Most excellent piece. Having grown up under Communism, I was much less of a Jew than you (simply because atheism was the state diktat and no religions were tolerated) and at the same time much more of a Jew than most - because my mother z"l survived 3 years of Auschwitz. I was lucky enough to live in Tel Aviv for 9 years (though the circumstances that brought me there were tragic) Being an Israeli, speaking Hebrew, observing the holidays made me a lifelong Zionist even though I would have no idea when Passover begins if my "shiksa" wife didn't remind me 😁
I wear my IDF hat with pride, have a large I STAND WITH ISRAEL bumper sticker on my car and fuck anyone who doesn't like it. My parents were right: every guy is an antisemite - some just don't know it. (of course that's an exaggeration - but with a hint of truth)
I'm a goy, and I also have an I STAND WITH ISRAEL bumper sticker on my car. I also have two large magnetized signs on the back of my car with a photo of each of the Bibas babies. I pray for them every day. As a lifelong Dem, I am also feeling sickened and lonely because of the savagery I have seen on display by the Islamofascist Left since 10/7.
I am politically homeless, and I am grieving, too.
I suspect we are all far less alone than we believe, but these are terrifying times.
Why are Jews so resistant to the conservatives? They have been friends for a while. The liberals have been showing their disdain for 'Zionists' for a long time. It seems surprising that it is surprising....
Same here, Penny. I am still grieving…& often feel alone. I don’t understand how I can be this affected as a gentile. However, I won’t stop standing for truth.
Read it again. I did after I read your comment and don’t see that contention at all. However, the author does say that anti-Zionism = antisemitism - a statement with which I agree. One can be a non-Jew, critical
of Israel in the same way someone would be critical of any other state, but when comments/beliefs evince double standards, delegitimize or demonize Israel - that’s antisemitism. Sure, have an opinion, but be fair in how it’s applied.
I figured it out. It was the commenter who said it not the author of the piece. But, be fair the commenter also continues by saying, “(of course that's an exaggeration - but with a hint of truth)” - I have been zinged by multiple non-Jews who wouldn’t think of themselves as anti-Jew but have said to me, “don’t Jew me down”, “it’s always good to have a Jew involved when you’re talking about pricing”, “of course as a Jew you’re asking how commissions are paid”. WTF!? That’s what I would call a ‘hint of truth’. They may not be aggressively anti-Jew but they’ve got some seeds that could germinate. And to be clear, I definitely do not think all non-Jews are like this or that even many/most are antisemitic.
I don’t know if this will help, but I hope it will. I evolved into a progressive/leftist decades ago. For many years, I shared the basic leftist attitude about Israel/Palestine, which was, more or less, I don’t approve of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians but it’s the country and leadership I have a beef with, not Jewish people.
I never felt any conflict there. I had a few Jewish friends whose attitude about it was more or less the same as mine. I had a more conservative Jewish friend who worked for B’nai Brith and disagreed with me strongly, but he was always gracious about it and I never felt he had any sense that I was anti-Semitic.
When October 7 happened, it was just so sickening that I felt like I had to re-evaluate my position, which had always been pretty superficial. I did not anticipate the progressive response, and I was shocked by it.
I had already been at odds with younger progressives over various other issues in recent years, but this was the last straw for me. For the record, I still have objections to Netanyahu, so my position hasn’t changed in a huge way, but I feel like Hamas really tipped their hand on that day. Mostly my empathy is for the people of both countries, and my support for Israel’s policies is perhaps lukewarm, but I’ve purged myself of the kind of reflexive anti-Israel thinking I used to have. I don’t want anyone to confuse me with the kind of people who are treating you so callously, and while I’m not conservative, I can’t align myself with progressives any longer.
Sorry for all the detail, much of which you maybe don’t need. But I’m going somewhere with this.
If your social circles are mostly liberals, and i imagine mostly younger people than me— I’m almost 60– I can see how you might be feeling like the left, or even non-Jews in general, are against you and don’t want you here in America.
But I suspect that while people who’ve become more anti-Semitic over this are common in your life, they are by no means the norm or the mainstream. I only encounter people like that online, and I assume that a lot of people have had a similar arc to mine. You have a right to your anger, and I hope it helps you get through this. But those people have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, and an understanding of the conflict that’s much more superficial than mine was in my younger days. Whatever they may think about Jews, or about you, they’re a small part of America.
My feeling is that progressive thinking has really taken a wrong turn in the social media era. I want to believe that this has peaked and is shifting, and my 20-year-old son, who lives in a college town where younger people skew left, tells me that from his observation, things aren’t nearly as bad as they appear to when I’m on social media. He believes the pendulum is swinging, and that outside of a core of diehards, young liberals are becoming impatient with the kind of excess that led to this wrongheaded reaction to October 7. I hope he’s right.
