Splendid warning. When I read Vance saying " the US will not be subservient to Israel" , I know we are already in real trouble. The need to make such a comment, pregnant with the malice and Jew-hating of ancient tropes in both the far right and the far left, including the red-blinking lights on the word " subservient " , shows the depth of the bias and how quickly Israel and the Jews can find themselves demonised , a pre-requisite to allow the masses' their craved recurrent blood sacrifice to satisfy the Beast in them.
As if the US could be subservient to any country except those that Trump has a personal interest in for making money. Yes JD cannot be trusted on many levels.
🏆. I’m going to call it: Nachum, you have won the internet award of the year. This is all the truths put eloquently and unsparingly into one place. Kol haKavod.
Beautifully expressed. And, true! I'm sending this essay to a Jewish friend who believes Israel is doing terrible things to the poor Palestinians. My favorite excerpt: "A person can memorize the Nuremberg Laws and learn nothing about his own capacity for conformity. He can tour Auschwitz, stare solemnly at the piles of shoes, and return home to demonize living Jews."
Great article. Ultimately, what we are realizing is that the mask of tolerance for Jews, which was created in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has now slipped. The pre-war antisemites were always there. Now they are emboldened to come back out in the open.
When masses of people are more upset that the Jews of Israel had the temerity to fight back in a way the far left didn’t approve of, you already know everything you need to know about these people. That they are more upset with Israel for surviving an attack than they are with the folks who actually launched the attack just rams it home that much more thoroughly.
I’m through arguing with these people. They are beyond redemption. And when the history of this time is written a generation or so from now, a lot of these people are going to wonder what possessed them and why they didn’t take the opportunity to shut up. We Jews have extraordinarily long memories. We will not forget the breadth of the betrayal we are seeing.
Nachum Kaplan tells the gentile bystander that the real Hitler test is happening now and he's failing it. True, and beside the point. The gentile was never fixable. Not in Alexandria, not in Vienna, not today in Berkeley.
We are the problem. Until we fix ourselves, every word aimed at the bystander is wasted. You don't lecture the crowd about courage while your own ranks are lining up to surrender.
The disease has two forms.
The useful idiot
He speaks "as a Jew." He speaks as a prop. His surname is the most valuable thing he owns and he rents it to people who need a Jewish face to chant for the end of the Jewish state and call it peace.
He calls the war genocide while the man who coined the word turns in his grave. He weeps for Gaza and has no sentence for the girls raped at Nova. Context for the murderers, contempt for the murdered. Powerful people are grateful to him for the first time in his soft little life, and all it costs is his own family.
He isn't a wayward cousin who needs a better argument. He heard the arguments and he chose the enemy. The only thing more contemptible than what he does is our habit of still calling him one of us. He left. Stop holding the door.
Our failed leadership
The leadership is the whole structure, and they
Seventy years on one theory: be liked. A seat at every table, a check to every cause. Fund the universities and the coalitions and they'll remember us.
They didn't. The universities we endowed threw Jewish students out of their own clubs. The coalitions we built moved us to the enemy column. And our leaders, watching their only strategy collapse, wrote letters. Convened dialogues. Begged for the loyalty of people who had already spit on them.
Not cowardice. Uselessness. A professional class whose only skill is getting the meeting and who have nothing when the meeting is refused. They had the donors, the alumni, the lawyers, every weapon in the box, and were too well-mannered to pick one up. They mistook their comfort for our safety and are still collecting salaries for it.
The diaspora they raised was told antisemitism was a museum exhibit. The bill came October 8 and most still haven't opened it. They'll attend the gala. They won't attend the fight.
Fix this first
Stop auditioning. No more condemning Israel to prove we're the good kind.
Stop funding people who hate us. Pull the money, publicly, and let them explain the hole.
Stop apologizing for Jewish power. Use it.
Fire the leaders. Coldly, the way any board fires executives whose strategy failed.
Then we can ask the gentile to pass Kaplan's test. Until we pass our own, we have no standing to grade his. We survived kings, popes, and commissars. What we have never survived is agreeing with our enemies about ourselves, and too many of us are nodding along.
