Jew hate is the only explanation. You've spelled it out clearly in this insightful Essay. It's why the useful idiots can't see themselves for the dispicible, immoral creatures they are. Thier jew hate blinds them to the truth
Note that US aid to Israel in 2022 (the last year before Oct 7, comprised <5% of US foreign aid, and ~0.05% of the US budget that year. And, as you noted, most of the aid to Israel (unlike aid to other countries) was required to be spent on US-made equipment.
This was very well written and organized but managed to exclude the barbaric Oct 7 attack. Obviously it’s not just relevant to why Israel launched its war but also shows the barbarity and depravity that went unacknowledged or entirely justified and cheered on. Hamas schools and rhetoric and unrwa being infiltrated by Hamas it would be farcical if there wasn’t a body count for it.
should’ve also delved into what genocide is bc no I don’t think people in *good faith* are hotly contesting genocide in Israel they’re redefining genocide. If genocide is ugly war event or any war event then every war is genocidal. That’s the point. The number of casualties what Israel could do and the civilian to soldier death ratio the lack of any genocidal intent makes genocide impossible. But it doesn’t rule out other war crimes or evils. Genocide is important to allege bc it’s necessary for demonizing Jews as victims doing the same to others. Anyone who knows what the Holocaust entailed would shrink at this and be appalled but that would require not harboring deep resentments towards Jews to begin with.
Things like the ICC corruption scandal highlight just how far up the food chain the anti semitism and double standard goes.
It also shows how the script is being flipped on Israel deliberately. Everything Hamas did Israel is accused of. Try it out online.
Hamas a violent repressive human shield using kleptocratic fascist theocracy is not held accountable nor are all the civilians who support them including those who held hostages and participated in the Oct 7 arson rape looting torture and murder. All their violence inciting anti semitic rhetoric and indoctrination is not just supported but makes any peace impossible. No one makes peace with neighbors committed to their end. By any metric this isn’t the locus of the worst evil in the world. Oct 7 could’ve been but it was halted. It’s really unsurprising that people who despise Jews have latched onto this en masse and people in the west who’ve been conditioned in higher ed to despise the west or to associate Israel with subjugation of literally everything on earth have joined in the chorus baying for blood. There’s a smaller contingent brainwashed by the deliberately dishonest media but I don’t give them a free pass because any overarching simplistic analysis would have one question why is this the center of hell? Are sharks really attacking everyone all the time because it keeps making the front page. I go to the beach daily and I’m still here. You can do this cheap easy mental work.
hate saying things like of course Israel does things wrong bc duh. No one is going to see anyone Jewish as impartial and they’ll always find a reason you’re not impartial. This isn’t and was never a war of logic. I don’t believe the angry enraged mobs really don’t know anything else that’s going on in the world. They look exactly like a lynching mob looks willfully ignorant and sadistic.
It’s not just selective outrage, one wishes. It’s inflated invented contorted and manipulated bile towards an insidious familiar end goal. But it won’t happen this time. They won’t get their museum where they mourn all the dead Jews.
The reason I didn’t go into those issues in this article was simply to stay focused and keep the word count manageable. But I completely agree that what happened on October 7, and the widespread justification or celebration of it, is central to understanding not just Israel’s response but the depravity of the global reaction.
You’re right that the misuse of “genocide” is part of a broader project of demonizing Jews as eternal aggressors. And yes, it’s scary how easily that lie has taken root in supposedly educated circles, especially when genocidal intent is entirely absent on Israel’s side and glaringly present on the other.
I appreciate the hard work but I felt you put so much thought into this and was really well composed and you don’t want to miss the forest for the trees. I know you know this that before even Israel responded the anti semitic explosion was under way. It didn’t come out of a vacuum. When you’re cataloging what everyone is ignoring I think it’s critical to again bring up the bloodbath of Jews that they not just ignored but largely cheered on while also saying it didn’t happen. That just blew my mind. Yay! Resistance! What did y’all think decolonization meant? Myth. Fantasy. Fake. Huh? I am not someone who can give people participating directly or peripherally a pass as I simply don’t believe they don’t have the capability of asking questions. Substack has a lot of emotion porn and I am very sympathetic when I read someone’s story. Sometimes it’s extreme enough that my feeling is if this is true it’s sick and I’m not going to equivocate it. Of course I don’t know it’s true but I’m not mediating. Other times I see more complexity between the lines and I’ll say what I think with the caveat that I don’t know the other persons side. If you can’t outline both sides you don’t belong on a side. Israels side is hardly we want to colonize and oppress. Israel’s side may not be true but it can’t come from your fantasies it has to come from majority Israeli opinion.
