People hate you. There is little you can do about it except to protect yourself from the loonies amongst them.
There is an “Anti-Zionism” symposium in Toronto soon. A lot of the big guns from the conservative side of the spectrum are scheduled to speak/participate in the event. Good for them. I think that trying to “fight” antisemitism or anti-Zionism is like trying to teach people how not to breathe. Israel has every right to exist like the other 200 countries in the world; those who hate Jews will come up with absurd claims about why not. Anti-Zionism is an extremely convenient way to hate Jews while claiming not to be antisemitic. “Me? A Jew hater? No! I only am opposed to Israel for reasons, blah, blah, blah.” Jews bought and developed land and won wars; what’s not legitimate?
A long time ago, a fellow in the South was found guilty of some type of KKK activity. As part of his punishment, he was required to take classes that would explain the contribution of blacks to America. He said that he would do so, but in the end, he would hate blacks as he always has. And for you, without any fault of your own, there are people who hate you. Whereas my folks taught me not to judge people for the way God made them, today, haters mostly on the Left will hate you for a plethora of reasons, some from God, some by your choice:
- You’re white
- You’re military or in law enforcement
- Maybe you’re Jewish
- You’re well-to-do
- You’re successful
- You support Israel’s right to live in peace
- You’re a dedicated spouse and parent
- You attend religious services and activities
- You have conservative views and voted for Donald Trump
I am not opposed to a conference on antisemitism or anti-Zionism, and I would love to hear Ben Shapiro and Gad Saad speak. But what will it accomplish? Will the day after the conference be different from the day before it? They can quote statistics and explain all of the awful and bigoted arguments antisemites use to demean Israel and attack Jews globally. I just don’t see how discussing the problem or the logical absurdity of hating Israel will necessarily bring a solution. It is well-known that various individuals, including academics, praised to high heaven the mass murder of Israelis on October 7, 2023. Is there anything other than a credible threat of losing their jobs that would make them at least externally claim that they don’t feel that any longer? Are we going to go with the threat approach: say you didn’t mean it, or you’re fired! Some percentage will recant to keep a job. But will they have changed?
These people will hate Israelis in particular and Jews in general, and even if their thinking is flawed, they will continue to hate. So either ignore them or enjoy hearing of their misfortunes, their illnesses, their bad breaks. In war, if your side is winning, then the other side is necessarily losing. And while in life your getting rich doesn’t prevent anyone else from doing the same, when you have people who hate you and wish upon you evil and harm, then your victory involves their defeat. Rejoice in their going bankrupt, becoming ill, or getting in trouble with law enforcement. Just as Muslims in England watched Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv and rejoiced, we are happy to hear—though we don’t make parties or hand out sweets for the same—when IRGC and government officials in Iran are in the past tense. People hate you. You can ignore them. You can hate them right back. If they violate the law, you can have them prosecuted. What you can’t do is expect to change their minds.
Look at all of the clowns on the Weirdo Right who claim that Bibi dragged President Trump into war, that Israel committed a genocide, or that Israel starved Gazans. Donald Trump made it clear that he chose to go to war to protect the U.S. from a potential Iranian nuclear bomb. Fifty thousand out of 70,000 killed in Gaza were Hamas fighters or associates. Pictures of genetically deformed Gazan children do not a famine make. Gaza received huge amounts of food, something that even the deranged U.N. had to admit. So the facts are not with Tucker or Cenk or Piers or Megyn, but antisemitism is a reverse logic: I don’t like Jews. Therefore, I don’t like Israel. Therefore, Israel mass-murdered Gazans and starved them. As Israel might benefit from a government change in Tehran, therefore, Bibi must have pushed Donald Trump into war. In short: Israel is evil, Jews are bad, and anyone who hates them—Muslims, lefties, Hitler-lover Fuentes—must be good. What at the Toronto confab is going to change that?
German Jews had made numerous contributions to all aspects of pre-Nazi society. Literature, philosophy, music, science, math, engineering, business—one can find leading Jews in all fields of German endeavor. Didn’t help a bit. My mother had a cousin who lost his university position because he was a Jew. In a final project, he put a defect into an underground synthetic fuel factory. When the Germans realized what he did, he fled for his life. After moving to New York, he used to periodically go to Washington to tell the government where critical German infrastructure elements were located.
The major problem we have today is that antisemitism/Jew-hating is at industrial scale, and the authorities have chosen to be flat-footed. Qatar funding, plus local Muslim Brotherhood organization, plus lefty political cover, plus students and foreign Muslims equals massive antisemitic activity. This is no longer 10 guys with homemade signs, like in France, where some Muslim held a sign “Kill all the Juice.” I would have hated to be a French orange or apple that day. But in the face of this tsunami of activity, authorities from university administrators to police leaders have punted. They hide behind “free speech” considerations, but anyone who comes out against gays, illegals, or other protected classes will be arrested, thrown off campus, or stopped cold in a matter of minutes. Let someone organize a big anti-black protest at Harvard, and its half-life will be less than that of an unstable radioactive element. But not when the target is Jews/Israel. Then it goes on for years. Nobody is thrown out of school, because hating Jews fits in with intersectional delusions—good guys and bad guys. Jews are white, so they’re bad. Tell that to my family’s Yemenite wing. They are not white, but being Jews, they are given free admission to the whites department. U.S. universities could have stopped the hate fests, and the police could have ended the harassment and graffiti, but ideologically, they were on the side of the Israel-haters. Five thousand Muslims show up in London to demand “intifada revolution,” and the police do nothing; one Jew comes with a kippah on his head and an Israeli flag in his hand, and he is threatened with arrest for offending the Muslims.
So when does it end? Probably not at the end of the Toronto conference. Only when it doesn’t pay to do public Israel-hating and rather keep it around the kitchen table. When youngins feel that their economic future and house-ownership future look brighter, they’ll be too busy making money to blame the Jews. Public Jew hatred ebbs and flows with the economy and the willingness of good-willed people to stand up to the hatred. Telling Jew haters that their iPhones and drugs are due to Israeli tech means nothing. If European cowards will not stop bringing Jew-haters wholesale and start to eject them, there will be no future for Jews in Europe. America is presently a jump ball.