This Week In: What the hell is going on?
America's "extraordinary opportunity" for the Jewish state, Red Cross military gear marked as "humanitarian aid," amazing advice on balancing left-wing views and supporting Israel, and so much more.
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Editor’s Note: Hi, it’s Joshua Hoffman, the founder of Future of Jewish. We are experimenting with what could become a weekly satirical feature called “This Week In: What the hell is going on?” — in which we try to humorously bring you the most bizarre, outlandish, and surreal developments from around the Jewish world during the past week.
Please let us know in the comments if you enjoy (or do not enjoy) this first edition.
Matthew Paul Miller, the famous Jewish American mainstream musician who goes by the stage name “Matisyahu,” had two of his concerts canceled in New Mexico and Arizona because pro-Palestinian protesters targeted venues where he was scheduled to perform.
But please, keep incessantly reminding us that so-called “anti-Zionism” should never, ever, ever be confused with pure, unadulterated antisemitism.
The Islamic Republic of Iran — which, as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s chief sponsor, is for all intents and purposes behind the October 7th terror attacks in Israel — reiterated that the regime owns Antarctica and will build a military operation in the South Pole.
“A continent that Tehran has not (yet) managed to manufacture a disaster in,” said Robert Greenway, a director at the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation. “I don’t know if penguins and polar bears can be radicalized, but if they start launching drones and missiles, we’ll know why.”1
Speaking at a panel at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted that there is an “extraordinary opportunity” in the months ahead for Israel to be integrated into the Middle East, as Arab countries are willing to normalize ties with the Jewish state.
“Virtually every Arab country now genuinely wants to integrate Israel into the region to normalize relations,” said Blinken, “to provide security commitments and assurances, so that Israel can feel more safe.”
Ah, yes, Mr. Blinken, we would love to hear more about why it is such a profoundly genius idea, just four months after the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, to award the ultimate prize of statehood to the Palestinians, the majority of whom unapologetically support Hamas and the October 7th terror attacks, according to multiple polls.
Israel, not America, and not “virtually every Arab country,” will ultimately have to share its borders with your idea of a Palestinian (terrorist) state. And if you are asking the Israelis to compromise their national security so that you and the Biden administration can parade to the American public that you “solved” the Israeli-Palestinian saga — when in reality, you will only make it so much worse — thanks, but no thanks. Signed, all nine million people in Israel.
Last Thursday, Jews in the UK awoke to new figures showing that late 2023 saw a 589-percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Britain, compared with the same period in 2022, while knowing that many such incidents also go unreported or undocumented. In other words, the number is probably much higher than the already-unbelievable 589-percent increase.
This news came a day or two after the Labour party’s decision to drop Azhar Ali, after he suggested that Israel had deliberately allowed the October 7th attacks to happen — that is, had allowed the murder, torture, mutilation, rape, and kidnapping of nearly 1,200 of its own citizens — as part of a highly confidential scheme to occupy Gaza, “a new version of the centuries-old notion of Jewish conspiracy, of a Jewish deviousness so diabolical that it is prepared to sacrifice its young to advance its schemes,” wrote columnist Jonathan Freedland.2
“You can see the pattern here,” he added. “Many want there to be a clear, bright line between antisemitism — obviously appalling and to be condemned — and the loathing of Israel that has felt especially intense these past four months. They want the two to remain in neat, separate boxes, so that the latter can be regarded as safely uncontaminated by the former.”
“That’s partly because when some people want to express their apparent anger at Israel’s actions, they direct it at Jewish targets — daubing ‘SS IDF’ on the walls of a former synagogue in Sussex, for example. They are holding a British minority responsible for the actions of a foreign government several thousand miles away, a response that does not seem to happen with other distant conflicts: after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” wrote Freedland, “Russian Orthodox churches in Britain did not brace themselves for attack.”
But don’t forget, everyone, anti-Zionism is one-million percent not in any way, shape, or form antisemitism. It is only a mere coincidence that they share the prefix “anti,” and that the words Zionism and semitism are both unequivocally related to the Jews. There is absolutely no overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, whatsoever.
Students on the world’s all-time most welcoming campus for Jews, Harvard University, woke up a few days ago to posters of Israeli hostages defaced with red paint, making them completely unreadable.
If you advocate for your cause by defacing posters of people who have been kidnapped from their homes — including a baby, children, teenagers, and the elderly — then no, you are not an “activist.” You are a bigot, a stain on society, and you should be dealt with accordingly.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian demonstrators continue to insist that harassing and bullying Jewish students on campuses is “resistance,” and that these actions “depend on the context.” I am still waiting for a Jewish student to punch one of these obnoxious demonstrators somewhere it hurts, in the name of said “resistance” of course, and then tell them that they can shove the context up their you-know-what.
Pardon my Hebrew.