I hope this makes you feel slightly less lonely. I don’t want to suggest that my experience is anything like yours, but the woke psychology is largely about finding people who don’t share your convictions and trying to make them feel lousy. I’ve been the victim of that behavior many times, despite being liberal for almost 40 years. Many longtime liberals I know tell the same story. I don’t think any of this will ultimately pay off for the left.
I am from the same generation and I agree for the most part however, I think that was is absence is the courage to speak out of those who recognize the threat against us (and themselves) has bene replaced with awkward silence. Having to ask “a friend” to get off the sidelines and into the discourse ring with us is agonizing when we have been there for those friends who come from communities that have been targeted with hate and have been assured by those who carry all the “privileges” that they support us but won’t publicly stand with us.
Spot on. I was shocked by a well-known author who was a friend (both in real life and online). A Chicago bookstore, one that claims to put "Women & Children First," went full-throttle with the pro-Hamas lobby, ignoring completely what happened to Israeli women and children on October 7. When people pushed back on the store's social media posts, this author defended them, saying that people didn't understand "who controls media and the government." As I say, I was shocked--but not so shocked that I was surprised. Anti Zionism is the new buzzword for antisemitism. The equal opportunity hatred.
This reminds me a bit of when I got blocked by Shalom Auslander who denies there is antisemtism in those crowds and who has downplayed antisemitism globally in this last year, particularly. I think it’s because he carries such a monumental chip on his shoulder and has taken his anecdotal mommy and religious issues and assigned them to the entirety of the Jewish world. And of course, the literary world loves Jew that shits on themself/their people.
I went back to the post and he removed that remark. Consequently, without further proof, I can’t give his name despite his original antisemitic trope. That said, I’m going to see if the comment can be found through other means. Stay tuned.
It is a pity that so many Liberal people identify with the Left. The Left, by whatever name they call themselves this week, has never been liberal. The Left considers Liberals to be Useful Idiots.
Most of the USA is small-L liberal. Most of the USA is also small-C conservative. We prefer incremental change, and we intend to hang on to our civil liberties.
I think it’s admirable that you realize belatedly that you’ve been conned and you admit the truth. That’s brave. I just hope you do realize that this won’t change. And I hope you take to heart the lesson that people who are prone to virtue signaling and latching on to the latest thing, even when it’s endorsing homicidal maniacs are low quality people.They know nothing about the ME and they don’t care. It’s a social exercise for these bozos. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends with all kinds of people. It does mean that there’s a large group of people who are fine with seeing Jews suffer and die, and who will use that suffering as a way to virtue signal for the bad guys. Think about how sick that is. BTW the hatred that goes across the political spectrum these days is not something to be celebrated. It is an idea planted and nurtured by the progressive Left and from these seeds the virulent anti-Semitic attitude we see in bastions of liberalism has sprouted. Jews are just another scapegoat target for their ideology of envy and misery.
Serious question: do you think it's possible for someone like me/us to maintain a friendship with someone who regularly attends anti-Israel protests in a kaffiyeh?
I couldn’t do it. I can answer it that way. How can you be friends with somebody who is advocating for the wholesale destruction of Israel and the murder/displacement of its Jewish population? I can’t tell you what to think.
You have to figure it out yourself, but I think you already know the answer to this question at a deeper level.
Yes. The problem is that some of these people I've known for over a decade, and if you put this aside, I know they are fundamentally good people. *They* do not believe that they are advocating for the destruction of Israel but rather for the livelihood of what they consider to be a group of minorities experiencing danger. Taken at face value, it's well-intentioned. But they're ignorant as to how much it affects me personally.
I haven't told any of them how hurtful it is to me, maybe because I'm afraid of what would come out of such a conversation.
Jill, again, it's complicated, and agonizing, and I know you know that, maybe better than I do. If it were just as simple as, oh, the poor Gazans are suffering, etc., that would be one thing, but there is more to it. I won't even get into the complexities of Israeli politics because I don't follow them closely. What concerns me more about what happens here is the fact that many of not most of the organizers of the protesters are agitators who manipulate underinformed young people for their own antisemitic purposes.
Well, you’ll have to decide for yourself how uncomfortable you are or aren’t with the situation. Ignorance is a dangerous excuse all by itself when it’s persistent in the face of copious information.
