Daddy

One of the overseas students - Chinese - raised her hand to ask me a question. She prefaced it by saying that she didn’t know if it was the right question to ask or if she was framing it correctly. After I’d spoken for almost 90 minutes about October 7, and October 8, and what I witnessed in the Gaza envelope and all over Israel and the diaspora, and in particular about my connection to Nova after a life as a music reporter, she was one of dozens who had many questions, and the question she wasn’t sure was the right one to ask was:

“Why has the music media still not written about what happened there?”

I could see her eyes fixed on me, waiting for a response. A response that made sense to her. And I told her. I told all 40 of the non-Jewish Stanford students who came to here myself and my Iraqi Muslim peer Sarah Idan speak last night at the University of Southern California. We were sitting in a round and I could talk to every one of them, and look them each right in the eyes, including the ones who participated in Stanford’s own pro-Hamas encampments. Sarah and I had no protection but the compulsion to speak overrides that. I said: “I’m going to tell you an uncomfortable truth that you may find difficult to believe, but the reason they have not written about Nova or October 7, and the reason none of you knew anything until today about what happened that day, is because Nova happened in Israel and the media doesn’t care about Jews, unless Jews or the Jewish state can be presented as the villain.”

Her jaw literally opened, and her eyes lowered at me, and she shook her head, waiting for me to add - to say more, to have something more. Another answer would have been preferable, I think. But I repeated it. “The media has an agenda, and the agenda is anti-Israel. You will not gain a balanced, trustworthy perspective from mainstream media, and certainly not from a social media echo chamber, particularly not on TikTok where the ratio of pro Hamas to pro Israel posts is 50:1.”

Another young Asian man who came up to shake my hand afterwards asked about the university curriculum and whether it could be trusted, and why there was so much institutionalized antisemitic rhetoric being actively taught in their courses. Again, I warned them that these truths are uncomfortable, but that American institutions, particularly leftist elite environments focused on liberal arts and social sciences, were infused by Soviet ideas over 50 years ago, and the Middle East is being taught via a Marxist/Soviet lens of antizionism, which is a fundamentally racist and xenophobic idea. I said: “Tell me, with what we know of human rights violations in Russia or China, or even here in this country, does anyone ever say to you: Do you think Russia has a right to exist? But you hear that question about Israel all the time, right?” They nodded, and - again - looked shell-shocked.

Another female student said when she went to the Nova exhibition in LA earlier that day as part of the group, she understood for the first time that this conflict is not about land. “They seem to want to just annihilate the Jewish people, like the Holocaust,” she said. “But then why were American Jewish students scared on campus when October 7 happened thousands of miles away in another country?” Great question. I said: “Well the war isn’t about land, and Hamas is a death cult terrorist movement that desires an Islamic state in Israel with no Jews, and that is an ideology. It’s an ideology that has engulfed the world far beyond the Middle East, and it is right here in this very country and it is on your campus. I don’t mean that it is a notion wafting through the quads of Stanford. I mean that it is literally infiltrating Stanford and physically manifesting in the place you call home; a place that is supposed to be a safe learning environment for all. But how is it safe for a Jewish student, if Jewish students have to walk around with intimidation by hoards of other students who are wearing keffiyeh and waving Palestinian flags, and the official flags of Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis, and chanting genocidal chants such as “from the River to the sea”, and themselves not knowing which river and which sea? And another uncomfortable truth - the keffiyeh, and the Palestinian flag are intimidating symbols for your fellow Jewish students. Do you know who wore keffiyeh and flew Palestinian flags? Hamas on October 7 as they raped and murdered and looted and burned. Imagine a Jewish student not having a breath to grieve and instead having to face a 12-month onslaught of support and celebration of the evil that destroyed the lives of their loved ones in Israel? Is that a safe space for them?”

Last night, for three hours, Sarah and I repeated what we did a few weeks ago for a new group of students organized by Stanford Hillel, and I learned as much as they did. I learned that they know nothing about October 7. I learned that the faculties put antisemitic blood libels on the curriculum in social science classes. I learned that in a feminism course at USC, it is taught that you cannot be a feminist if you have served in the IDF. I learned that this generation is not lost, but preyed upon, by academic institutions and social justice groups masquerading as “grassroots” (ie, Students for Justice in Palestine, a group funded by overseas terror networks) who are stealing their years as students and pressurizing them to adopt their anti-American, anti-democratic ideologies. I learned that these students don’t understand that they are being used as pawns to promote an Islamic state in the West. They have no idea. And the courageous ones have many questions. They had questions all night long. The first time that Sarah and I did this we were in the venue past midnight answering their questions. Who do they trust? Which media outlets are reporting the truth? Can they have a list of independent voices to follow? Music to our ears.

You could see that the mask on the whole charade had fully slipped off for them. This is the work. We can and should be finding every way to answer their questions and provide a space for them to expand their viewpoints. It's not just the misinformation that's astounding, it's the total lack of information that they have access to. I would personally visit every single elite campus in America to do more and more of these types of sessions. We just need funding. And those willing to help organize internally. I believe it can be done. We didn’t just change one mind last night. We changed an entire room. It can be done.

