Where is the world’s outrage?

When it is the Jews in question, people use social media to post about their skincare routine, what they ate for lunch or, even worse, an ill-timed ceasefire.

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Israel did not start this war.

But did you actually expect that we would simply saunter into the abyss without a fight?

I am still waiting for one (just one!) of the scores of people who are condemning Israel’s response to a genocidal terrorist group that uses their own civilians as shields, to answer: What would be a more appropriate response aside from allowing your people to be massacred? Which is, for what I would hope would be obvious reasons, completely off the table.

To all those people justifying the murder, rape, and kidnapping of Jewish civilians by saying, “What did y’all think decolonization looked like?” — yet who are simultaneously outraged by Palestinian deaths and destruction of Gazan buildings in response, I answer:

What did y’all think self-defense looked like?

If you think that establishing a Palestinian state is the solution needed to end the war, then you have been thoroughly deceived. This war is not because the Palestinians do not have a state. This war is because the Jews do. And until people wake up to this reality and stop indulging the Palestinians in their fantasy of conquering all of Israel, the bloodshed will never, ever end.

The “Free Palestine” movement is an Islamic imperialistic ideology — not a resistance movement, not an indigenous rights movement, not a self-determination movement, not a human rights movement, not a peace movement. An Islamic imperialistic ideology.

It is hard to believe that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and apparently everyday Gaza civilians (as evidenced by Israel’s hostage rescue operation last week) are still currently holding more than 130 abductees, including children that they dragged out of their homes after slaughtering their families on video — and people are actually out here debating who “the bad guys” are.

This world is broken.

I am disgusted by the world leaders, politicians, celebrities, influencers, and desperate wannabes trying to declare that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians. Why can’t the Palestinians publicly make that distinction themselves?

In the Palestinian territories, they would surely be killed if they spoke out, but what about all of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living abroad, no less the millions taking to the streets across the world?

Palestinians and their supporters spanning the globe have the unique opportunity right now to express how little Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad represent them and their aspirations. They could be rallying with signs saying “not in our name” for the massacring, sexual assaulting, beheading, mutilating, maiming, torturing, and kidnapping innocent Jews.

They could be shouting for the release of the remaining 130 or so abductees who were dragged out of their homes and into Gaza, including a 10-month-old baby and elderly folks. They could be roaring through our cities, demanding liberation from Hamas’ corrupt, oppressive dictatorship over Gaza, and they could marching with millions of like-minded Jews calling for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They could be. But they are not. Instead, they are openly supporting Hamas’ genocidal agenda to kill all Jews in Israel and everywhere. Even though they demonstrate with their faces covered or hidden, the masks are off.

If the one thing Palestinians simply wanted was a state alongside the Jewish one, this conflict would have been over long ago. In fact, it would have never begun. A healthy majority of Jews in Ottoman-era and British-era Palestine were always willing to share the land. The Palestinians were (and still are) not. Thus, a two-state solution, when one state’s objective is to destroy the other, would become a two-state disaster.

How could people be flagrantly disgusted with the idea that Palestinians in Gaza are starving, yet rather apathetic about the reality that people who have been kidnapped have actually been starving as captives for four months? It can’t be because they the abductees are mostly Jews, can it?

The sheer absurdity of prioritizing the comfort and well-being of free Palestinians, even if they are innocent, let alone terrorists and their sympathizers, over the basic needs of the abductees who were ruthlessly kidnapped, cannot be overstated.

For many people in many Western societies to elevate the needs of the perpetrators and their families over the basic needs of victims who lack any freedom whatsoever, simply because they are Jews, reflects systemic antisemitism within the “Free Palestine” movement — and is also a disgrace to the notion of justice, a betrayal of humanity, and a testament to the spectrum of moral bankruptcy on one end, and apathetic silence on the other.

Here is a revolutionary idea: Palestinian terrorists and their supporters (both active and passive) and even innocent Palestinians should not get food, water, and aid instead of the hostages. The hostages should be the world’s number-one priority. Period. If aid is so critically important to the survival of Palestinians, release every hostage. It really is that simple.

Now, pay attention. There is a reason why you do not see so many people advocating “Free Palestine” also demanding “Free the hostages” — which is the most basic call for human rights. And there is a reason why you do not see “Free Palestine” alongside “End Hamas,” the world’s fifth-most active, Islamic fundamentalist terror group (also a pretty basic call for human rights).

This is because the “Free Palestine” movement is anti-peace that uses the well-established myth of an indigenous Palestinian people fighting for freedom as a masquerade for the very real movement dedicated to destruction of Israel, the Jewish state, and genocide of the Jews.

The heinous proclamations of “Gas the Jews!” and “Globalize the intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” heard at virtually every pro-Palestinian demonstration are not isolated incidents, accidental occurrences, or a few bad apples.