Douglas Murray, the British writer who has been covering the Israel-Hamas war mostly from within the Jewish state, was asked how people should “balance” their support of Israel with their left-wing views. His response, in classic Douglas Murray fashion, was nothing short of priceless:
“How about urging them to orient their lives not by a boring political seesaw game that no one cares about except for themselves, and instead of orienting themselves by, ‘Oh, exactly how can I position myself?’ — no one cares — how about you just orient yourself towards the truth?”
“When you come across a mental blockage like this, you can keep hitting your head against the wall, or you can realize that you’ve got to do something else. And the something else in this case is to look frankly at what is actually happening. It is a serious moral defect of a person to think that their membership in a political tribe should override anything else.”3
Amen, brother. Somebody get this guy a bottle of Goldstar.
An American junior college professor decked out his office in Palestinian flags and a “Visit Palestine” poster that was designed by an Austrian Jew in the 1930s to support Zionism (the Jews’ right to self-determination in our indigenous homeland).
One would hope that professors would be decently versed in history, but hey, the world is not perfect, so God forbid you blame the Palestinians for co-opting this very same poster starting in the 1990s, as part of their knows-no-bounds propaganda.
And God forbid we laugh at the stupidity of a professor who is so clearly uninvolved with and unaffected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet extravagantly designed his office with flags from two territories thousands of miles away. Never mind that, since 2007, one of these territories has been ruled by the world’s fifth-most active terror organization which governs by oppressive autocracy, fascism, and Islamic jihad.
What an upstanding educator.
At a rally in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, a police officer asked a Jewish bystander to hide his Star of David — to avoid “triggering” the protesters.
“The police officer is clearly worried that he and his colleagues are heavily outnumbered and that these protesters could pose a threat to Jews,” wrote Khaled Hassan, an Islamist terrorism researcher, “but his response was effectively to stop a passing Jewish man and ask him to hide his identity before continuing on his way. Whose rights are actually being protected here, those of law-abiding people, or those of mobs of extremists who might be ‘triggered’ by people being Jewish in public?”4
No further comment necessary.
Israel discovered military gear packed in Red Cross boxes on trucks bound for Gaza, classified as “international aid.” I repeat: Israel discovered military gear packed in Red Cross boxes on trucks bound for Gaza, classified as “international aid.”
Can I just say that the Red Cross’ humanitarian work has been overwhelmingly spectacular during this Israel-Hamas war. Truly, impeccable. Job well done.
The overly “progressive” U.S. politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she will vote against legislation regarding foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel because it lacks humanitarian aid for Palestinians. The interviewer, CNN’s Jake Tapper, then corrected her that the legislation includes $10 billion — billion, with a B — for Gaza.
“We’d have to see. But as it stands, UNRWA is the number-one central corridor for humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza,” she said, speaking about the “humanitarian” organization that Israeli intelligence just revealed employs some 1,400 known terrorists, at least 30 of whom participated in the October 7th Palestinian terror attacks in Israel.
Mind you, this is the same politician who met with families of the hostages, then bragged about it on Twitter to “promote a ceasefire” that would likely result in the death of most or all of the hostages. What great humanitarian work.
A new “report” by the profusely antisemitic Amnesty International claimed that — devoid of any actual evidence — Israel committed war crimes during attacks in the Gazan city, Rafah. Amnesty stated that Israel attacked targets which “could be considered legitimate military objectives” and accepted local Gazans’ testimonies.
In other words, charges of war crimes rely on “because we said so” evidence.
At the same time, Jewish eyewitnesses are repeatedly told to “prove it” after speaking about Palestinian terrorists’ attacks that included raping teenage girls, beheading babies, mutilation, and burning whole families to death.
Don’t you just love a good Jewish double standard?
During a press conference last week, U.S. President Joe Biden used King Abdullah II of Jordan as a prop to lecture Israel on a ceasefire and the pressing, dire need — just four months after the worst single-day attack against Israel, ever — for a Palestinian state.
Biden’s aids forgot to include on his note cards that Jordan is a monarchy where the king has absolute power and chooses all the members of the legislature, and criticism of the king is strictly prohibited.
To add insult to injury, the Jordanians have offered no extra-ordinary assistance to Gazan civilians (even though the king’s wife is Palestinian). But sure, it is perfectly acceptable for Biden and the Jordanian autocrat to dictate the terms of Israel’s surrender, in the name of the “poor Palestinians.”
Because, as Douglas Murray so aptly put it: “Israel seems to be the only country in the world never allowed to win a conflict. It is allowed to fight a conflict to a draw, but rarely to a win. Which is one reason why the wars keep occurring.”5
CNN published an opinion article by Rajaie Batniji, a Gaza-born physician, entrepreneur, and political scientist based in the United States. Sounds harmless, right? Well, not as much as we might have hoped.