A very dark inversion of events is taking place with Israel. Israel is becoming a representation of every ugly nationalistic and belligerent ill of countries that this love crowd is cheering on. They’re not for peace. They’re opening gates for barbarians and soothing themselves saying it’s for the greater good of clearing up evil or “cleaning up the world”
When you see a sign with a Jewish star in the trash along with clean up the world and the person holding it is explaining that it means she doesn’t like Netanyahu there’s no reasoning that’s going to help. I want these folks to know what I believe they represent. They can bathe in illusion or tunnel vision but I’m going to call out what I see.
If from the river to the sea means something else say that something else bc Hamas has made it clear what they mean and the people shrieking it ready to club someone know damn well what it means.
How ever indeed did pogroms happen. Kristalnacht. Well thanks fine people for getting to me to understand something I wish I never came to understand. America shielded me bless her for most of my time on earth. But it’s happening here too. I’m pushing back. America is a shining city and should stay one. Thanks for all the hard work and know it’s appreciated.
Thank you for this brilliant statement. What excellent research and summary. People killing one another all around the world. Even here in the USA we may be on the verge of sacrificing our poor and vulnerable citizens. But there is the great rule of thumb: When the going gets tough, we can always blame the Jews.
"whether [Israel's military action in Gaza] meets the legal definition of genocide remains hotly contested."
Expressing Israel's military action in Gaza tentatively as being "hotly contested" lends credence to the accusation. However, even a cursory reading of the Genocide Convention reveals that no such crime is being committed. In fact, according to International Humanitarian Law and Customary International Law, Hamas is committing multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging from the taking of civilian hostages, using. civilians as shields, dressing as civilians, and aiming rockets and missiles at civilian populations.
"None of the accusations hurled at Israel apply to it any more than they do to dozens of other states. So why do they only stick to the Jewish one?"
When you adopt your enemy's words to describe yourself, whether done consciously or not to project an image of "even-handedness" or impartiality, you are legitimizing your enemies accusations. Fair enough if those accusations are substantiated by history and law, but vile distortions of fact if a willfully invented story manufactured to create hatred towards an identifiable group.
"People insist it’s not about Jews but it’s the government, the IDF, the policies, the Zionism. . . .
Today, it’s 'Zionists.' "
No one denies national people like the Chinese, the British, the Mexicans and many, many other countries their right to nationhood. Why? Because we do not deny the right of a national people to their own country. But we do deny this right to Jews not because they have over 3,500 year history of unbroken presence on their unceded, ancestral homeland despite waves of conquests, colonization, and apartheid policies inflicted on them, but because they are Jews.
To put it more succinctly, Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and a Zionist is a Jewish nationalist.
On the first point: i agree that calling the genocide accusation “hotly contested” inadvertently lends legitimacy to the accusation of genocide which I don’t actually support. I’ve written at length elsewhere (including in my piece How to Manufacture a Genocide) about why Israel’s actions in Gaza definitely do not meet the legal or moral definition of genocide. I tried in this piece to acknowledge the widespread academic and institutional use of the term without getting sidetracked into refuting it in full. but in hindsight, the phrasing implies more openness to the accusation than I intend. I agree it’s important not to grant that kind of rhetorical foothold, especially when bad faith actors or ideologically compromised institutions are behind much of the push to label Israel’s self-defense as genocidal. I will consider rewording this section in my original.
