My inspiring friend Eden wrote this tonight:
I want to add something: We’re good enough. We are good enough.
Also, we’re a healthier choice. Why would anyone want to hang out with Nazi sympathizers? I don’t sympathize with that. That’s not my problem. Sorry. I already lost a lot of friends. Multiple times. For different points of advocacy. I am a zero-tolerance person. If your bullshit stinks, and it’s harmful to me and the people I love then I don’t want you anywhere near me, my space, my future or the future of any adult or child who risks being poisoned by your deranged and inhumane ideas. You’re not good enough for me.
We Jewish people and our esteemed and brave allies should be good enough for you. There are plenty of us to go around. Nobody needs Nazis in their life.
One of my best non-Jewish friends said to me tonight: history is not going to be kind to people who wavered right now. Correct. This is the moment you find out who you are and what you want to do. A lot of people have expressed to me in recent days that they want to stand up for Jews and - above all - the truth. They feel compelled. Awesome. How could you not feel compelled right now? What is your doctor prescribing you that’s taking your mind off this?
Things have never been clearer for me. I am forever changed. I have no time for anyone who has antisemitic ideas. None. I don’t want them in my work projects, in my home, at dinner tables, in restaurants, in my text threads, on my Instagram, nowhere. I don’t want to be anywhere near a person who even likes a post featuring Nazi ideology. Why did they like that post? It’s depraved. None of us are safe around perverted thinkers, or worse - people who are not thinking but are so ego-driven that they too must pollute our now suffocating fountains of knowledge with their arrogant toxic purity. This has reached a line. There is a limit, and it has arrived. We live in a society in which no wrongdoing is ever disciplined, but people will get away with Jew hatred at their own peril, and at the peril of civilization itself. That is the line. It should be everybody’s line.
By the way, there are a lot of lefitst loudmouths who have access to me that don’t take advantage of it. It’s a big red flag to have not received communications from people in the last month. Cards have been marked. The biggest insult is to know people who make up their minds without asking a Jew who knows. Why would they ask? That would involve engaging the Jew.
There is a standard for prejudice that doesn’t seem to apply to the Jews. Well sorry (not sorry) but we’re making it apply. If someone has antisemitic ideas, they’re an antisemite. They’re not merely ill-informed, or ignorant, or brainwashed by social media. No, they’re antisemitic. Never would we accept that a Black person should be told that the prejudice they experience is not racism. Never would we accept that a gay person should be told that the slurs they receive are not homophobia. Never would we accept that a sexual assault survivor should be told that the shame and gaslighting they’re enduring is not misogyny. Never.
The standard should be no different for us. We Jews should not accept being told that the hatred we know intimately and far better than anyone else is not antisemitism. The burden of proof isn’t on us Jews to show who is and isn’t antisemitic. It’s on the person spouting antisemitic beliefs to prove that they didn’t mean what they so proudly said. End of story.
Every time they talk over us, it’s an insult to our history; a slap in the face to our current dead and the ancestors we’re lost in terrible periods past.
I’m done with it.
I have seen it all a billion times in every iteration since the day I was born, and I know what it is. Everyone wants to get away with the most fun sport in history: blaming the Jews. It is so much more fun to post disinformation about Israel than it is to advocate for the truth against a baying mob. It’s “exhilirating” - to borrow from Professor Russell Rickford at Cornell University, who felt thus about the Hamas attacks.
So much fun to be had, everyone wants to get involved. Today an International War Expert entered the chat. Have you heard of her? Her name is Bjork. We can all relax now because Bjork is here and she knows what to do. Everyone was waiting for Iceland’s only export to weigh in, and weigh in she did. Bjork has been infantilized her entire life, and apparently with good reason, because she displayed the emotional maturity of a five-year-old.
OMG, you guys, is it what we call sharing? Why are we like this? We have to learn how to share! Nobody is safe to have a Lunchables around us. We’re the last kid you wanna wind up in morning recession with. We’re not swapping our Monster Munch with you!