No. Not a friendship. But you can explain that if they are ever open to the listening or asking a question that is not informed by inherent bias, if they are willing to “do the work” as they either said they would or expected us to do when it came to BLM (and which we did and continue to do!), then let them know you are open to sitting down with them for a coffee (don’t do it electronically/virtually as those are monologues). In that way, you can also ask them questions … be Socratic in your approach. Have you been listening to the Hartmann Institute podcasts? They are reflective of the “who” we are at our core as a people. I don’t always agree with all the analysis or phrasing … but I deeply appreciate the tone (which I need more of in my life as the raging form wherever it comes is just too much to bear and leaves me exhausted.)
I can’t tell you what to do but for me that’s beyond a deal breaker. I wouldn’t want anyone in my life like that, it’s telling me our core morals and values do not align whatsoever.
I don't like what you are saying, but I think you are correct. It's sad, but true. Antisemitism remains strong, after all this time. It's depressingly resilient.
He’s not correct. It’s well-documented that the far right considers the far left useful idiots and hijacked the movement to launder their message of wanting to destroy Israel. The Islamist movement is a right wing movement. And of course then there’s just the garden variety non-Islamist right wing that also wants to rid the world of Jews, but sees us as useful idiots against Muslims - and some of us are more than happy to oblige.
That’s totally incorrect and it’s well documented that the current rash of antisemitism in the West has been promulgated and financed by the far Left, including the CCP and many leading institutional donors to the Democrat party along with Iran and Iran and Palestinian linked NGOs. The finance part is imoirtant because a lot of this is not organic but purchased. There is no equivalent far right financial or protest scheme. There are of course anti-Semites on the Right. But what you are saying is hogwash.
Ok now you’ve crossed the Rubicon of stupidity. There is a well documented Green-Red alliance. It began with the Soviet Union decades ago. So now Communists are not the Left? GTFO with that BS. Who funds the BDS movement? Which university is full of conservative professors supporting calls for jihad and river to the sea crap? You’re wasting everybody’s time with this line of nonsense.
No need to be rude. You’re just mistaken. It’s ok. Feel free to read that article. And don’t embarrass yourself any longer with takes like “oh, you think the National Socialists were right wing, hennnnnggghh! Socialism is right in their name!” silliness.
Jason and Tanto: you both are just arguing over semantics. There are antisemites on both extremes of the aisle and their goals re: Jews and Israel are far more aligned than they each care to admit.
Right there with you in loneliness, Jill. In the days after October 7, when the details started coming out, one word came to mind: “pogrom”. I was surprised to learn how few young adults I know (my grown children and their friends) were familiar with this word. I learned the word from my grandfather, whose parents left imperial Russia when he was a child, due to the pogroms. He taught this word to me, when answering the question: why did our family come to the United States?
Prior to October 7, the word was an abstraction, a terrible thing from another century. Never, ever did I imagine that a pogrom would occur in my children’s lifetimes, in our refuge, the United States, or the aftermath could happen here, or anywhere in the Western world. And that has changed everything.
Keep finding your friends. Count me as one. Am Israel Chai
Loved your post. It was brave. Just think that you may be less lonely than you imagine. Remember also that "OFTEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE AT THE END OF SOMETHING, YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING ELSE".
My culture comes from yours. Whoever attacks yours is attacking the basis of mine. We’re intertwined, that’s why our enemies try to erode that bond as much as they can. Am Yisrael Chai.
As a non-Jew I am surprised at the polarization in the Jewish community. My late, great father fought with Patton’s armor divisions and, although he would never speak of it, saw the camps. As young man I studied the Holocaust at length. I have worked for a couple of Jewish businesses and loved and admired my employers for their fairness and generosity. Israel needs to exist. We should support it in every way. The Hamas assault shows why. God (if there is one) Bless 🇮🇱.
I resonate with what you've written here. I lost my synagogue and most of my face to face Jewish community as well as most of my trust in non-Jewish friends after October 7, because I had built my social circle out of activist types.
I HIGHLY recommend looking up the YouTube videos of Haviv Rettig Gur about Jews, the People who Lived Through History (or something like that) and what the Palestinians really want. Then look up the interview series Bari Weiss conducted in Israel. So much valuable perspective to be had.
Catch-67 by Micah Goodman was also a really helpful dose of understanding.
I also liked the note you posted about "Apartheid Israel" celebrating the liberation of Israeli citizen Qaid Farhan al-Qadi and the clueless Liberals in America being surprised.
This is yet another example of the interesting realities that don't conform to the fake narrative imposed on us by the powers that be:
This is timely as I was just reading the latest substack from Seattle's favorite social justice darling ijeoma oluo: "Shortly after October 7, I noticed a shift in some of my Jewish friends that was shocking. Friends who had been openly critical of Israel, even some who had considered themselves anti-Zionist, were suddenly making excuses for genocide."
