I can’t sleep. I know none of us can sleep. I stir and jump in panic. Nightmares.
Images from Berlin today gave me chills. Places where Jewish people live, that have been marked up by “Free Palestine” proponents. How is this freeing Palestine?
In my local grocery store last night, someone was ranting about Jews loudly. I couldn’t tell if it was positive or negative. There was an energy to it that I didn’t trust. I felt the cold weight of my Star of David on my chest and I lifted it from under my shirt. I hate hiding my Star of David.
All Jewish schools in Amsterdam closed yesterday. Several in New York. Columbia university closed to prevent demonstrations. An Israeli diplomat was stabbed in Beijing. A Jewish teacher stabbed to death in France. In Portugal, a synagogue was vandalized and spray-painted. In Washington DC, a demonstration happened outside the Jewish Museum. Not the Israeli embassy. The Jewish Museum.
Today in LA there’s a massive Free Palestine demonstration. We have witnessed marches all over the country’s universities this past week. Young men and women wrapped in keffiyehs screaming at Jewish students. “You guys are all fucking gay, bro,” said one, practically spitting. At UCLA videos of at least hundreds of chanters stomping through the campus, faces covered, flags waving, loudspeakers booming. I guess they want a… Final solution.
The vibes are apocalyptic.
I have watched as communities of people I’ve advocated with for the past few years have said the most despicable things about Jews. Women who are opposed to and campaign against Sexual Assault in all its forms justifying the rapes of Jewish women, or worse claiming they never happened.
What we are bearing witness to is the return of the world's oldest conspiracy theory. Instead of the conspiracy being centered explicitly on Jews, it is instead pointed at Israel, but it is the same thing.
The non-Jewish world has believed fantastical things about Jews for thousands of years to excuse their own behaviors and blame-shift (as a result the Jewish people have been in a very abusive relationship with much of the non-Jewish world, and have often internalized the hate). So, for example, there was economic libel, which proscribed that Jews are obsessed with money; a conspiracy that transpired because Jews were banned from all work, except for the dirtiest job - money lending. When we excelled in our limitations, the lie began that we're sinful and greedy.
There are libels around our racial features, conspiring that we are demonic and have horns and hooked noses. Libels around bloodthirstiness (that we killed Jesus and made our unleavened bread out of the blood of murdered children). All fantastical lies, believed for millennia.
These libels have morphed and mutated throughout history, showing up in every generation slightly differently from the one before. Antisemitism is a tricky conspiracy theory like that. This week it manifested thus:
claims the Jews lied about deaths to justify crimes against the humanity of Gazans
calls to see proof that Jewish children were indeed beheaded despite evidence provided by Hamas
claims that Israel seeks to genocide Palestinians when they've given evacuation warning
claims that Israel intend to genocide Palestinians when they intend to let the citizens back in once the area is cleared of weapons and terrorists
claims that Israel is using white phosphorous against Gazans when the images shared were from Ukraine
cries that Israel is unjustly cutting off water and electricity to Gazans in a criminal war act, when Israel only provides 10% of Gaza's water supply, and is not beholden to provide this given the genocidal acts of Hamas
Etc
Israel is NOT going to perform a genocide on the Palestinians. That is NOT Israel’s objective. These lies are the tentacles of a conspiracy theory that has held strong for thousands of years about the Jewish people; a people who were wrongfully charged with killing Jesus, and were thus capable of the most despicable acts against humanity. This is its modern iteration. And all the elite and intellectual arguments from the progressive left and all its institutions and international orgs hold tight to this conspiracy theory, because without it their whole raison d'etre falls. If it's not actually the Jews' fault, they might just be the bad guys.
So if you don't believe in the conspiracy theory, welcome to the matrix. You're inside now. And everyone else sounds like they've just eaten five edibles and have decided to stand on a pulpit and save humanity with conspiratorial emotional word salads. You're not crazy. They are. And they have to make us look crazy, or else they’re the baddies.
It is frankly amazing that we Jewish people are subjected to a false claim that we are colonialists while white progressives sit around all day trying to dictate how Israelis and Palestinians should try to survive. It is the big football match the progressives have all been waiting for – for years. Like an old firm game: Israel vs Palestine – the battle for biggest humanitarian disaster. It has always been sport for them.
And to the “colonizers!” crew: here is a recap of thousands of years of history. Before 1948, Israel's kingdom was passed to Persia, the Greeks, the Hasmoneans, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, then the Brits. Israel is DECOLONIZED.
If these ignorant lunatics were moral people, they would not be egging on Hamas to genocide the Jews. Instead they would be calling on Hamas to stop firing rockets from places where Israel is telling people to evacuate. The only way Israel can defend herself is by entering Gaza and rooting out terrorism and weapons. I repeat: Israel is not calling for ethnic cleansing. Once the area is cleared of threat, the people of Gaza will be able to return. The civilians of Gaza have been abandoned by all, including the West, who are not jumping to take them in. The blame is on Hamas and the failed leadership of the Palestinian people.
It is not a “micro aggression” or “words as violence” that Jewish people throughout the world are refusing to roll over and die. The genocide happened. It happened on the people of Israel. It’s been called for years: “From the river to the sea.” We are at war with a genocidal regime who have cloaked the world with Nazi-level propaganda for decades in universities and governments and international bodies who claim to care about so-called human rights.
Anybody who twists this is a liar, an antisemite and a supporter of global genocide on the Jewish people. It is an awfully weird way to learn about who in your life has a moral code, but ignore your instincts are your own peril.
My world has gotten so much "smaller" over the last week. I have discovered with some pain and sadness that people I thought were allies clearly are not, if they aren't outright enemies. It has led to me unfollowing many Substacks and defriending/disconnecting from many people on social media.
What on earth is going on when college students from Stanford to Harvard are demonstrating in FAVOR of genocidal baby killers? If Hamas did not want to kill Jews, their homophobic, misogynistic, religious fundamentalism would make them anathema to all of their “progressive” supporters.