Showing posts with label roger waters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roger waters. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 03, 2024



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. Please note that this post contains extremely graphic descriptions.

Roger Waters is an evil antisemite. The word “evil” here is no hyperbole. Some people hate Jews out of habit or ignorance, but Roger Waters is a rabid, virulent Jew-hater, who denies that Jewish babies were burned and Jewish women were raped on October 7. Even though there is ample evidence to the contrary, as Piers Morgan rightly stated during a recent interview with the Pink Floyd co-founder and Jew-hater par excellence.

Roger Waters: Wouldn't it be great to have that conversation at some . . . and wouldn't it be great if we could have an actual real investigation beyond the very good Al Jazeera documentary that we all saw that came out and all the great work that the Gray Zone and Electric Intifada people did in debunking all the filthy disgusting lies that the Israelis told after October the 7th about burning babies and women being raped which were all completely . . .

Piers Morgan (interrupts): Actually women were raped.

Roger Waters: No they weren’t.

Piers Morgan: Yes, they were.

Roger Waters: Well, there's no evidence.

Piers Morgan: It's been must been established by the United Nations.

Roger Waters: You can say anything that you want but there's no evidence.

Piers Morgan: Actually there is extensive evidence. . .

Roger Waters (interrupts): There is no sex assault and rape.

Piers Morgan: Well, there is, okay?

Waters is only annoying. No one takes him seriously anymore, except for his fellow haters. Still, there is much frustration among those of us who are all too well aware that in fact, babies were burned and women were raped. There is more, much more, and we can prove it—Hamas recorded it all with their GoPro cameras.

That being the case, say the naysayers, why haven’t we seen this evidence?

I would answer that there are very good reasons you haven’t seen the evidence of mass gang-rapes and beheadings; the baby shoved into a microwave oven; others decapitated or burned alive. For one thing, there are families to shield from seeing how their loved ones were brutalized. We also have the dignity of the victims to consider. But then there is the issue of the footage being difficult to watch.

A 43-minute video, a compilation of raw footage of the October 7th carnage, was produced by the IDF and shown to foreign journalists. At the request of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the film was subsequently shown to Knesset members at a November 1st, closed-door screening.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Knesset screened the IDF's uncensored October 7 documentary for MKs on Wednesday.

The movie, which is made up of footage taken from killed and captured terrorists, was previously screened for Israeli and foreign journalists to show them the horrors of Hamas's attack.

The MKs who watched the footage on Wednesday were heavily affected by it, with Likud MK Keti Shitrit leaving the auditorium sobbing a few minutes after the documentary began. Fellow Likud MK Tsega Melaku reportedly fainted after the screening and was taken to the Knesset's infirmary.

Likud MK Gilat Distel-Atbaryan said the Knesset's doctor was at the entrance to the auditorium offering MKs relaxation medications before they went in to watch the documentary. Three psychologists were also available afterward to help those who watched the documentary to cope.

"I held it out in the hall for five minutes and then I ran out sobbing and shaking," said Distel-Atbaryan.

Even with the relaxation pill, which she had accepted, she said the footage gave her a panic attack like she had never experienced before.

Fox News’ Harris Faulkner reported on a screening for Members of the House:

Harris Faulkner: And on Capitol Hill, Members of the House visibly shaken after they watched Hamas’ footage of the October 7th atrocities. Many of those terrorists wore body cameras—as you know they were “GoPro-ing it,” as they were slaughtering men, women, and children, entire families, one in front of each one of them and then killing the last one.

It's torture.

Senators are planning a wider viewing tomorrow in their chamber.

(cut to reactions)

US Representative Elise Stefanik: These horrific images of atrocities are etched into my memory forever.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: You could have heard a pin drop except for the sighs and cries in the room, because the video would make anyone with a soul, cry.

Congressman Mike McCaul: Horrific scene, that I can't get into detail because they are so disgusting. They are a messianic cult, they’re a terror organization, a cult.

Harris Faulkner: The devil is what they are. Incarnate. Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens posted, “I'm gutted. This is barbarism. An attack on all humanity."


California Republican Darrell Issa said, “Watching the footage made me sick to my stomach.

(cut to Harris Faulkner): Heartbreaking and dramatic newly-released video from October 7th shows the bravery of a young off-duty soldier. He was defending civilians inside a rocket shelter as the terrorists tossed in grenades. The soldier, lobbing them right back before they would explode. One after another after another.