Seriously: this is what every asshole on the internet sounds like, infantilizing not just the Jews but the Palestinians. News flash: you’re all behaving like you’re fucking five-years-old right now.
Bjork found the myth of the four maps. Well done to Bjork. The myth of the four maps is basically page one in the “How To Be A Modern Antisemite” manual.
There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. There are not even 16 million Jews in the world. OK? These Nazis and their sympathizers think that they’re establishing an anti-establishment movement with their anti-Israel diatribe because they believe the trope that the Jews have disproportionate power. We do not.
They’re not part of the enlightenment. They’re members of the crusade. We are the resistance. Not them. They’ll find out when it’s too late. (By which point Bjork indeed will be Oh so quiet (Shh! Shh!)). They don’t represent clear-minded Jews. They don’t represent moderate Muslims. They represent Islamic fundamentalism.
Do you want to join our resistance with us? It’s better for you. It’s the best choice. We are good enough.
It’s four weeks since I saw an image of Israel’s map n Twitter with red targets drowning out the terrain, signalling rocket fire, and I started writing a substack called “Israel Under Attack”. 10.30pm PST and the information came flooding in. A video of a pack of terrorists at the break of dawn roaming the streets of Southern Israel with guns. I then saw the first image of dead. A pool of blood in the street with elderly people gunned down at a bus stop. Then I saw the video of Shani Louk, the rape victim whose mangled and naked body had been barrelled in to the back of a truck while paraded through Gaza as Hamas terrorists spat on her. And I received a DM from Shani’s friend who sent me a picture of her alive. I immediately threw up.
I saw the footage of kids running from the festival. By 1 or 2am that morning I had hundreds of Israelis in my DMs telling me horrific things, sharing unspeakable images and videos, trying to piece together what was happening and what was continuing to happen. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I spoke to strangers who sent me anguished voice notes. I rejoined groups on WhatsApp and directed people to the numerous saints who handled so many things ranging from financing and putting together supplies for the IDF and injured on the ground to people connecting victims with the worldwide media. I felt like I couldn’t breathe but I had to because there was no other choice.
The next afternoon I was running through the streets of LA in panic, not sure why I was running. I wasn’t out for a run but aimlessly lost. When I stopped I couldn’t calm myself down. I opened my phone and read a tweet about the girls who were taken from Sderot and how many of them had been raped. I hadn’t sobbed before that moment. I was in an alleyway near La Brea, and it felt like 350 degrees outside. There was nobody around, and I collapsed on a concrete wall. The world felt obese with evil.
Since that night I have been wide awake. I am too scared to sleep. Too scared to go outside. Too scared to be inside. Too scared to think beyond this moment. Too scared to consider a future, whatever it could be. I have fought with the only weapon I have - my voice. Every night I write on my Substack as a means of resistance. I have poured every point I’ve advocated on for the last ten years into every post because this is the moment it truly matters more than ever. The terror we have endured 24 hours a day since October 7 is beyond comprehension for non-Jews. The never-ending panic attacks. The jump-scares at every stranger at the door. The disguising ourselves in public. The fear among our peers and neighbors. The incessant gaslighting and bullying by people we thought we knew. The mockery. So much mockery. The ugliness of the ripped posters. The glee of the celebrants who dance on our not-yet-cold graves. The upside-down of it all.
The world we walk in feels as though it’s behind a pane of glass and we can’t get through it.
It’s a living nightmare. And it is endless. We have not had a second to grieve. To process any of it. We have cried and held each other and tried to laugh through the darkest moments. We won’t stop fighting. We will never stop fighting.
“The world is antisemitic, Eve.” That’s what I was taught as a little girl. I didn’t want it to be true. But it is. We’re good for the world, but the world isn’t always good for us.
Shabbat shalom.
Thank you for everything that you say and write. Your words have been my comfort through the darkest days. You are a treasure, and this writing is so important. Keep going.
I am having a very hard time existing in this new reality. Your voice reminds me that I am not alone. Forever grateful for you. 🩵