Re: the second point, I understand the concern that by drawing comparisons I may appear to legitimise the false accusations against Israel. My goal was to show that the terms being hurled at Israel are either inaccurate or selectively applied. I do push back against these accusations directly in the article, especially the apartheid and colonisation claims which definitely do not apply to Israel. But I also wanted to meet skeptical or critical readers halfway, those who might not be convinced by an outright defense of Israel, but who could begin to question the hypocrisy when they see similar or worse actions by other countries going ignored. That said, I agree this approach can blur the line. it’s something I’ll reflect on.
On your final point, agree. Zionism is simply Jewish nationalism. It is entirely antisemitic to single out the Jewish people as uniquely undeserving of national self-determination.
Thanks for highlighting how I need to be more precise in how I framed those points.
I absolutely disagree with this. There is a whole lot of things I find in fault here. If you look for example at Manifest Destiny that white colonizers used against Native Americans. It's very similar to what Israel is using against Palestinians and I am mixed with native american ancestry. If one thing I absolutely know, is native history like the back of my hand. I know about the Ma'abarot Camps where Arab Jews were sprayed with DDT as a requirement. It was an insecticide used in farming. The ICC is not any more scandal of one man for misconduct where Netanyahu is wanted for war crimes.
Your mention of the Ma’abarot camps actually supports my argument that Israel is not a simple case of settler colonialism. The history of Mizrahi Jews and the challenges they faced in Israel complicate the idea that this is a purely white, colonial project.
As for the rest of your comment, it’s quite hard to follow. Nowhere in my post did I say that Israel is beyond criticism. In fact, I explicitly stated the opposite and even emphasized it in bold.
The point of the post was to highlight the double standards. So unless you truly believe that Israel deserves a thousand times more scrutiny than the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, or regimes responsible for far deadlier wars and famines, I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying.
This is the clearest explanation of why the overall criticism of Israel can be considered antisemitism but it does not justify the extreme deadly actions in Gaza. The initial reaction of Israel, after the Hamas attacks that provoked it, were to be expected. Hamas knew Israel would react that way, they had invaded Gaza 2 times previous, after they had relinquished control of Gaza. Why else did they build such a huge complex of tunnels? Hamas provoked Israel's reaction, but probably didn't expect such a massive counter offensive and overreaction. Your argument doesn't mean The present government of Israel should be left off the hook though for the massive deaths in Gaza and the starvation. Still my father was born on a kibbutz in British controlled Palestine. (The name I believe they gave that area.) His parents escaped the pogroms in what is now Russian occupied Ukraine, in the Crimea. And I never believed the narrative of "settler colonialism". The "Nakba" was real, but never a mention of Jews forced out of the neighboring countries. I'm from New York and my primary care doctor was a Jew from Iran, and my dentist was from Egypt. While there are Palestinians living as citizens in Israel and many other Jews who came to Israel from Africa or the Middle East there has been discrimination against them. This is not to say your premise is not valid, and for which I appreciate, for clearly articulating what I suspected all along.
I agree with the premise. And in a more balanced world where Israel wasn’t uniquely scrutinized and where atrocities elsewhere drew even a fraction of the global outrage, there would absolutely be more space for fair and necessary criticism of Israel and its policies. In fact, in such a world, that criticism would be far more productive.
I think the reason I so often find myself defending Israel isn’t because I see it as beyond reproach. It’s to counterbalance the volume and intensity of criticism aimed exclusively at Israel, often stripped of historical context or any reference to surrounding realities. It’s not that I think Israel can do no wrong (i emphasised this in bold) it’s that the discourse is so wildly lopsided that I end up countering distortion rather than engaging in what could be a serious conversation.
I agree Hamas provoked the war knowing full well Israel would respond. That doesn’t mean Israel should get a free pass either. I hope that’s not what people take away from my posts.
Absolutely 100% right on. A lot of great info all in one place. Thanks.
As brilliant author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen put it, antisemitism is “The Devil That Never Dies” (like the Devil, it just changes form).
Jew hate is the only explanation. You've spelled it out clearly in this insightful Essay. It's why the useful idiots can't see themselves for the dispicible, immoral creatures they are. Thier jew hate blinds them to the truth
Spot on!