Seven times he did that, before he himself was killed by the eighth grenade.

Martha MacCallum, also at Fox, described the experience of watching those 43 minutes:

"Everyone has seen some of these images online, but the unfiltered video is absolutely – it’s so horrific it’s hard to put into words," MacCallum told Dana Perino Monday on "America’s Newsroom."

"There is obviously so much blood, so many charred bodies, it’s very difficult, obviously, to watch this. But the two things that stuck with me, Dana, more than anything is a moment when two young boys, they’re probably [ages] 8 and 10, a grenade is thrown into the room that they are in with their father, and their father is killed and then the terrorist, the Hamas terrorist, pulls the boys out and basically pushes them into their kitchen, and they’re crying, one of them can’t see from the grenade," she continued.

"And the terrorist starts drinking water, or milk or juice out of their refrigerator… these boys are screaming, and one of them says, ‘I want my mother,’ and then he says, ‘Why am I alive?’" MacCallum became emotional when recalling the chilling video of some of the Oct. 7 terror that gripped Israel.

"I will never forget these two boys, I just can’t imagine," she said.

"Beyond the blood and the horror is the emotion of, I don’t know if they survived, but of the survivors, and the other thing that will haunt anyone that hears it or sees it, are the phone calls," MacCallum continued.

"There is a Hamas terrorist who calls his parents… he says, ‘Mom and dad, you would be so proud of me. I’m a hero. I killed 10 Jews with my own hands.’"

MacCallum said the terrorist’s parents were "cheering" on the call.

"It’s horrifying and I think that the reason, obviously, that they’re showing it to people is that they don’t want this part of the story to be forgotten, and it is important to remember what the spark was," she said.

MacCallum is absolutely correct. But no one who is swept up in the antisemitic protests cares about the nature of the “spark” that lit the fire in Gaza. It’s too late for that—they’ve been indoctrinated with the falsehood that Israel, in 1948, by its very creation, was the spark that led to the destruction in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre.

On the other side of the aisle, Matt Gutman, writing for ABC News, talked about his turn to view the 43-minute film, and how it was for him:

"You won't see rape, there's no rape in this video... We won't show you beheaded babies," a senior Israeli officer said to a small group of journalists, saying such images existed but would not be shown.0000

The journalists were the first to watch a screening of an hour-long reel cobbled together from Hamas helmet cam, mobile phone video, surveillance video, dashboard camera video and victims' livestreams. . .

. . .  Journalists were not allowed to record or use the video presented, and our phones were deposited outside the room.

The video started slowly. Hamas fighters are seen on the back of a pickup, with RPGs spiking out in every direction. You can sense their excitement. The video shows several groups cut through the fence and wave a pickup truck through.

Then it shows three separate angles of motorists in Israel being flagged down, then gunned down -- the AK-47s puffing smoke -- on the road outside the Kfar Aza and Be'eri kibbutzim. Bodies are yanked out of cars.

Then a pair of attackers in Be'eri is shown. For several minutes, we watch as they amble around the kibbutz. They poke into one house and you can hear someone's alarm going off. It's 8 a.m. You can hear them breathing heavily. The one wearing the body camera has a high, soft-spoken voice that seems to belie his mission.

At a playground, he wonders in Arabic, "Where are the kids?" The duo set fire to one house, shoot an encroaching dog, and shoot another old man through a darkened screen. They are parsimonious with their ammunition, and chillingly unhurried as they pick through the tidy vegetable gardens and open the latches of wooden fences.

Then the video gets grisly. Other militants are busy mashing a dying man's face with their boots. Another pair screams "Allahu akbar" as they use a garden hoe to try to decapitate another man.

In another house, a gunman sticks the muzzle of his rifle into a room inhabited by a family. It's a mash of colors. In one, a terrorist is standing on an Israeli man's chest and shoots him point-blank in the face.

Then, the scenes of bloodied bedrooms start to blur. The rooms and the gore are the same -- it's how the bodies are arrayed in death that's different. There are so many children. Some are jam-packed together in a slippery mass of human flesh. Huge blood stains streak the tiles.

So many of the bodies are burnt. It was unclear if this was because they were set fire to or if it was from the grenade blasts. Other videos show Israeli first responders trying to put out the still-smoldering skeletal remains of victims -- with water bottles, as if watering a parched plant.