There were Army generals during the campaign in WWII Europe who forced the German locals to GO to the concentration/death camps and SEE what they claimed not to know about. Maybe many of these protesters ought to be forced somehow to go see the Gazaniacs in the raw without minders. Think they'd change their tune?
Nachum, I am a Jew who was living in Israel on October 7. I am still mourning people I lost then. And I internally gag in a mixture of disgust and disbelief when I watch the direction taken by so many others who are seeing the same events I am.
Nachum, as usual, you produced a masterpiece: impeccable presentation, piercing insight, and an ability to lead the reader slowly toward clarity.
You helped me understand something I had struggled to reconcile: how someone can sincerely denounce the antisemitism of yesterday while participating in the vilification of good people today—including people I know personally, who hold themselves to high moral standards while being condemned for precisely the opposite.
I see more clearly now the difference between recognizing evil as a persuasive, subtle force that must be detected before it becomes obvious, and comfortably walking through a Holocaust museum shaking one’s head at perpetrators whose guilt history has already labeled for us. It is easy to condemn evil once the ambiguity is gone.
But then, in all the irony, I realized that I am guilty of this too.
What good is acknowledging my past mistakes if I remain just as susceptible to the next bold headline that drowns out the morally important fine print? Perhaps I should be learning to recognize the patterns that fool me before they do—not merely shaking my head afterward at what I got wrong.
Maybe I shouldn’t need to look in the mirror and see swastikas on my uniform before realizing that I require serious improvement.
It is easy to point at what has already been conveniently labeled. Why investigate when I can summarize? Why solve when I can rationalize and avoid the pain of change? Why reflect when reflection might expose me? Why acknowledge that I was utterly, shamefully wrong when I can follow the admission with a “but…” and place myself safely beyond guilt’s reach?
A religious friend of mine once told me: ״רשעים מלאים חרטות״—the wicked are full of regrets. I think I understand that line better now. To be truly evil, they do not need to be ignorant or indifferent to their own handiwork. They just need to remain uninformed about their agency. Regret is easy. Recognition is painful, and is the only thing that will change me. Mourning evils’ influence on me is easy. Realizing that I’m a willing victim might actually aid my improvement, and should therefore be avoided at all costs.
Good article and so true. I was completely Shocked by the fact that the American people (I’m an American citizen ) had Literally Lost their mind over the horrific atrocities committed against the Jewish community’s. it was so Unbelievable to see so many people being demonically deceived - and not knowing— by propaganda and Lies from the left and media and…..AARG‼️😢I can’t even fathom How Many People are SO PROUD And Happy 😃 to Condemn the Jewish State of Israel 🇮🇱 and call them “Settlers “ in their Own GOD GIVEN LAND- it makes me Sick and Sad 😢 gotta go, I’m ranting. The Almighty LORD LOVES YOU ALL SO MUCH, You Are The Apple Of His Eye‼️🙏💯🌈💕🙌❤️😻
They justify it by claiming that the jews in Israel today are not "real" jews. They have come from Europe and were not on the land for thousands of years. The people who were are the Palestinians, they claim. Substack is full of antisemitic people, and it has amazed me. I was planning on leaving the platform because of this and was unsubscribing when I ran across this article. So, I will see.
There are many who believe in Israel 🇮🇱 and the facts. The ones who don’t are just not worth even listening to- block them and ignore their ignorance❣️PRAISE OUR GOD, AMEN And HALLELUJAH‼️🙏🌼🙌❤️💯✝️😻
This is not an easy article to "like" but it is accurate, truthful and points out a vital lesson from the past that all sufferers of normalcy bias try to forget....
To paraphrase Dara Horn, if there’s one thing people love more than dead Jews, it is defenseless ones.
Splendid warning. When I read Vance saying " the US will not be subservient to Israel" , I know we are already in real trouble. The need to make such a comment, pregnant with the malice and Jew-hating of ancient tropes in both the far right and the far left, including the red-blinking lights on the word " subservient " , shows the depth of the bias and how quickly Israel and the Jews can find themselves demonised , a pre-requisite to allow the masses' their craved recurrent blood sacrifice to satisfy the Beast in them.