Note that US aid to Israel in 2022 (the last year before Oct 7, comprised <5% of US foreign aid, and ~0.05% of the US budget that year. And, as you noted, most of the aid to Israel (unlike aid to other countries) was required to be spent on US-made equipment.
A perfect summary and unveiling of the myths and hypocrisy. Thank you!
This was very well written and organized but managed to exclude the barbaric Oct 7 attack. Obviously it’s not just relevant to why Israel launched its war but also shows the barbarity and depravity that went unacknowledged or entirely justified and cheered on. Hamas schools and rhetoric and unrwa being infiltrated by Hamas it would be farcical if there wasn’t a body count for it.
should’ve also delved into what genocide is bc no I don’t think people in *good faith* are hotly contesting genocide in Israel they’re redefining genocide. If genocide is ugly war event or any war event then every war is genocidal. That’s the point. The number of casualties what Israel could do and the civilian to soldier death ratio the lack of any genocidal intent makes genocide impossible. But it doesn’t rule out other war crimes or evils. Genocide is important to allege bc it’s necessary for demonizing Jews as victims doing the same to others. Anyone who knows what the Holocaust entailed would shrink at this and be appalled but that would require not harboring deep resentments towards Jews to begin with.
Things like the ICC corruption scandal highlight just how far up the food chain the anti semitism and double standard goes.
It also shows how the script is being flipped on Israel deliberately. Everything Hamas did Israel is accused of. Try it out online.
Hamas a violent repressive human shield using kleptocratic fascist theocracy is not held accountable nor are all the civilians who support them including those who held hostages and participated in the Oct 7 arson rape looting torture and murder. All their violence inciting anti semitic rhetoric and indoctrination is not just supported but makes any peace impossible. No one makes peace with neighbors committed to their end. By any metric this isn’t the locus of the worst evil in the world. Oct 7 could’ve been but it was halted. It’s really unsurprising that people who despise Jews have latched onto this en masse and people in the west who’ve been conditioned in higher ed to despise the west or to associate Israel with subjugation of literally everything on earth have joined in the chorus baying for blood. There’s a smaller contingent brainwashed by the deliberately dishonest media but I don’t give them a free pass because any overarching simplistic analysis would have one question why is this the center of hell? Are sharks really attacking everyone all the time because it keeps making the front page. I go to the beach daily and I’m still here. You can do this cheap easy mental work.
hate saying things like of course Israel does things wrong bc duh. No one is going to see anyone Jewish as impartial and they’ll always find a reason you’re not impartial. This isn’t and was never a war of logic. I don’t believe the angry enraged mobs really don’t know anything else that’s going on in the world. They look exactly like a lynching mob looks willfully ignorant and sadistic.
It’s not just selective outrage, one wishes. It’s inflated invented contorted and manipulated bile towards an insidious familiar end goal. But it won’t happen this time. They won’t get their museum where they mourn all the dead Jews.
Hey, I actually agree with everything you’ve said here and have written extensively about both October 7 in several other posts, and the fabricated genocide narrative, especially in this piece: https://open.substack.com/pub/lucytabrizi/p/how-to-manufacture-a-genocide-a-masterclass?r=25bl88&utm_medium=ios
The reason I didn’t go into those issues in this article was simply to stay focused and keep the word count manageable. But I completely agree that what happened on October 7, and the widespread justification or celebration of it, is central to understanding not just Israel’s response but the depravity of the global reaction.
You’re right that the misuse of “genocide” is part of a broader project of demonizing Jews as eternal aggressors. And yes, it’s scary how easily that lie has taken root in supposedly educated circles, especially when genocidal intent is entirely absent on Israel’s side and glaringly present on the other.