In another video, a grenade was apparently tossed into one of the bomb shelters that line the roads in southern Israel. It was filled with partygoers who'd left the Supernova music festival. The camera shows a flash of limbs, some dismembered, some still attached to writhing, screaming bodies. A selfie camera shows a young man weeping, while someone croaks hoarsely in the background, "help, help." Hamas then drags survivors out, some by their hair, to trucks, and then batters them some more in the backs of the pickups on the way to Gaza.

Forensic images show bodies burned in cars, on beds, on the streets and in the fields in various states of incineration.

There’s a reason that not everyone should or is capable of watching this footage, or even reading these descriptions. It’s gruesome, gory. Inhuman. Bestial. 

“Screams Before Silence,” available to everyone, and not just the press or the Knesset, was difficult to watch, but the worst images were blurred. Many Israelis and Jews felt the film as painful vindication of what they knew to be all too true. Here, finally, was the proof an angry, hateful world had demanded. At last, here was a way to make them understand. To see the real “spark,” as Martha MacCallum put it.

If only that were true, and perhaps it is true of most people, that on viewing factual evidence, they believe what they see. Not so, however, the evil. People like Roger Waters.

Given proof, the evil will deny and discredit what they see and hear. For the Roger Waters of the world, any proof you show them will be likened to Karine Jean-Pierre’s “cheap fakes.” You could show Waters photos of charred infants, and he will say, “The Israelis did it. False flag operation.”

You could show him the interrogation of an October 7th terrorist describing rape and murder by a father and his sons, and Waters will say, “He’s being coerced by his Israeli interrogators,” or “That’s an actor. His accent is suspicious.”

Martha MacCaullum is, of course, correct that none of this story should be forgotten, the story of the October 7th massacre. But when it comes to evil people like Roger Waters, it’s not a question of remembering, and it’s not even a question really, of hate. Once a person says that what happened on October 7, didn’t happen, he has gone over to the other side. It’s not just a dislike of Jews, but an embrace of evil.

This, in the end, may be the most serious consideration in deciding who should and should not see real, raw October 7 footage. The last thing Israel should do is expose the bodies of my dead sisters to the scorn and ridicule of black-hearted people like Roger Waters. All it does is give him more rope to heap abuse on murdered Jewish women.

He has perfected the art of feigning belief. And he’s got an answer all at the ready, to everything. “Even if there was rape, it was limited . . .” say the Roger Waters of the world.

The evil are immune to proof, because they take glee in the murder and rape of Jewish women and children, and the burning of families alive in their homes. Should we then share our sorrow in order to give evil joy? It’s a point that is hard to absorb, because like Anne Frank—that is, before she was found out and sent to die in a concentration camp under horrible, unbearable conditions—in spite of everything we “still believe that people are really good at heart.”

We want to believe that proof will make a difference. Maybe so. For some people. But don’t bother to show that brutal footage to people like Roger Waters. They’ve gone to the Dark Side, lost for good.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, October 02, 2023

It's been a few weeks since I last posted my latest graphics....

















Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has released a film called "The Dark Side of Roger Waters," featuring interviews with Jews whom he has worked closely with who say that Waters is (at least functionally) an antisemite. 

It is well worth watching. 






Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, June 13, 2023




In April, when the city of Frankfurt planned to cancel their Roger Waters concert for antisemitism, he wrote on Instagram:

ROGER WATERS FRANKFURT SHOW UPDATE
FRANKFURT COUNCIL WERE LEGALLY REQUIRED
TO RESPOND TO ROGER WATERS INTERIM INJUNCTION
BY MIDNIGHT APRIL 14
DID THEY?
NOBODY KNOWS?
WE CAN ONLY GUESS AT
WHAT’S GOING ON IN FRANKFURT?
ARE THEY PLAYING FOR TIME?
WHO KNOWS?

NOT THAT IT MATTERS MUCH!
WE’RE COMING ANYWAY!
BECAUSE HUMAN RIGHTS MATTER!
BECAUSE FREE SPEECH MATTERS!
YES! FRANKFURT CITY COUNCIL
WE REMEMBER KRISTALLNACHT!
LIKE SOPHIE SCHOLL
OUR FATHERS STOOD
WITH THOSE THREE THOUSAND JEWISH MEN
AND TODAY WE STAND WITH THE PALESTINIANS!
WE’RE COMING TO FRANKFURT
ON THE 28TH OF MAY!