As if the US could be subservient to any country except those that Trump has a personal interest in for making money. Yes JD cannot be trusted on many levels.
🏆. I’m going to call it: Nachum, you have won the internet award of the year. This is all the truths put eloquently and unsparingly into one place. Kol haKavod.
Beautifully expressed. And, true! I'm sending this essay to a Jewish friend who believes Israel is doing terrible things to the poor Palestinians. My favorite excerpt: "A person can memorize the Nuremberg Laws and learn nothing about his own capacity for conformity. He can tour Auschwitz, stare solemnly at the piles of shoes, and return home to demonize living Jews."
Great article. Ultimately, what we are realizing is that the mask of tolerance for Jews, which was created in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has now slipped. The pre-war antisemites were always there. Now they are emboldened to come back out in the open.
When masses of people are more upset that the Jews of Israel had the temerity to fight back in a way the far left didn’t approve of, you already know everything you need to know about these people. That they are more upset with Israel for surviving an attack than they are with the folks who actually launched the attack just rams it home that much more thoroughly.
I’m through arguing with these people. They are beyond redemption. And when the history of this time is written a generation or so from now, a lot of these people are going to wonder what possessed them and why they didn’t take the opportunity to shut up. We Jews have extraordinarily long memories. We will not forget the breadth of the betrayal we are seeing.
Kaplan Is Talking to the Wrong Audience
Nachum Kaplan tells the gentile bystander that the real Hitler test is happening now and he's failing it. True, and beside the point. The gentile was never fixable. Not in Alexandria, not in Vienna, not today in Berkeley.
We are the problem. Until we fix ourselves, every word aimed at the bystander is wasted. You don't lecture the crowd about courage while your own ranks are lining up to surrender.
The disease has two forms.
The useful idiot
He speaks "as a Jew." He speaks as a prop. His surname is the most valuable thing he owns and he rents it to people who need a Jewish face to chant for the end of the Jewish state and call it peace.
He calls the war genocide while the man who coined the word turns in his grave. He weeps for Gaza and has no sentence for the girls raped at Nova. Context for the murderers, contempt for the murdered. Powerful people are grateful to him for the first time in his soft little life, and all it costs is his own family.
He isn't a wayward cousin who needs a better argument. He heard the arguments and he chose the enemy. The only thing more contemptible than what he does is our habit of still calling him one of us. He left. Stop holding the door.
Our failed leadership
The leadership is the whole structure, and they
Seventy years on one theory: be liked. A seat at every table, a check to every cause. Fund the universities and the coalitions and they'll remember us.
They didn't. The universities we endowed threw Jewish students out of their own clubs. The coalitions we built moved us to the enemy column. And our leaders, watching their only strategy collapse, wrote letters. Convened dialogues. Begged for the loyalty of people who had already spit on them.
Not cowardice. Uselessness. A professional class whose only skill is getting the meeting and who have nothing when the meeting is refused. They had the donors, the alumni, the lawyers, every weapon in the box, and were too well-mannered to pick one up. They mistook their comfort for our safety and are still collecting salaries for it.
The diaspora they raised was told antisemitism was a museum exhibit. The bill came October 8 and most still haven't opened it. They'll attend the gala. They won't attend the fight.
Fix this first
Stop auditioning. No more condemning Israel to prove we're the good kind.
Stop funding people who hate us. Pull the money, publicly, and let them explain the hole.
Stop apologizing for Jewish power. Use it.
Fire the leaders. Coldly, the way any board fires executives whose strategy failed.
Then we can ask the gentile to pass Kaplan's test. Until we pass our own, we have no standing to grade his. We survived kings, popes, and commissars. What we have never survived is agreeing with our enemies about ourselves, and too many of us are nodding along.
I was fired for condemning Hamas and faculty and staff were too cowardly to stand with me. But they think they would have been Schindler.