They are very much a part of the “Free Palestine” movement’s core beliefs, manipulated by marketing and branding geniuses to make the average person think that all they are calling for is love, peace, shared humanity, and maybe a pot of gold and the end of the worldwide “we’re all in this together” rainbow.

Yet nobody is stopping them. Across Europe, the police say they are “outnumbered” and scared to enforce the laws. In America, people are worried about infringing on their “free speech” rights — even as the “Free Palestine” movement regularly oversteps reasonable boundaries of the “free speech” privilege.

When Black people in America are wrongly killed, or when women in Iran are harassed for not wearing a hijab, or when women and the LGBTQ communities experience inexplicable double standards, the world seems rushed to stand by their side.

But when it is the Jews in question, people use social media to post about their skincare routine, what they ate for lunch or, even worse, an ill-timed ceasefire that — for all intents and purposes — would force Israel (i.e. the Jews) to cease so that Hamas can fire.

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Jews and Israelis do not need to prove to anyone that we do not hate Palestinians or Muslims. We are not the ones marching through the streets chanting for blood, violence, and genocide. We are not the ones who teach our children how to stab and murder innocent people we call our “enemy.”

We are not the ones attacking schools, houses of worship, community centers, students on university campuses, and random people on the sidewalk in cities around the world. We are not the ones insatiably tearing down posters of kidnapped people who were dragged by their hair into tunnels.

We are not the ones who are brazenly supporting a radical Islamic fascist dictatorship, or standing on the same side as the world’s worst abusers of human rights. We are not the ones whose broadly supported vision for the future is “intifada revolution,” a “one-state solution,” “we want all of it,” and “from the river to the sea,” all of which openly deny the right of Jews to exist at all in our indigenous homeland.

Therefore, the burden of proof lies on the Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim worlds to convince us that they do not hate Jews and Israelis, when all evidence over the last 1,300 years, and especially since October 7th, suggests otherwise.

And no, using a few token Jews, who have no idea what the hell is going on, to conceal their Jew hatred is not going to cut it. In fact, by exploiting Jewish voices only when they agree with the “Free Palestine” movement’s socio-political agenda reveals just how deeply antisemitic this “movement” truly is.

There is a world of difference between the rise in Islamophobia, which occurs as a direct consequence of radical Muslims committing brutal terror attacks around the world, and the rise in antisemitism which occurs as a direct consequence of the emboldening of radical Islam.

Overlooking the shared root cause of radical Islam not only misrepresents the issue, but also fails both communities affected.

Making blanket, virtue-signaling statements that equate Islamophobia and antisemitism is not only offensive to Jews, who bear a lot of the brunt of Islamic extremism (and are also targeted significantly more); it also inadvertently strengthens radical groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their supporters who manipulate claims of Islamophobia as a cover for their violent speech and actions.

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I too would love to “move on.” I too want to be posting on social media beautiful parts of life that I experience — surfing at sunset, dancing at a rave with friends, sailing with my family, eating a festive meal to welcome in 2024. Instead, my social media has turned black since October 7th.

I choose to write and speak for the voiceless. For the 1,200 people in Israel who were massacred as part of the worst single-day attack on the Jewish state, ever; and for the 130-plus people, some dead, hopefully many alive, and all still being hold captive by Palestinian terrorists and their collaborators.

While the world eats, dances, and enjoys the luxury of being free today with the people they love, the kidnapped are alone and starving in a dark underground tunnel, 136 days in captivity. If the kidnapped could post on social media, what would they say? Would you listen to their desperate cries for help? If not me, then who will speak for them?

And yet, instead of so-called world leaders using every resource at their disposal to defeat Hamas and save the hostages, it was Israel which was brought before the World Court on baseless charges of genocide, needing to defend itself against a blood libel thousands of kilometers away from where so many of these so-called world leaders are barely permitting the Israelis practice legitimate self-defense against those wishing to commit an actual genocide.

A few weeks ago, we honored International Holocaust Day, a day that the UN General Assembly chose to recognize the memory of victims of the Holocaust, which is the very reason that the word “genocide” exists. (Trust story, Google it.)

Now it seems that the world created International Holocaust Day to absolve itself of guilt, not just for the Holocaust, but for all the countries and governments, past and present, which have persecuted, murdered, and expelled Jews — or turned their heads another way as others did.

If Hamas is not eradicated as a governing power from Gaza, and if the West continues to appease the Islamic Republic of Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” (i.e. Islamic fundamentalist terror groups) as they propagate their mission to kill all Jews, next year’s International Holocaust Day will be utterly meaningless.

The other option is to keep cynically framing the Jewish People and Israel, our indigenous homeland, as the villains in our fight for survival — a fight that did not start on October 7th, but was certainly reinvigorated by it.

We are way too far into overtime, where so much of the world continues acting like gaslighting does not matter, the Jews are undeserving of others’ activism, and we ought to “move on” and pretend like none of this ever happened.

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