LOVE

R.
(Yes, he pretends to understand Kristallnacht better than the Germans do.)

Last week Waters again said that he supports free speech:




Free speech matters! 


This week, for at least the third time, a fan with an Israeli flag was forcibly removed from a Roger Waters show and the flag desecrated.

Former Pink Floyd star Roger Waters, who has lately featured repeatedly in the news for all the wrong reasons, has stated that wearing a mock Nazi uniform in his concerts was actually a "statement against fascism", but that does not explain why a fan who was waving an Israeli flag was manhandled by security and escorted off site.

"There was no intent on my part to provoke anyone," said Gilad Emilio Schenkar, who arrived at the concert with his partner. "And I certainly did not plan on being thrown out."

"Both I and my partner are huge Pink Floyd fans, and this was dubbed a farewell tour, so we just had to buy tickets. Since we've been noticing the antisemitic displays in his concerts lately, we decided to take an Israeli flag with us.

Shortly after displaying the Israeli flag, he was summarily ejected from the venue. "It was brutal. They grabbed and dragged me out. It was quite painful. They took me to a side room and interrogated me. Who I am, what I was doing there and all that. They firmly held my hands while they searched me. They then took the flag, threw it in the garbage and kicked me out. I told them that I thought this was a democracy, so why is a Palestinian flag allowed but an Israeli one isn't?"

Unlike the earlier incidents, in this case there was no written message, no chanting. The man simply displayed the Israeli flag quietly. It is not blocking anyone's view. It is not disruptive in the least.




And that was too much free speech for Roger Waters.

When Waters says "We remember Kristallnacht," it appears to mean that he remembers it from the Nazi point of view. Because his treatment of peaceful protesters at his concerts are right in line with how Nazis dealt with protests.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

German site Belltower has a review of Roger Waters' concert in Berlin. Writer Nicholas Potter goes into detail about all the implicit and explicit antisemitism he saw during the concert. A video of the concert is online so there are even more offensive parts that Potter didn't mention.

The concert was outrageous, starting from before the concert itself.

German police stopped Jewish protesters of the concert - but allowed BDSers to hand out literature.

Waters began the concert by declaring "A court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an anti-Semite." This is a lie, he has been allowed to move forward with the concerts for various bureaucratic reasons, but there was no such ruling.

During the song "The Powers That Be," Waters put up photos of people he claims were murdered because of the crime of their identity. Two of them were Anne Frank, and Shireen Abu Akleh, the latter supposedly executed for the crime of "being Palestinian."

This is Holocaust trivialization and incredibly insulting.


One person listed during the song was not killed for being Jewish or Roma or Black or female. That was Rachel Corrie, "sentenced to death" for the "crime" of "defending Palestinians."



Rogers' hypocrisy is acidly noted: his stage backdrop screams "resist capitalism" while he gets rich by charging hundreds of euros per seat for the concert. 

But the most antisemitic part was an entire dialogue displayed on the backdrop before the aforementioned "The Powers That Be."   

The on-screen dialogue says:

"They must think we're fucking stupid!"
"Who do you mean by they?"
"Them, up there in the penthouse, the fucking oligarchs"
"Ah, you mean....the Powers That Be."
"Yeah, the powers that fucking be."
"Wow! Why are they so brutal?"
"Because they want to crush our resistance and keep ruling the world."




Waters is asserting that there are powerful wealthy people who secretly pull the strings and control the world, specifically attacking anyone who speaks truth to power.

Waters is promoting a conspiracy theory that is virtually identical to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But like the Soviet-era antisemites, he couches his hate of Jews in terms like "oligarchs"- a euphemism that he uses the way the Soviets used "rootless cosmopolitans" and "bourgeoisie," or how more recent antisemites say "Wall Street bankers" or "globalists." 

Now, a reminder of what Waters said about Sheldon Adelson: “the puppet master who is pulling the strings of Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo..." And he then claimed that  "Sheldon Adelson believes that only Jews – only Jewish people – are completely human. That... everybody else on Earth is there to serve them."

This was an antisemitic trope right out of Nazi literature, and it is what Waters believes - that Jews like Adelson are "the powers that be" who brutally rule the world. 

Which makes it difficult for the audience not to then associate the rich "Wall Street globalists" with the pigs in suits opening up suitcases of cash  during the later song  "Money," evoking the classic antisemitic trope of Jews as pigs. 


