A narrow bridge

Today a woman came up to me in the grocery store with her baby in her trolley and she was shaking and she was crying. And she couldn’t say much, but what I would say to her now in case this reaches her is this: don’t be afraid, be prepared.

The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the thing is to have no fear at all.

It is happening a lot. The people in the street coming over, knowing me, but me not knowing them, except that look in their eyes, and suddenly I do know them. That look in their eyes becomes everything I also know. They needn’t say anything. I know the exchange we’re about to have. If this is you at some point, we will hug and I will tell you to stay strong, and that we got this. Because having this is mandatory.

I empathize with the fear. I do. All of the events in the last year have been profoundly shocking. And as I spoke to the 3,000 strong congregation at Beverly Hilton on Yom Kippur this year, I said: Be soft with yourself – with the expectations you had. This last year dashed our expectations about the world around us. We have been villainized before we’ve even opened our mouths to speak of what happened to our people. That’s why we have to be each other’s purpose. We have to be the rock that braves the storm.

No fear.

I said at the time. What happened to me in 2020 was not special. It was just the beginning. I was just a symbol. I understood it implicitly. My industry loved me. It wasn’t about me. I was the first hit. Jewish. Female. Unapologetic.

Last night at CAA in Hollywood, there was a premiere for Wendy Sachs’ documentary “October H8te”, which was executive produced by actress Debra Messing (Will & Grace). Below is the trailer, and it’s very powerful, and you’ll hear my dulcet Scottish tones before you see me. This trailer will make your arm hairs stand up.

In the movie, you will meet several Jewish students who survived the last year on American college campuses, despite unrelenting harassment and ostracisation. They are of all backgrounds: Ashkenazi from the Soviet Union, Black, Native American, Iranian, half Muslim… their stories were as diverse as our people. All of them Jewish children of parents who had fled antisemitic regimes to seek refuge in America, land of the free, only to find their children at the forefront of a battle they had risked everything to escape.

The entire time I was watching the students – many of whom have been DMing me for years, taking hope from my refusal to shy away – I was absolutely mad. I was mad because when I was cancelled, I told the American Jewish establishment that this was serious. That this wasn’t just some overnight one-off social media sensation meme fest. I told the organizations. I spoke up and down the country at all the various major groups. I organized and summoned several meetings with the senior ranks of the ADL. I tried to impress upon our people that I wasn’t special. That I was just the canary in the coalmine. That more would come. That you, and you, and you would all experience this hell sooner than later. I’m not sure if anything could have been done about it but I’m still pissed that there was no major acknowledgment of the boycott I experienced many years before our latest batch of dissenting heroes: Eden Yadegar, Shai Davidai, Tesssa Veksler, Noa Fay, etc. In 2020, two months before Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times, I, a mere music critic, had suddenly become the #2 trend on Twitter, and the subject of a nationwide witch hunt, because after 15 years of being a lauded writer I became nothing but a Jew who refused to go gently.

So while Bret Stephens wrote this below op-ed in the New York Times ahead of October 7’s anniversary this year, four years before I wrote the article below it to the only publication that would print my byline that summer. The only one. For me, it would be impossible to be published in the New York Times now, but for those who held onto their tongues until the crisis had reached fever pitch…

October H8te is an important film. It shows precisely how “Free Palestine” is not a grassroots movement. It is not a debate in the film. It is a fact. I think the most impressive thing Sachs does is to interview a whistleblower at Human Rights Watch. A former employer of the organization who had to leave after October 7 due to the rotten state she was exposed to within the working environment that she’d dedicated so much of her adult life to. The whistleblower shows chillingly how every single prestigious organization that markets itself as one concerned with human rights - from HRW to Amnesty to the UN - has not only refused to acknowledge October 7 but is actively working towards the delegitimisation and ultimately the dissolution of the state of Israel. And we see that happening every single day right now in real time.

The film presents inarguable realities about the American education institutions and about how decades of funding and planning by Qatar’s Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated here in America has resulted in chapters of student groups all over the country. They have the appearance of grassroots organizations but don’t in fact have 501(c)3 status, or any traceable paper work, because they are arms of international terrorist organizations. The film also presents inarguable realities about social media, particularly TikTok, upon which the algorithm is set to present 50x more pro-Hamas content than pro-Israel content, poisoning the minds of the most impressionable generation on the planet.

If there are things you cannot explain, such as why it is that every institution or organization you may have trusted to protect you has completely and utterly failed the Jewish people since October 7 and before, then this film will set out the how, why and where pretty clearly. What it doesn’t do is present to us a solution about how to deal with it. It doesn’t solve the problem of queers for Palestine, or the ignorance of BLM protestors who side with the jihadists who would kill them instantly. The terrorists they support hate LGBTQ+ people, they hate women, they hate free speech, human rights, and any and all freedoms. These humanitarian organizations and all the progressives who worship at their feet are lapping up the “privilege” they criticize so much of being gay and/or Black and/or female and/or [insert here] in a culture that isn’t sitting in opposition to basic human rights and freedoms. They should be using that “privilege” to stand up against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ideology of Islamism, because that is what is oppressing their brothers and sisters in Palestine and the rest of the Middle East. They should be standing up in truth against Sharia law. That is “THE WORK” (trademark).

As Einat Wilf says: there is feeling good and there is doing good. They are indulging their own narcissistic virtuous addiction to feeling good, while doing very, very bad. For clicks. For likes. For popularity. For their own ideological suicide.

This is how we deal with it. More people have to do the hard work. More people with positions of power need to get a grip and platform the voices of truth. Whether it’s me or it’s the college campus students or it’s Mossab Hassan Yousef who destroyed Cenk Uygur, a former Presidential plant - sorry I meant candidate - from 2024 in the clip to follow. If you don’t take the necessary risks to get the right message out today (yesterday, let’s be realistic), then the set-back that will be incurred is growing not by minutes or hours or months or years, but by decades.

It will take decades of de-radicalization to change the assumed positions of large swathes of Western populations.

As the Hebrew proverb (and song - rendition by The Shvesters below, who I spent a Shabbat in Jaffa with during the war) goes:

כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלוֹ גֶשֶׁר צַר מְּאֹד וְהָעִיקָר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלַל
The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the thing is to have no fear at all

Don’t be afraid. Be prepared. And keep your head up. And do the work. The hard work. It’s not the popular elective. It’s the required exam. “What is at stake is the soul of America” - Rep Ritchie Torres.