People of good will around the United States are watching in horror, disgust and disbelief as huge numbers of pro-Hamas protesters take to the streets and the campuses of our allegedly most prestigious colleges and universities in support of last week’s Iran-backed terrorist attack on Israel.
Their message is “The Jews had it coming!” Those innocent Jewish babies deserved to be decapitated. Those old Jewish ladies deserved to be kidnapped. Those Jewish families deserved to be burned alive. Those Holocaust survivors finally got what they deserved. To the protestors, it was a good thing that 250 young Jewish concertgoers were gunned down in cold blood.
But what is the crime that these monsters believe justifies the attack? The answer is simple: The mere existence of the Jewish State of Israel. What motivates the monsters? Antisemitism.
The next time anyone asks whether the Holocaust could happen again, just listen to the groups lining up to support the pro-terrorism protestors like Black Lives Matter. Internalize the grotesque mealy-mouthed responses from people who should know better, like presidents, professors and administrators of institutions of “higher learning.” Listen to the Orwellian Newspeak of elected officials like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her “Squad” who, to the extent they could bring themselves to issue any statement of condemnation, were clearly concerned about offending many of their most ardent supporters, who have taken to the streets to hail Hamas’s terrorist massacre.
Could the Holocaust happen again? The answer is a resounding yes.
To be clear, these are not the protests of white supremacists. White supremacists were not chanting “Gas the Jews” like the so-called “protestors” in Sydney, Australia last week. Police forces around the U.S. are not beefing up security at Jewish places of worship and gathering sites because they fear an assault from the Proud Boys. It was the Democratic Socialists of America who marched for terrorism in New York’s Times Square, not the Ku Klux Klan. The authorities’ show of force is to protect the Jewish community from the antisemitic radical progressive left.
History shows that Jews are most imperiled when antisemitism is mainstreamed and becomes national policy. The Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union are the best examples. Shockingly, we are witnessing the mainstreaming of antisemitism in the United States today, and it is coming from the progressive left.
While there are many factors to consider, the progressive “social justice” movement is central to this outpouring of antisemitic vitriol. Support for Iran and Hamas as they wage a genocidal war against the Jewish State of Israel is simply the international application of the social justice movement’s ideology.
This is because, at its very core, the social justice movement is racist and antisemitic. By viewing everything through the lenses of race and gender, social justice activists are freed from history, facts or the moral necessity of separating right from wrong and good from evil. It is a paradigm for idiots.
Under the social justice rubric, the world is broken down into two groups: oppressors and the oppressed. Oppressors are racists and the oppressed have a right to fight back against oppression. Whites are oppressors. People of color are oppressed. Jews are whites. Therefore, Jews are oppressors. Israel is a Jewish state. Therefore, it is an oppressive state. Palestinians are people of color. Therefore they are oppressed and have the right to fight back against Jewish oppression. Attacks by the oppressed against the oppressors are always justified.
Thus, to the pro-terrorist social justice movement, last week’s attack was carried out by the oppressed Hamas against the oppressor Israelis. Therefore, the attack was justified.
For the pro-Hamas protestors and their pro-terrorist social justice accomplices, every Palestinian is George Floyd and every Israeli is Derek Chauvin. In their demented worldview, Hamas has the right to fight back “by any means necessary.”
Fortunately, the ahistorical, anti-intellectual, fact-free and morally bankrupt arguments of the pro-terrorist social justice movement as applied to the war against the Jewish state are easily disproven.
First, Jews are not a race. Jews are a nation with a specific religion. As such, they have the right to self-determination in their own state. By embracing the racist notion that the Jews are a race and—worse still in their eyes—a “white” race, the social justice movement can deny this right with impunity.
The pro-terrorist protestors also call for “decolonization.” This term is literally meaningless when applied to Israel. Only a “mother country” can colonize another country. If there is no “mother country,” there are literally no colonists to undertake colonization. The Jews have no mother country except Israel, and by definition cannot be colonizers of Israel.
The pro-terrorist protesters’ cry of “apartheid” may be their most dishonest slogan. Like “decolonization” it is a meaningless catchphrase. Apartheid was a unique legal system in South Africa that deprived all blacks of basic human rights. It made it illegal for blacks to participate in the political process, own land or operate businesses outside of specifically designated areas.
In Israel, non-Jews are full citizens. Arabs legally own land and businesses. They sit as judges in Israeli courts and as MKs in the Knesset. An Arab party was part of Israel’s previous government. But what truly makes the “apartheid” libel laughable is that the majority of Israeli Jews are people of color from North Africa, Ethiopia and the Middle East.
Gaza and the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, however, are both apartheid entities. They are completely Judenrein and Jews enter them at risk of their lives. It is clear, moreover, that those who control them, backed by monstrous regimes like Iran, seek the outright annihilation of the Jewish people. It is telling indeed that the Palestinians have turned down every offer of peace made by Israel because those offers did not include the destruction of the Jewish state.
The pro-terrorist activists’ claims of “occupation” are also false. Under international law, a territory is occupied only if it is located in a state with recognized borders. For example, Russia is occupying parts of Ukraine. There was never a Palestinian state or any other state in the areas controlled by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. The British were the last internationally recognized power in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, but they gave up their rule of those territories in 1948.
Moreover, the pro-terrorist social justice movement has made it clear that they believe the entirety of Israel—including Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—are all “occupied” as well. This is a demented fallacy and a clear writ for ethnic cleansing.
The movement’s accusation of “genocide” is particularly absurd. As we know from the Holocaust, genocide is the extermination or attempted extermination of an entire people based on their race, nationality or religion. When Israel was established in 1948, there were approximately 1.4 million Palestinians. Today, there are almost 10 million. This would be literally impossible if a “genocide” was being committed against them.
While there may be rejoinders to the above points, any meaningful rebuttal requires thought and engagement. The pro-terrorist social justice movement is interested in neither.
As a nation, we need to fight back against this racist and antisemitic movement. It must be completely ostracized from our politics, schools and businesses. Elected officials who advocate for its agenda must be sent packing.
Rabbis and synagogues have a particularly important role to play in this. Many Reform and Conservative synagogues have “social justice” committees. They must be disbanded immediately. Rabbis and synagogues must stop giving cover to the antisemitic social justice agenda by pretending it is just a vehicle for tikkun olam. Teach the Torah, not progressive politics.
In the eyes of our antisemitic enemies, the most unforgivable sin any Jew or supporter of Israel can commit is to fight back. Let’s be sinners!