His twin hatred of Israel and his hate for "the powers that be" only make sense when you consider what, to his mind, the two have in common: Jews. Israel cannot be considered a worldwide "power that be" unless you also believe that the powers that be are primarily Jewish.

In a later song, "If I Had Been God," Rogers took direct aim at Israel. The graphics started off with supporting Julian Assange and then general slogans using his limited vocabulary, like "Fuck the patriarchy," "Fuck imperialism," "Fuck drones" and "Fuck the war on terror."  Yet inevitably - while wearing a keffiyeh so no one could mistake his real message as being universal - he zeroed yet again in on Israel. The display said, "Fuck bombing people in their homes. Fuck the occupation. You can't have occupation and human rights."


He isn't talking about the Russian occupation of Crimea or parts of Ukraine, which he evidently supports. There is only one "occupation" he goes beyond criticism to real hate.  

If that isn't enough Israel obsession, he also displays  Israel's life-saving security barrier during "Us + Them." 



Us vs. Them is the theme of the show. This rich white male rock star getting paid a fortune to spew half-baked political messages pretends to  be the everyman "Us" while the Jews and Israelis of every race and economic status are the unseen wealthy "Them" that secretly control the world and oppress the disadvantaged for no reason beyond their age-old greed and bigotry. 

This is the profoundly antisemitic message that Roger Waters is giving to millions of his fans. A large number of Germans recognize it for what it is - because they know all about the euphemisms for Jews that incite hate and violence.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, April 27, 2023

From Ian:

Jeffrey Herf: Israel Is Antiracist, Anti-Colonialist, Anti-Fascist (and Was from the Start)
Nor did support for Israel come only from the Soviet bloc. Liberals and leftists in London, Paris, New York, and Washington heard Jamal Husseini, the representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations, reject a Jewish state in Palestine, because, he said, it would undermine the “racial homogeneity” of the Arab world. Such remarks resonated in a profoundly negative fashion with Americans who had followed the appalling news out of Germany during and after the war. In the Senate, Robert Wagner, a major author of New Deal legislation, extolled the Jewish contribution to the Allied cause. He had already denounced appeasement of the Arabs during the war. With the Allied victory, continuing to appease Arab rejectionism surely made no sense. In the House, Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn led efforts to focus attention on Jamal Husseini’s cousin, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who had entered into a written understanding with Germany and Italy to “solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries . . . as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.”

The liberal media also took note. Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis was thoroughly documented in the New York Post as well as in the left-wing publications PM and The Nation, by I.F. Stone, Freda Kirchwey, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Edgar Mowrer, who urged Husseini’s indictment at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, despite extensive State Department files on Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis, the American bureaucracy succeeded in resisting efforts to put him on trial and publish its evidence of his Nazi-era activities.

The brief confluence of Soviet and liberal Western sympathies for the nascent Jewish state was brilliantly exploited by Ben-Gurion. He understood better than anyone that it presented a unique moment to bring Israel into existence, with the assent of the world’s two great powers — and that it was an opportunity that would soon close, as indeed it did. During the “anti-cosmopolitan” purges of the early 1950s, Stalin reversed course, spread the lie that Israel was a product of American imperialism, repressed the memory of Soviet support for the Zionist project, and launched a four-decade campaign of vilification against Zionism and Israel. It was one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the Cold War.

Stalin succeeded in rewriting American history, too. His insistence that it was the Americans and not the Soviets who had wholeheartedly supported the establishment of the State of Israel carried the day. And yet the records of the Departments of State and Defense and the CIA clearly document their emphatic and consequential opposition to the Zionist project.

The differences between the international political landscape of the late 1940s and the one that emerged first in Soviet and then world politics in the 1950s and 1960s need to be reflected in American-Jewish discussions about the establishment of Israel. Contrary to what we’ve heard at the United Nations for decades, in international BDS efforts, and in academic descriptions of Israel, the Zionist project was never a colonialist one.