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
I appreciate the hard work but I felt you put so much thought into this and was really well composed and you don’t want to miss the forest for the trees. I know you know this that before even Israel responded the anti semitic explosion was under way. It didn’t come out of a vacuum. When you’re cataloging what everyone is ignoring I think it’s critical to again bring up the bloodbath of Jews that they not just ignored but largely cheered on while also saying it didn’t happen. That just blew my mind. Yay! Resistance! What did y’all think decolonization meant? Myth. Fantasy. Fake. Huh? I am not someone who can give people participating directly or peripherally a pass as I simply don’t believe they don’t have the capability of asking questions. Substack has a lot of emotion porn and I am very sympathetic when I read someone’s story. Sometimes it’s extreme enough that my feeling is if this is true it’s sick and I’m not going to equivocate it. Of course I don’t know it’s true but I’m not mediating. Other times I see more complexity between the lines and I’ll say what I think with the caveat that I don’t know the other persons side. If you can’t outline both sides you don’t belong on a side. Israels side is hardly we want to colonize and oppress. Israel’s side may not be true but it can’t come from your fantasies it has to come from majority Israeli opinion.
A very dark inversion of events is taking place with Israel. Israel is becoming a representation of every ugly nationalistic and belligerent ill of countries that this love crowd is cheering on. They’re not for peace. They’re opening gates for barbarians and soothing themselves saying it’s for the greater good of clearing up evil or “cleaning up the world”
When you see a sign with a Jewish star in the trash along with clean up the world and the person holding it is explaining that it means she doesn’t like Netanyahu there’s no reasoning that’s going to help. I want these folks to know what I believe they represent. They can bathe in illusion or tunnel vision but I’m going to call out what I see.
If from the river to the sea means something else say that something else bc Hamas has made it clear what they mean and the people shrieking it ready to club someone know damn well what it means.
How ever indeed did pogroms happen. Kristalnacht. Well thanks fine people for getting to me to understand something I wish I never came to understand. America shielded me bless her for most of my time on earth. But it’s happening here too. I’m pushing back. America is a shining city and should stay one. Thanks for all the hard work and know it’s appreciated.
anti-Judaism is an ancient virus that has infected billions s over millennium but no vaccines developed.
Thank you for this.
As a born again Christian, we arw a spinnoff of Judaism. Basically , my boss is a Jewish carpenter. 😍
Thank you for this brilliant statement. What excellent research and summary. People killing one another all around the world. Even here in the USA we may be on the verge of sacrificing our poor and vulnerable citizens. But there is the great rule of thumb: When the going gets tough, we can always blame the Jews.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE and100% correct
"whether [Israel's military action in Gaza] meets the legal definition of genocide remains hotly contested."
Expressing Israel's military action in Gaza tentatively as being "hotly contested" lends credence to the accusation. However, even a cursory reading of the Genocide Convention reveals that no such crime is being committed. In fact, according to International Humanitarian Law and Customary International Law, Hamas is committing multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging from the taking of civilian hostages, using. civilians as shields, dressing as civilians, and aiming rockets and missiles at civilian populations.
"None of the accusations hurled at Israel apply to it any more than they do to dozens of other states. So why do they only stick to the Jewish one?"
When you adopt your enemy's words to describe yourself, whether done consciously or not to project an image of "even-handedness" or impartiality, you are legitimizing your enemies accusations. Fair enough if those accusations are substantiated by history and law, but vile distortions of fact if a willfully invented story manufactured to create hatred towards an identifiable group.
"People insist it’s not about Jews but it’s the government, the IDF, the policies, the Zionism. . . .
Today, it’s 'Zionists.' "
No one denies national people like the Chinese, the British, the Mexicans and many, many other countries their right to nationhood. Why? Because we do not deny the right of a national people to their own country. But we do deny this right to Jews not because they have over 3,500 year history of unbroken presence on their unceded, ancestral homeland despite waves of conquests, colonization, and apartheid policies inflicted on them, but because they are Jews.
To put it more succinctly, Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and a Zionist is a Jewish nationalist.
On the first point: i agree that calling the genocide accusation “hotly contested” inadvertently lends legitimacy to the accusation of genocide which I don’t actually support. I’ve written at length elsewhere (including in my piece How to Manufacture a Genocide) about why Israel’s actions in Gaza definitely do not meet the legal or moral definition of genocide. I tried in this piece to acknowledge the widespread academic and institutional use of the term without getting sidetracked into refuting it in full. but in hindsight, the phrasing implies more openness to the accusation than I intend. I agree it’s important not to grant that kind of rhetorical foothold, especially when bad faith actors or ideologically compromised institutions are behind much of the push to label Israel’s self-defense as genocidal. I will consider rewording this section in my original.