There were Army generals during the campaign in WWII Europe who forced the German locals to GO to the concentration/death camps and SEE what they claimed not to know about. Maybe many of these protesters ought to be forced somehow to go see the Gazaniacs in the raw without minders. Think they'd change their tune?
A sobering test for those who imagine they would have been among the righteous few: today, they get to find out.
Good closing sentence. Well written, well done.
Brilliant as usual. The majority embraced hatred then, and the majority is embracing hatred now. Attention: wannabe upstanders: we need you now!!!!
Nachum, I am a Jew who was living in Israel on October 7. I am still mourning people I lost then. And I internally gag in a mixture of disgust and disbelief when I watch the direction taken by so many others who are seeing the same events I am.
Nachum, as usual, you produced a masterpiece: impeccable presentation, piercing insight, and an ability to lead the reader slowly toward clarity.
You helped me understand something I had struggled to reconcile: how someone can sincerely denounce the antisemitism of yesterday while participating in the vilification of good people today—including people I know personally, who hold themselves to high moral standards while being condemned for precisely the opposite.
I see more clearly now the difference between recognizing evil as a persuasive, subtle force that must be detected before it becomes obvious, and comfortably walking through a Holocaust museum shaking one’s head at perpetrators whose guilt history has already labeled for us. It is easy to condemn evil once the ambiguity is gone.
But then, in all the irony, I realized that I am guilty of this too.
What good is acknowledging my past mistakes if I remain just as susceptible to the next bold headline that drowns out the morally important fine print? Perhaps I should be learning to recognize the patterns that fool me before they do—not merely shaking my head afterward at what I got wrong.
Maybe I shouldn’t need to look in the mirror and see swastikas on my uniform before realizing that I require serious improvement.
It is easy to point at what has already been conveniently labeled. Why investigate when I can summarize? Why solve when I can rationalize and avoid the pain of change? Why reflect when reflection might expose me? Why acknowledge that I was utterly, shamefully wrong when I can follow the admission with a “but…” and place myself safely beyond guilt’s reach?
A religious friend of mine once told me: ״רשעים מלאים חרטות״—the wicked are full of regrets. I think I understand that line better now. To be truly evil, they do not need to be ignorant or indifferent to their own handiwork. They just need to remain uninformed about their agency. Regret is easy. Recognition is painful, and is the only thing that will change me. Mourning evils’ influence on me is easy. Realizing that I’m a willing victim might actually aid my improvement, and should therefore be avoided at all costs.
Nachum, thank you for calling me out.
What better time than today for our teshuvah and looking inward to make our accounting.
Good article and so true. I was completely Shocked by the fact that the American people (I’m an American citizen ) had Literally Lost their mind over the horrific atrocities committed against the Jewish community’s. it was so Unbelievable to see so many people being demonically deceived - and not knowing— by propaganda and Lies from the left and media and…..AARG‼️😢I can’t even fathom How Many People are SO PROUD And Happy 😃 to Condemn the Jewish State of Israel 🇮🇱 and call them “Settlers “ in their Own GOD GIVEN LAND- it makes me Sick and Sad 😢 gotta go, I’m ranting. The Almighty LORD LOVES YOU ALL SO MUCH, You Are The Apple Of His Eye‼️🙏💯🌈💕🙌❤️😻
They justify it by claiming that the jews in Israel today are not "real" jews. They have come from Europe and were not on the land for thousands of years. The people who were are the Palestinians, they claim. Substack is full of antisemitic people, and it has amazed me. I was planning on leaving the platform because of this and was unsubscribing when I ran across this article. So, I will see.
There are many who believe in Israel 🇮🇱 and the facts. The ones who don’t are just not worth even listening to- block them and ignore their ignorance❣️PRAISE OUR GOD, AMEN And HALLELUJAH‼️🙏🌼🙌❤️💯✝️😻
This is not an easy article to "like" but it is accurate, truthful and points out a vital lesson from the past that all sufferers of normalcy bias try to forget....
In a word: yup.
Excellent!