Rajaie said that on February 1st, he met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a 90-minute private discussion on the situation in Gaza. “Blinken took extensive notes and nodded attentively,” he wrote.6
According to Rajaie, some 70 percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, citing an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, which I genuinely have no problem accepting as a matter of fact.
He then asserted that “almost all the schools, all the universities, many of the hospitals, the mosques, the churches, the historical sites and the public records” have also been destroyed, even though Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made these structures legitimate military targets, according to international law, by using them for military purposes.
You see, this is what the Palestinians, historically and still to this day, love to do: They effectively force you to accept whatever they say as indisputable fact. But then, when you contextualize what they say with other indisputable facts, they act as if no one but the Palestinians (and definitely not the Jews) can be the provider of indisputable facts.
“My family may be better off than most in Gaza and they are still hungry,” said Rajaie, unsurprisingly blaming Israel for this reality, even as Palestinian terrorists have been documented time and again preventing humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinian civilians, and even as the UN refuses for whatever reason to distribute much of this aid to the strip. There are literally photographs of undistributed products sitting in parking lots in Gaza, waiting to be allocated throughout the strip.
Rajaie then added, in the most prophetic fashion, that “according to the United Nations, four out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza.”
That is correct, Mr. Rajaie, because the UN is not doing its job. But sure, my friend, keep blaming the Jews for problems that are unrelated to us.
A Columbia University professor (Shai Davidai) and his wife (Yardenne Greenspan) saw their lives upended by — wait for it — their decision to denounce terrorism in Israel and antisemitism in America.
The day after giving an impassioned speech during an anti-terror vigil on Columbia’s campus, every one of Shai’s inboxes was overflowing with messages. One person said that speaking up against organizations who openly support Hamas was “not a good look.”7
“As leftist, liberal Zionists, we have always made a clear distinction between the people of Palestine and the inhumane terror organizations that falsely purport to speak in their name,” wrote Davidai and Greenspan. “Our support for a two-state solution has never wavered.”
“This is what we got wrong. We failed to realize that for many in our ‘progressive’ circle, being a liberal Israeli just wasn’t good enough,” they added. “Our friends did not have a problem with our politics, they had a problem with our identity. Our friends were willing to overlook the fact that we were Jewish Israelis, but only so long as we shut up about it.”
“Every morning, as we sift through the hundreds of hateful emails and online comments that Shai receives each day, we are reminded that life will never be the same again,” they wrote. “From memes of rats with big, curving noses to threats of physical violence, from the publicizing of our personal information to the dissemination of egregious lies about Shai and his parents, from unsubstantiated criticism of Shai’s professional conduct to conspiratorial antisemitic rants, we believe we’ve seen it all.”
“Shai is regularly called a Nazi, a Zionist pig, a genocidal baby murderer, a kike. Thousands have called for his death. While a few people get in touch privately to offer their support, almost none of our friends have dared to publicly stand by his side. Many of Shai’s colleagues are regularly cc’d on these hateful missives. None have spoken up.”
And we thought American academia was among the world’s best. Sigh.
Recently, the vaunted UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) insisted that they rigorously vet Gazan staff according to the UN list of terrorist groups.
There is just one totally insignificant minor detail. You know what, I am not even sure it is worth mentioning, but okay, because I already teased it, here it is: The UN does not classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. In the gracious words of Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:
“Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course as you know. It is a political movement.”
Hey, Mr. Griffiths, if we (say) wanted to write a multi-million-dollar check for (say) you to claim something unthinkably outlandish, to where can we send it?
Sorry, UNRWA, we’re not quite done with you. I mean, you just keep giving us so much content to play with. Like yesterday, when the agency that changed the definition of a Palestinian refugee in the 1980s to a definition that applies to no other group of refugees on Earth, tweeted this photo with the caption: “There are no words.”
Actually, there are a few words: I am glad you reminded us that UNRWA, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are to blame for this, you antisemitic mockery of a refugee agency. The three of you consciously chose systemic terrorism and unhinged hate to brainwash the people of Gaza into detesting Israel and Jews, while doing nothing to make Palestinians’ lives remarkably better by, among other important steps, ending their refugee status like every other refugee agency is primarily tasked with doing.
One-line, dramatic tweets with a non-contextualized photo do nothing to make the situation better for anyone, but sure, keep acting like you are part of the solution to a problem that you have gravely exasperated, and keep pretending that the only way forward is to continue increasing your billion-dollar annual budget, which only results in more virulent terrorism and hate.
As our friends at the parody Twitter account, “The Mossad: Satirical, Yet Awesome,” wrote: “Kanye West and UNRWA should start a ‘lost over a billion dollars in two days for hating Jews’ support group.”