Re: the second point, I understand the concern that by drawing comparisons I may appear to legitimise the false accusations against Israel. My goal was to show that the terms being hurled at Israel are either inaccurate or selectively applied. I do push back against these accusations directly in the article, especially the apartheid and colonisation claims which definitely do not apply to Israel. But I also wanted to meet skeptical or critical readers halfway, those who might not be convinced by an outright defense of Israel, but who could begin to question the hypocrisy when they see similar or worse actions by other countries going ignored. That said, I agree this approach can blur the line. it’s something I’ll reflect on.
On your final point, agree. Zionism is simply Jewish nationalism. It is entirely antisemitic to single out the Jewish people as uniquely undeserving of national self-determination.
Thanks for highlighting how I need to be more precise in how I framed those points.
I absolutely disagree with this. There is a whole lot of things I find in fault here. If you look for example at Manifest Destiny that white colonizers used against Native Americans. It's very similar to what Israel is using against Palestinians and I am mixed with native american ancestry. If one thing I absolutely know, is native history like the back of my hand. I know about the Ma'abarot Camps where Arab Jews were sprayed with DDT as a requirement. It was an insecticide used in farming. The ICC is not any more scandal of one man for misconduct where Netanyahu is wanted for war crimes.
Your mention of the Ma’abarot camps actually supports my argument that Israel is not a simple case of settler colonialism. The history of Mizrahi Jews and the challenges they faced in Israel complicate the idea that this is a purely white, colonial project.
As for the rest of your comment, it’s quite hard to follow. Nowhere in my post did I say that Israel is beyond criticism. In fact, I explicitly stated the opposite and even emphasized it in bold.
The point of the post was to highlight the double standards. So unless you truly believe that Israel deserves a thousand times more scrutiny than the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, or regimes responsible for far deadlier wars and famines, I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying.
This is the clearest explanation of why the overall criticism of Israel can be considered antisemitism but it does not justify the extreme deadly actions in Gaza. The initial reaction of Israel, after the Hamas attacks that provoked it, were to be expected. Hamas knew Israel would react that way, they had invaded Gaza 2 times previous, after they had relinquished control of Gaza. Why else did they build such a huge complex of tunnels? Hamas provoked Israel's reaction, but probably didn't expect such a massive counter offensive and overreaction. Your argument doesn't mean The present government of Israel should be left off the hook though for the massive deaths in Gaza and the starvation. Still my father was born on a kibbutz in British controlled Palestine. (The name I believe they gave that area.) His parents escaped the pogroms in what is now Russian occupied Ukraine, in the Crimea. And I never believed the narrative of "settler colonialism". The "Nakba" was real, but never a mention of Jews forced out of the neighboring countries. I'm from New York and my primary care doctor was a Jew from Iran, and my dentist was from Egypt. While there are Palestinians living as citizens in Israel and many other Jews who came to Israel from Africa or the Middle East there has been discrimination against them. This is not to say your premise is not valid, and for which I appreciate, for clearly articulating what I suspected all along.
I agree with the premise. And in a more balanced world where Israel wasn’t uniquely scrutinized and where atrocities elsewhere drew even a fraction of the global outrage, there would absolutely be more space for fair and necessary criticism of Israel and its policies. In fact, in such a world, that criticism would be far more productive.
I think the reason I so often find myself defending Israel isn’t because I see it as beyond reproach. It’s to counterbalance the volume and intensity of criticism aimed exclusively at Israel, often stripped of historical context or any reference to surrounding realities. It’s not that I think Israel can do no wrong (i emphasised this in bold) it’s that the discourse is so wildly lopsided that I end up countering distortion rather than engaging in what could be a serious conversation.
I agree Hamas provoked the war knowing full well Israel would respond. That doesn’t mean Israel should get a free pass either. I hope that’s not what people take away from my posts.
Yep. It’s antisemitism dressed up as hypocrisy. The accusation of genocide looks like holocaust denial to me. .