Let me start this entry off with a caveat. If you are a person who is absolutely genuine in your concern for the Palestinian people who are now caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas, none of what follows will apply to you. If you are using concern for the Palestinian people as a shield for other purposes, you can kiss my ass.
For the past three weeks, my emotions have alternated between shock, sorrow, disbelief and mounting rage over events transpiring in the Middle East. I was deeply shaken by the surprise attack on Israel on October 7. I was heartened by the support Israel received from many of the leaders of the West in the following days. I was disgusted, though not surprised, by the pro-Hamas rallies that came so quickly after Jewish blood was still wet on the ground.
What I was not prepared for was the rapidity from which much of the media narrative would shift from a compassionate or neutral tone toward Israel to one of sympathy for those in the Gaza Strip, while mixed with a growing skepticism of Israel’s motives, tactics and end goals. I’ve been paying attention to Israel now for 20 years, so I expected the media and many politicians to turn against Israel at some point, but I figured it would happen after Israel ramped up its ground assault in Gaza. I did not think it would take mere days.
The best example of this tonal shift, of course, was the Israeli bombing of a Palestinian hospital that wasn’t. The New York Times lead the charge in labeling the attack as coming from Israel. When President Biden visited Israel the following day, he had to inform the world that the rocket had actually been fired from Gaza and fell far short of its target. Yet, it took the NYT six days to correct the narrative. To this day, certain members of the progressive left such as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib still maintain and trumpet this spurious, libelous story.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Social media swarmed with deniers questioning everything from whether or not babies had been beheaded, whether women had actually been raped, whether children had been kidnapped, or whether the videos, many of which were taken by Hamas terrorists and proudly flaunted on social media, were authentic. This forced Israel into the position of having to validate the attacks by holding special screenings for journalists, posting graphic photos of dead babies on the internet, and justifying its strategy to the western world.
And then came the campus rallies. Angry young people marching on free, comfortable, entitled colleges, chanting and screaming slogans that they’ve been taught in classrooms without the benefit of any critical analysis. Then came cowardly, mealy-mouthed administrators issuing tepid, toothless statements trying to soothe everyone while condemning no one. Then came a group of terrified Jewish students locked in a library at Cooper Union with an angry mob of pro-Hamas supporters banging on the doors and screaming taunts and epithets. The students had to be escorted from the building by armed cops.
The only silver lining I can find in all of this bloody business is that the masks are finally off. If the bigoted right wing of the Republican Party was drawn out of the closet during the rise of Donald Trump, the anti-Semitic bigoted left is now feeling free to crawl into the light under the umbrella of the Democrat party. Supposed anonymity on the internet, masks in public and the comforting yoke of permission granted by a cadre of media, intellectual and academic elites gives these people cover to reveal who they really are. Let them have their reckoning in public, rather than the quiet solitude of the voting booth where they expose their hearts to no one but God. We will remember them.
I doubt anyone reading this is familiar with the three D’s as connected to antisemitism. I don’t blame you. I had never heard of them until recently. The three D’s are, demonization, delegitimization and double standards. Demonization is the historical pattern by people of blaming the Jews for all of the woes of the world; economic, political, social, etc. See Adolf Hitler and Louis Farrakhan for further reference. Delegitimization is the practice of downplaying or denying the right of Israel to exist, or questioning or denying the existence of historic events, such as the Holocaust. See Ayatollah Khamenei and Nick Fuentes for further reference. Double standards are the practice of applying standards or expectations to Israel or other Jewish persons that would not otherwise be applied to other countries in a similar situation. See most college professors, media pundits, leftist politicians and CAIR for further reference.
These three D’s, reflected in the charter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, perfectly illustrate what Israel and Jews across the world are up against. Yet, the working definition of antisemitism as brought forth by the IHRA has been adopted by numerous countries, including the US, Australia, Germany, Canada, the UK, Spain and Italy. Strange how so many civilized countries can so easily agree on a working definition in peacetime, yet can buck at the notion of applying such definitions when the theory is put to the test.
As a tribute to the three D’s, I have implemented my own system for countering antisemitism. They are, the three F’s. Fuck you, fuck off and fuck yourself.
If you are a pundit, politician, journalist, college professor or even an Uber driver who uses terms like, “moral equivalency,” “apartheid,” “occupiers,” “ceasefire,” or “decolonization,” then fuck off!
If you are a “protester” who tears down posters of Israeli child hostages and wears paraglider stickers at your pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rally, then fuck you!
If you are someone who is, “just asking questions about the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the October 7th Massacre, when there is ample evidence available, then fuck yourself! You’re not really asking questions. You’re planting poisonous seeds.
If you’re someone who uses the Israeli-Hamas war as an excuse to instigate harassment, discrimination or even violence against Jewish citizens in your own country, then fuck you, fuck yourself and fuck right off!!!
Let me (ahem ahem) just ask a few questions before I finish up.
What does the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine, it will be free,” really mean? How many people who gleefully chant this slogan at rallies also love to employ the word, “genocide,” when speaking about other minorities?
If the Jewish people were to leave Israel, or be forced out, where would they go?
If the United States had been told to, “control your rage,” or “don’t escalate,” in the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, what would our response have been?
How many of the progressives who are calling for a ceasefire have also called for Hamas to release the hostages?
What do pro-Palestinian protesters in the West really know about the workings of the Israeli government? How do they square their western values, such as pro-homosexuality, overt feminism and diversity with the treatment of women, gays and other minorities by Hamas?
Why did the Palestinian people elect Hamas as their government in 2006, after Israel had already relinquished the Gaza Strip to them? It wasn’t as if Hamas was lying about who and what they were. Unlike the Nazis, who went to great lengths to conceal their crimes, Hamas has been perfectly clear in their goals. They want to eradicate Israel and the Jewish people from the Earth. I’m not trash-talking here. Look it up.
And for you Jewish leftists who are still anti-Israel, when are you gonna wake the fuck up!?
Let me hasten to add that criticism of Israel as a country is fair game. No country is above reproach. But when masked students project vile, anti-Semitic slogans on to a library on an American college campus under cover of darkness, there’s something else going on that goes far beyond criticism of Israeli policy. When people are sharing pictures of the Star of David in a garbage can, that’s not pro-Palestinian, or even pro-humanitarian. That is pure evil.
The worst part of this whole business is that I used to view the rise of Nazism and the subsequent Holocaust as, just history. It was a horribly fascinating period of history that I was sure wouldn’t…couldn’t happen again in our modern world. I don’t think that way anymore. Between the rise of Donald Trump, the bending of the knee to authoritarianism along the entire political spectrum, and recent events in Israel and abroad, I now have a much clearer understanding of exactly how and why the events of the first half of the 20th Century occurred. It happened before and I am certain that it will happen again. Between Russia, Iran and China, I have no doubt that we will be in World War III before long.
Against this dark and ominous backdrop, I can only make one final statement. It is a statement that comes without equivocation or nuance.
Let history bring down the sword of war upon us all. My neck is my own, for the saving or the severing. I stand with Israel. I stand with my fellow Americans who are Jewish. I stand with the Jewish people of the world.
Death to Hamas.