The U.S. has been pressuring Israel to prepare a “credible plan” to protect civilians before attacking Hamas in Rafah, a city in the south of Gaza. When Israel provided such a plan, the UN said it was impossible to evacuate civilians because the rest of Gaza is “littered with unexploded ordinance.”
In other words, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad booby-trapped tons of roads and homes with explosives ahead of the IDF’s advance — a strategy to pressure the West by putting Israel in impossible predicaments and weaponizing Palestinian civilians’ suffering.
If we were to put on our super duper terrorist thinking caps, we would say that this is a brilliant game plan. Legendary, I might add. It appears that the Jews’ bestest of friends at the UN, and other humani-terrorism organizations, concur.
The city of Rafah has been the center of much debate during the last few weeks. Israel claims that a quarter of Hamas’ battalions are stationed or hiding there. Reportedly, there are also more than a million Palestinians sheltering there, having been evacuated from other parts of Gaza.
To better understand the situation, let me bring in Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, who said:
“We think it’s horrific that UN agencies have tried to characterize Israel’s actions, in pursuance of its obligations under international law to protect civilians, as forced displacement.”
“Because what do these UN agencies tell Israel? You cannot attack Hamas military targets because there are civilians in the way and they might get killed. But you can’t ask civilians to get out of the way because then they’ll be displaced. The logical conclusion is that they are telling Israel not to attack Hamas at all.”
When will the UN and its agencies just come out and say: “You know what, it is time that we clarify something once and for all. We are rooting for the world’s fifth-most active and third-wealthiest terror group in its war with Israel. Islamic jihadis who gang-rape, behead, maim, and mutilate are more our cup of tea than democracy-loving Jews who have made peace with every Arab country that has desired it.”
Far-left U.S. politician and Congress’ top-ranking antisemite, Rashida Tlaib, was the only member of the House of Representatives who declined to vote last week for a resolution condemning the rape and sexual violence that Hamas leaders ordered members of the terror group to carry out during and after its monstrous October 7th attack in Israel.
“This resolution falls well short of also acknowledging the sexual abuse of Palestinians,” the American-Palestinian Tlaib said, baselessly insinuating that Israelis sexually assault Palestinians.
Thankfully, journalist Emily Schrader has investigated the accusations of sexual assault or abuse by Israel against Palestinians.
“It is almost nonexistent,” she wrote, “in fact remarkably so. The few incidents which have taken place over the past decade have resulted in lengthy jail sentences for the perpetrators and condemnation from Left to Right. However, even these isolated incidents have never been, based on years of research I’ve conducted, used as a method of war or as a policy of oppression.”8
As if the U.S. Congress was not already overflowing with more than enough folks who should not be legislating for one of the world’s great powers, it is so reassuring to know that Tlaib is perfectly fine with rape and sexual violence as an act of war. Not to mention that it was used by Palestinian terrorists against American citizens in Israel. What an honorable American patriot. More power to you, Rashida!
On the subject of top-ranking antisemites, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his country is ready to cooperate with Egypt on Gaza. I cannot think of a worse regime “helping” in Gaza — well, other than Iran.
And lastly, American actress Selma Blair made remarks in an Instagram video that slammed U.S. politician Cori Bush and our most favorite antisemite, Rashida Tlaib, for voting against legislation to prevent immigration into the U.S. by people “who participated in or otherwise facilitated” the Palestinian attacks in Israel on October 7th.
“Thank you very much,” the actress wrote in response. “Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroy minds. They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate.”
Blair was then called Islamophobic and forced to apologize — because stating empirical facts, albeit in an aggressive manner, means that you are unjustifiably scared of people (Muslims) who are endlessly encouraged to despise and kill Jews, essentially share the same ideology as ISIS, and call people in the West “infidels.”
When Muslims say whatever they want to say, no matter how vile or hateful it is, they call it “free speech.” But when other people say things that are more or less true about Muslims, it is a phobia — you know, an uncontrollable, irrational, and persistent fear.
What the hell is going on?
Robert Greenway
“Those who attack Jews in the UK are not striking a blow for Palestine: they are behaving as antisemites always have.” The Guardian.
J-TV on Instagram
Khaled on X
“The Easy Politics of Criticizing Israel.” Sapir.
“Opinion: Secretary Blinken, this is the uncomfortable truth about America and Israel.” CNN.
“What Happens When You Teach at Columbia and Reject Hamas.” Tablet.
Emily Schrader on X
Dear Joshua, please continue your excellent deep analysis of the news from Israel. I depend on your writing almost everyday and appreciate your publication very much. It is hard enough to learn about what is going on and too much to take the sarcasm. It is not necessary. Please. ❤️🇮🇱
I couldn’t stomach reading the entire article, being a wimpy senior just home from a moving “Bring Them Home” rally, but unlike Ilana, I say, “Bravo, Joshua! Sarcasm becomes you.” It is one more way, and not one that you overuse, to articulate the craziness we see in the world today.