Confronting reality

When you’re going through hell, keep going. I paid the price for using my voice, so I’m going to take it up a notch.

I’m going to say it. America was stunned for weeks after the killing of George Floyd in police custody. We did nothing other than recognize the moment.

Today, America would not give us ONE day to mourn the death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was executed by a terror organization with a bullet to the head after 11 months in captivity. Instead America took to the streets to celebrate his executioners, Hamas, who they emboldened for the last year. The blood is on their hands, in fact.

To my neighbors and friends, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And it's your problem. It's not my problem any more because my eyes are open and my conscience clear. It's time you started to feel uncomfortable. It's time to say the things you're not supposed to say. What's the worst that could happen? I guarantee that standing by will provide more dire consequences.

This is a famous photograph from Ukraine in 1942 during the Holocaust.

On the left you see a Nazi member of the Einsatzgruppen. His weapon is almost half the length of his victim’s torso. On his right, a Jewish mother and child being murdered at close range while trying to run away.

A few days ago, Hamas executioners used the same method to kill American civilian Hersh and five Israelis for the simple crime of being Jewish. Below are images from videos that Hamas released TODAY. Two days after the news of their deaths landed. They filmed the six hostages in their final moments, just like the Nazis. They published on Telegram today. I urge you to show any ignorant friend of yours the sunken eyes of Eden Yerushalmi, 24-years-old. Ask them to contemplate what she might have been through for 11 months in Hamas tunnels, only to be shot in the back of the head.

Never again is now. We keep saying it. Never again is now. Now was 332 days ago. Now was before even October 7. Now has been gathering momentum ever since the state of Israel was born in 1948. Now was promised the day the camps were liberated.

Now!

If you want answers for the last 48 hours and you still can’t get your head around why. Why why why, etc. I have a solution for you. Read the Quran. Read it cover to cover, in black and white, and see exactly what it has to say about the world, and about Jews. And if you want some added context, look into the history of Arab colonialism.

Arab colonialism is alive and well today. You can see it playing out in the UK, where traitor Keir Starmer rewarded Hamas for their murders by suspending arms to Israel. You could see it in Union Square in New York City where crowds gathered to Free Palestine. Here is a picture of New York City on Labor Day, proudly flying the flag of Hezbollah in broad daylight. The same city that was targeted with the most lethal terror attack in United States history almost 23 years ago.

Stunning.

The American flag however was not being flown at half-mast today outside the White House for Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hersh lived as an Israeli-American citizen but he died as a Jew. Take note. His face should have been flooding my social media feeds today, but only Jewish people shared his face, shared the clips from his funeral in Jerusalem (see below). Other Americans were posting their last day of brat summer - sunsets and ice creams and sandcastles. Not a care in the world. Were we ever a part of this society? The streets were normal. Not a single person looked like they understood that an American citizen was murdered by a terrorist organization. Leave no man behind? America, you changed.

My friend Brianna Wu asked a question on Twitter today about why every Jewish person tweeted about Hersh, but why there was blanket silence from everyone she stood with on LGBTQ+, BLM, Times Up, or any other social justice issue. I replied thus.

Stop asking. Start accepting. Social justice warriors have shown us who they are. It is not all eyes on Rafah. It is all eyes on them. It’s about them.

When "feminists" like Clementine Ford spend a year screaming that "Free Palestine" is The Work, they know precisely what they are doing. They have intentionally placed "Free Palestine" at the top of the tree because they want to blame all societal ills on the Jews. Every single facet of the intersectional discourse: the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, the fight against anti-Black racism, climate change, etc, can all be blamed on the Jews (now known as The Zionists), despite the fact that the Jews and Israel do not threaten any one of these issues. In fact we champion them all, and our nation is the only nation in the MENA region that safeguards these rights and freedoms. When Jewish people resist this, activists like Clementine Ford make and publish lists of Jewish people to expel them from society, not because they want to promote social justice, but because they believe in the exact same sick ideology of Nazism; that the Jewish people are a disease and if you expel these hateful Jewish people, everything will be fine. Then they take cover behind antizionist Jewish people (our equivalent of an Uncle Tom) to deny all accusations that they are engaged in eons-old antisemitism. The truth will reveal itself over time, of course. I'm just giving everyone a heads-up.

I am resisting offering too much comment on the reaction of Israelis. The calls to strike. The immediate knee-jerk response to blame Bibi, when Hamas shot six hostages in the head. I understand the pain and desperation, but striking, protesting, leaving the country vulnerable to further attack is exactly what Hamas want. It is a suicide mission. It is a victory for Hamas, who have not paid any price for October 7. There is nothing we can offer Hamas that they want. They want us all dead. This is not a land war. It is an ideological war. Its entire objective is to humiliate Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East.

To quote Israeli academic and wise owl Einat Wilf:

“We are facing an enemy dedicated by all means necessary to teaching a final lesson to those Jews who dared imagine themselves equal, sovereign, and masters of their fate in their own state on their ancestral land, so that they never attempt to do so ever again.

We are facing an enemy that no only invaded our country, our homes, to gleefully murder and mutilated the most peace loving people in their beds, but went on to kidnap hundreds of them to serve as an insurance that they will pay no consequences for what they did on October 7th.

The brutal executors of the ideology of Palestinianism, known as Hamas, did not kidnap people for the limited goal of releasing murderers from Israeli jails, but rather to ensure it pays no price for what it did and therefore could do it again, and again, and again.

Make no mistake, as far as Hamas is concerned, it paid no price and suffered no consequences for October 7th. The devastation in Gaza, the people killed, are all meaningless to Hamas. Buoyed by the global pressure to provide it with ongoing supplies it even as it is conducting a total war, it remains in firm control of Gaza and its people. It secured a position as a legitimate negotiating partner while all the pressure is placed on Israel to yield to its demands to go back to October 6th with no consequences for its actions. Nothing is done against the backers of Hamas - Qatar, Egypt and Iran - pretending that the first two are somehow helpful (they're not), and the latter somehow uninvolved.

Once Hamas exchanged the women and children it kidnapped, who were above all a liability for their total cause, for guaranteed ongoing supplies that secure its rule in Gaza, once it ensured that no-one touches the funnel of UNRWA, the only additional deal to which it would agree - as it made repeatedly clear, is one that goes back to October 6th: Hamas remains in charge of Gaza, of the border with Egypt that has been the site of endless supplies for its army and economy, Israel withdraws completely, and they can continue receiving billions from the world through UNRWA and other channels, so as to be even more effective executors of acts of mass murder in the future.

Hamas executes hostages or attempts to do so when Israeli soldiers are close to releasing them, because the one thing they cannot accept is to have the lowly Jews rescue their own people. The kidnapped hostages are Hamas' insurance policy to continue to fight until there is no more Israel.

In the face of a totalizing ideology that plays a long game with an annihilationist goal, there is only moral position for any government/international organization is to pursue (and should have been the policy from October 8th):

Unconditional release of the hostages

Unconditional surrender of Hamas

That is the only thing that ends the immediate war (Ending Palestinianism as the ideology that negates a sovereign Jewish state in any borders is necessary to end the bigger century long war). And until then? It is war, and should be waged as such, with no illusions about the enemy we face.”

There will be no concessions to Hamas. No ceasefire. Enough. Dayenu. Let our people go.

If you want to place blame or improve something, then look at the dire failure of America - the leader of the West – to hold onto itself. What a weird, depressing, disjointed, demoralizing day.