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I was in New York City last week to speak to a UJA Jewish community, and while I was there I found a first edition of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel in a used bookstore in the East Village. It’s one of my favorite books of poetry, written in the small hours in the weeks before Plath took her own life. In particular the poem “Daddy” has visited me during different chapters. And taken on many meanings. This is “Daddy” if you don’t know it, or have not read it for a time…

A cheery poem, it is not. Sorry for that.

In simple terms, the poem is about the protagonist’s long-deceased father, who was such an overbearing presence for her that even at 30-years-old she still feels as though she’s living inside a black shoe her entire life, unable to experience the color of the world, and “barely dar[ing] to breathe - or Achoo”. Silenced. Her tongue “stuck in [her] jaw”. She can’t speak as a direct consequence of her oppression, because Daddy has been glorified as some sort of God by society, but she understands that he is no God at all, but rather a “Swastika” - and that no light can get through it. The truth cannot be seen but if it could be, the whole illusion would crack and Daddy would lose power.

She then daringly goes on to say that all women love fascists, being stepped on brutally by someone who is a monster at heart. She’s talking about the normalization of violence against women, and how women can only be seen to adulate their offenders. Female victims don’t even recognize it, it is deemed so normal. Never mind have the courage to fight back.

Enough poetry. Watch this video.

This is in Iran. Yesterday this woman, Ahou Daryaei, a PhD student, who was previously taken by the morality police for not wearing hijab then went on to take off her clothes and wander among the streets. Head high. Defiantly. Railing against the ongoing harassment of students on university campuses in Tehran. She has since been arrested by the IRGC and has suffered head wounds. She has disappeared, committed as insane. This is the face of “Women. Life. Freedom”; a true feminist resistance movement.

To me, “Daddy” is a discussion on patriarchy and women’s endless fight to overcome the overbearing, cold and punitive power of paternalism. But now I’m reading something else. As we see in real time how feminists around the world have abandoned the issues that matter in favor of their own power grab, I read about how easy it is for women to fall for the same abuse they want to emancipate themselves from, and I’m thinking about the women who have turned their backs - not just on us, but on themselves. Plath wasn’t Jewish but her imagining her Nazi father and feeling like an oppressed Jew hits hardest when I contemplate how Jewish self-determination, ie Zionism, is a true sister of every woman’s right to self-determine through the clarion call of fighting for our rights as feminists.

The modern manifestation of antisemitism is antizionism. It is the undoing of Jewish self-determination. It is the desire to render us like Plath in “Daddy”, unable to get a word out beyond “ich”, unable to speak about our abuse, our subjugation, forced to remain in the cycle, to live life inside the black shoe. It’s happening everywhere.

In London this weekend, and in Manchester, atrocious acts of antisemitism that leave many wondering whether there could be a future for the Jewish people in the United Kingdom. I don’t think there is. And we’re not alone. I don’t think there’s a future for many people in the UK, not just Jews.

This is London:

At Manchester University yesterday, my alma mater, a group of pro Palestine thugs, stole two busts of Israel’s first President, Chaim Weizmann, from a university building. The Palestine Action Group said it had "abducted" the busts to mark the date of the Balfour Declaration in which British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour supported establishing a "national home for Jewish people". Weizmann taught at Manchester.

Moving on, Sally Rooney, the acclaimed Irish author, is leading a boycott of 1000 authors against Israeli cultural institutions, authors and publishers. As journalist Matti Friedman said: “It’s a real comment on Western self-awareness that numerous intellectuals have come to hate the same people as their grandparents did, and seem to earnestly believe it’s a coincidence.” British Jewish intellectual Howard Jacobson has called it a “staggering” attempt by some voices to silence others. Panzer-man. Panzer-man, oh you.

So where does all of this lead? Well we can see. Because over in Afghanistan, the Taliban are providing a preview. In a shocking ongoing unveiling of new laws in Afghanistan, the Taliban have ushered even more depraved rulings against women. The Taliban have not only banned women from speaking and/or singing to each other, isolating them from hearing another woman’s voice, they have now also banned women from talking loudly at home to prevent anyone else from hearing them. Again, once more, I am screaming while I can that I’m not sure what the word “feminism” means any more but I know that I care that we don’t abandon the women of Afghanistan. I care that we don’t abandon ourselves, our moral compasses and our consistency.

The antisemitism in the UK has hit crisis level. And nobody talks about it, because their voices have been silenced. To talk about it is to be “Islamophobic”. Islamophobia is the weapon of free speech oppressors. Of Daddy. It is not and can never be Islamophobic to call out antisemitism. But when these leftists were radicalized by the BLM movement and encouraged to believe that all of us are racists and must become antiracist, we accepted a normalizing of weaponising “oppression” to police free speech. It’s fascistic and evil. Islamists want to kill Jews and stating so is not Islamophobic. It is for reasonable Muslims to say: not in my name. Our brave allies do so. Brave allies like my friend Sarah. They must listen to us. If global citizens let the UK’s antisemitism become acceptable then it will be a standard for which all other pro Palestine action groups raise the bar around the diaspora. This cannot stand. It will ruin the societies we live in. It already is.

Erin Molan, the Sky News Australia broadcaster, is also screaming, in style, with finesse, every week. Her latest is one of her best monologues yet. Essential.

Thank you Erin. Thank you Stanford. Thank you New York. Onwards.