Just the reverse. The generation that created the state, and its supporters abroad, viewed it as part of the era of liberal and leftist opposition to colonialism, racism, and, of course, antisemitism. The evidence is clear: Whatever faults Israel may have, its origins had nothing to do with American or British imperialism. The argument to the contrary is a conventional unwisdom that has found a home in too much scholarship and journalism of recent decades. Israel’s establishment was not a miracle that eludes historical explanation. It was an episode of enormous moral and military courage for which space was created by canny and hard-headed political leaders in the cause of historical justice — in particular David Ben-Gurion, who seized a fleeting moment, Israel’s moment, to create an enduring achievement.
Daniel Ben-Ami: Why the world has turned against Israel
From Israel's foundation in 1948 through the 1960s, the left generally celebrated Israel as an expression of Jews' right to national self-determination. By the 1990s, however, Western elites started to reject the idea of national self-determination. Yet the denigration of the right to national self-determination undermines the Palestinian cause, too.

Indeed, many of today's anti-Israel activists aren't really interested in Palestinian self-determination. They are mainly concerned with attacking Israel as a symbol of everything they dislike. This leads them to uncritically endorse Hamas, the leading Islamist representative of the Palestinians, and often Islamism more broadly.

Islamism's goal is not national self-determination, for the Palestinians or anyone else. Rather, it wants to create an international Islamic order. The destruction of Israel - and not the creation of a Palestinian state - is seen as central to achieving that objective. Islamists regard Jews as an expression of "cosmic Satanic evil," who should be physically exterminated if Islam is to flourish.

The Palestinian slogan, "from the river to the sea" (meaning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean), is popular among both Islamists and Western leftists. Islamists often state openly that they want to murder most if not all of the Jews living there. So when they chant "Palestine should be free," they typically mean free of Jews.
Stephen Daisley: Why I love Israel
[T]here are plenty of reasons for Zionists to be gloomy on this, Israel’s 75th birthday, but there is one reason for optimism that outshines them all: Israel is 75. Israel was created; survived an immediate Arab effort to annihilate it; ingathered the survivors of the death camps; settled the land and built kibbutzim; struggled through the lean and lonely years; triumphed in the Six-Day War and reunited Jerusalem; pulled through the Yom Kippur War; endured two intifadas; rescued Beta Israel and welcomed the refuseniks; lost Yamit, lost Rabin, lost Gush Katif; made the desert bloom with fruits and microchips; and made peace with Arab nations. All of that in 75 years and, despite impossible odds, Israel lives yet.

Israel is a hard country and for many a hard country to love. It is flinty but whiny, eager for the world’s love but diplomatically tin-eared, unsentimental but gripped by existential angst. It is a country that adores its army and reveres military discipline but is so hectically informal that you wonder how it made it to 75 days, let alone 75 years. It also boasts the highest density of rude people in the known universe, although I find that strangely endearing. I have never loved Israel more than the time the manager of a Tel Aviv minimart yelled at me for a) not speaking Hebrew, b) being a foreign journalist, and c) coming in to shop when she was trying to watch TV. Only in Israel, the innovation nation, could they invent the inconvenience store.

If Zionism is the theory, Israel is the practice and like all practical translations of idealism it is compromised, haphazard, sometimes unsightly, and occasionally disheartening. But that tension between Zionism and Israel, between ahavat and ha’aretz, is where the great debates take place and where the course of Jewish history can be set or changed. Israeli independence, as it reaches 75 years, is still a miraculous application of a mundane idea: Jewish self-determination.
Israel Independence Day: Celebrating 75 Years with Natan Sharansky
Former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky's personal journey reflects that of the Jewish people, and the centrality of Israel in his life and Jewish identity mirrors the experiences of so many Jews around the world.

Sharansky: "The existence of Israel and, in a way, the existence of the Jewish people is the best demonstration of the importance of these two basic desires of people - to be free and to belong."

"For a thousand years, what were we fighting for? For our right to live freely in accordance with our identity. And then Israel was established. It could not be created as a non-Jewish state and it would never have succeeded in gathering all the Jews if not for its freedom." "There is no other nation or any other state which embodies the strength of this connection. And if you look at history and compare us with Israel 50 years ago, we have much more freedom and much more identity. We have far more of a Jewish and democratic state, so that's the direction we're heading in....Our history and our triumphs are the best proof of how important it is for these two things to go together." "I grew up [in the Soviet Union] having zero connection with anything Jewish except through antisemitism....It was Israel that came in a very powerful way to the center of our life, from the Six-Day War, and it allowed us to discover our identity, that we have a history, we are a people and we have a state. That gave us the strength to fight for our Jewish rights and for a better world."