No dummy. On September 7th Jews witnessed people like you openly cheering on the massacre of over a thousand Jews. And many of us who were previously in denial woke up and realized nobody has our backs but us.
I'm not sure how my innate Jewish affinity developed. My mother selected school districts in Cleveland and KC that had higher Jewish enrollment, I joined a Jewish Boy Scout troop. I should have converted, LOl!. I'm 6 months into Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, a book I casually picked up in Mexico last winter. It has been life changing. It's very dense! It has made me more Pro Israel than ever b4, probably more so than my own cousins that live there. I too am alarmed at casual antisemitism among my "liberal" crowd in California. I don't back down on this issue and make my sentiments clear.
You do know, don't you, how surprised Polish and German Jews, for example, were when neighbours they considered to be good and close friends betrayed them to the Nazis? They had visited in each other's home, their kids played together in the street and they regularly exchanged birthday gifts and yet they were actually on the dark side. And when the Jewish neighbours were taken way their betrayers quickly moved in stealing the Jews' possessions including their homes.
So you are reliving an old behaviour. Despicable, isn't it? I am non-Jewish and an atheist but I am "fighting" these ignorant bastards everywhere and in any way that I can. I will never give up.
Most excellent piece. Having grown up under Communism, I was much less of a Jew than you (simply because atheism was the state diktat and no religions were tolerated) and at the same time much more of a Jew than most - because my mother z"l survived 3 years of Auschwitz. I was lucky enough to live in Tel Aviv for 9 years (though the circumstances that brought me there were tragic) Being an Israeli, speaking Hebrew, observing the holidays made me a lifelong Zionist even though I would have no idea when Passover begins if my "shiksa" wife didn't remind me 😁
I wear my IDF hat with pride, have a large I STAND WITH ISRAEL bumper sticker on my car and fuck anyone who doesn't like it. My parents were right: every guy is an antisemite - some just don't know it. (of course that's an exaggeration - but with a hint of truth)
עם ישראל חי 🇮🇱 Am Israel Chai
Thank you for sharing your background and experiences. :)
Meant to write "every goy" - not "every guy" Autocorrect for the win :)
I'm a goy, and I also have an I STAND WITH ISRAEL bumper sticker on my car. I also have two large magnetized signs on the back of my car with a photo of each of the Bibas babies. I pray for them every day. As a lifelong Dem, I am also feeling sickened and lonely because of the savagery I have seen on display by the Islamofascist Left since 10/7.
I am politically homeless, and I am grieving, too.
I suspect we are all far less alone than we believe, but these are terrifying times.
Sometimes it feels like there's no room in our fake "binary" political discourse for a nuanced discussion of anything.
Why are Jews so resistant to the conservatives? They have been friends for a while. The liberals have been showing their disdain for 'Zionists' for a long time. It seems surprising that it is surprising....
Same here, Penny. I am still grieving…& often feel alone. I don’t understand how I can be this affected as a gentile. However, I won’t stop standing for truth.
Thank you Penny! The nation of Israel always honors and loves the righteous 🇮🇱
You are noticed and appreciated.
We have a very small group that have gotten thrown off the progressive bus. I sometimes feel we are on a raft in the ocean.
There’s a large contingent of the “ceasefire synagogue “ crowd. I don’t know what to think about them.
I self censor a lot.
My social life is at a bottleneck but as my mother used to say,” don’t need them “. In every generation they will rise up against us.
What a sad commentary. Every non-Jew is an antisemite? Really?
Read it again. I did after I read your comment and don’t see that contention at all. However, the author does say that anti-Zionism = antisemitism - a statement with which I agree. One can be a non-Jew, critical
of Israel in the same way someone would be critical of any other state, but when comments/beliefs evince double standards, delegitimize or demonize Israel - that’s antisemitism. Sure, have an opinion, but be fair in how it’s applied.
A direct quote: “My parents were right: every goy is an antisemite - some just don't know it.”
It’s hard to misread that.
I figured it out. It was the commenter who said it not the author of the piece. But, be fair the commenter also continues by saying, “(of course that's an exaggeration - but with a hint of truth)” - I have been zinged by multiple non-Jews who wouldn’t think of themselves as anti-Jew but have said to me, “don’t Jew me down”, “it’s always good to have a Jew involved when you’re talking about pricing”, “of course as a Jew you’re asking how commissions are paid”. WTF!? That’s what I would call a ‘hint of truth’. They may not be aggressively anti-Jew but they’ve got some seeds that could germinate. And to be clear, I definitely do not think all non-Jews are like this or that even many/most are antisemitic.