"When people simply want tikkun olam [repairing the world] without any identity...your life is very shallow. Look at how all these Birthright kids - whose bar mitzvah was the last time they've had a connection to being Jewish - suddenly discover that it's cool and even interesting to live inside history....Suddenly, they have energy, meaning and understanding....In this age, there is no better way to quickly give Jews a brief injection of the importance and meaning of discovering their Jewish identity than coming to Israel."

Sunday, February 26, 2023

My post about Jimmy Carter's antisemitism last week prompts a question: but what about all the wonderful things he has done?

One cannot argue that Carter has not been sincere when he works with Habitat for Humanity, for example. His Middle East work may be influenced by his antisemitism, but he has worked on many other worthy causes. How can those things fit together?

But one can ask the same thing about lots of other antisemites. Alice Walker is a gifted poet and storyteller, but that doesn't make her immune from antisemitic attitudes. Roger Waters was a good songwriter in the 1970s, but that doesn't mean he doesn't harbor antisemitic attitudes. Roald Dahl wrote fantastic children's books, but also hated Jews. 

Then again, we can go back in history and ask the same questions. Voltaire was a groundbreaking philosopher, but he was also a racist and antisemite. Martin Luther was a brilliant theologian and an obsessed Jew-hater. 

If theology can coexist with hate, perhaps that invalidates the theology. But pioneers in theology and philosophy and humanitarianism and progressivism and socialism and science and even medical ethics have been found to be antisemites - and these are all fields that, in theory, if you believe their self-definitions, should be immune to antisemitic thought.

Obviously, theory is very different from practice.

Some people say that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. Or that it relegated to the Right. Or that is is a form of bigotry that is part of a larger group of discriminations against race or sexual preference or age. 

Yet it fits in no clear category. It morphs into new forms every few decades. 

It is a virus with new strains coming out all the time. 

Viruses have only one imperative - survive by adaptation. Right now the most virulent strain of antisemitism spreads by pretending to be outraged at how Jews act in Israel - and it cloaks itself by insisting that this current hate of Jews in Israel has nothing in common with the previous instances, despite the obvious parallels.  

This is hardly the first time antisemitism pretended to be the opposite. In 1873, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution on antisemitism that pretends to be philosemitic - but ends up wishing that all Jews should convert to Christianity.

Is this any different than modern antisemites who wish just as fervently that the Jewish state be destroyed, that Jews should live as second class citizens in a Muslim majority state and most of them should be ethnically cleansed? Is the Southern Baptist desire that all Jews see the light different from those who want all Jews to be "good Jews" who shed all nationalism and all attachment to the land of their ancestors? 

And both of them claim to be doing it because they care so much about Jews. 

The other strains of the antisemitic virus didn't die out. The Middle Ages strain is still there, the Christian strain still thrives in many places, the Nazi strain stays stubbornly alive and spreading. Social media has been a huge boon to the virus, allowing it to spread at the speed of light. People can work very hard for years to come up with a way to minimize the threat of one strain but another one can emerge and propagate in days. 

Today, we hear people arguing against accusations of antisemitism. How can Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch be antisemitic when their entire organizations are based on human rights? How can  Jeremy Corbyn be antisemitic when he is an avowed anti-racist?

The virus doesn't care what philosophy you have. Whatever you hate most in life can be linked to Jews, and usually is. 

Instead of reflecting on the history of antisemitism that shows that anyone can catch the virus of antisemitism, many pretend that they are immune. Worse, they pretend that their progressivism or humanitarianism or anti-racism inoculates them from antisemitism - that they aren't and cannot be antisemitic because their worldview does not allow it. 

On the contrary, the virus can grow in any medium. The anti-racists become antisemites by accusing Jews/Israelis of racism. The humanitarians become antisemites by accusing Jews of inhumanity. The very ideas that people believe make them immune to infection are the ones that spread it.

Just like before, they justify their hate as being based on facts, unlike all of their predecessors. even though those predecessors said the exact same thing. They write their articles and posts and tweets that show the exact same kind of irrational, obsessive hate that previous centuries of antisemites had. 

As we know from recent experience, viruses are hard to eradicate. We still need to try. But we need to understand that the virus does not avoid anyone because of their belief system. On the contrary, it often uses that very belief system as a means of spreading further. 

Beware of anyone who says they cannot be antisemitic because of their worldview. Instead, teach them about the history of antisemitism, and show that they have very prominent Jew-hating forebears, who were the world's leaders in theology, the arts, philosophy, science and the Enlightenment. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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