I don’t know if this will help, but I hope it will. I evolved into a progressive/leftist decades ago. For many years, I shared the basic leftist attitude about Israel/Palestine, which was, more or less, I don’t approve of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians but it’s the country and leadership I have a beef with, not Jewish people.
I never felt any conflict there. I had a few Jewish friends whose attitude about it was more or less the same as mine. I had a more conservative Jewish friend who worked for B’nai Brith and disagreed with me strongly, but he was always gracious about it and I never felt he had any sense that I was anti-Semitic.
When October 7 happened, it was just so sickening that I felt like I had to re-evaluate my position, which had always been pretty superficial. I did not anticipate the progressive response, and I was shocked by it.
I had already been at odds with younger progressives over various other issues in recent years, but this was the last straw for me. For the record, I still have objections to Netanyahu, so my position hasn’t changed in a huge way, but I feel like Hamas really tipped their hand on that day. Mostly my empathy is for the people of both countries, and my support for Israel’s policies is perhaps lukewarm, but I’ve purged myself of the kind of reflexive anti-Israel thinking I used to have. I don’t want anyone to confuse me with the kind of people who are treating you so callously, and while I’m not conservative, I can’t align myself with progressives any longer.
Sorry for all the detail, much of which you maybe don’t need. But I’m going somewhere with this.
If your social circles are mostly liberals, and i imagine mostly younger people than me— I’m almost 60– I can see how you might be feeling like the left, or even non-Jews in general, are against you and don’t want you here in America.
But I suspect that while people who’ve become more anti-Semitic over this are common in your life, they are by no means the norm or the mainstream. I only encounter people like that online, and I assume that a lot of people have had a similar arc to mine. You have a right to your anger, and I hope it helps you get through this. But those people have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, and an understanding of the conflict that’s much more superficial than mine was in my younger days. Whatever they may think about Jews, or about you, they’re a small part of America.
My feeling is that progressive thinking has really taken a wrong turn in the social media era. I want to believe that this has peaked and is shifting, and my 20-year-old son, who lives in a college town where younger people skew left, tells me that from his observation, things aren’t nearly as bad as they appear to when I’m on social media. He believes the pendulum is swinging, and that outside of a core of diehards, young liberals are becoming impatient with the kind of excess that led to this wrongheaded reaction to October 7. I hope he’s right.
I hope this makes you feel slightly less lonely. I don’t want to suggest that my experience is anything like yours, but the woke psychology is largely about finding people who don’t share your convictions and trying to make them feel lousy. I’ve been the victim of that behavior many times, despite being liberal for almost 40 years. Many longtime liberals I know tell the same story. I don’t think any of this will ultimately pay off for the left.
Fantastic analysis, I agree 100%.
I am from the same generation and I agree for the most part however, I think that was is absence is the courage to speak out of those who recognize the threat against us (and themselves) has bene replaced with awkward silence. Having to ask “a friend” to get off the sidelines and into the discourse ring with us is agonizing when we have been there for those friends who come from communities that have been targeted with hate and have been assured by those who carry all the “privileges” that they support us but won’t publicly stand with us.
Great sentiments. I hope you’re right. Feel absolutely the same.
non Jew, left(ish), just want to offer my support and solidarity.
Same same.
Spot on. I was shocked by a well-known author who was a friend (both in real life and online). A Chicago bookstore, one that claims to put "Women & Children First," went full-throttle with the pro-Hamas lobby, ignoring completely what happened to Israeli women and children on October 7. When people pushed back on the store's social media posts, this author defended them, saying that people didn't understand "who controls media and the government." As I say, I was shocked--but not so shocked that I was surprised. Anti Zionism is the new buzzword for antisemitism. The equal opportunity hatred.
This reminds me a bit of when I got blocked by Shalom Auslander who denies there is antisemtism in those crowds and who has downplayed antisemitism globally in this last year, particularly. I think it’s because he carries such a monumental chip on his shoulder and has taken his anecdotal mommy and religious issues and assigned them to the entirety of the Jewish world. And of course, the literary world loves Jew that shits on themself/their people.
Thank you. Interesting
Shame the devil. Who was it?
I went back to the post and he removed that remark. Consequently, without further proof, I can’t give his name despite his original antisemitic trope. That said, I’m going to see if the comment can be found through other means. Stay tuned.
Let me find a screenshot first. Then I'll do it.
It is a pity that so many Liberal people identify with the Left. The Left, by whatever name they call themselves this week, has never been liberal. The Left considers Liberals to be Useful Idiots.
Most of the USA is small-L liberal. Most of the USA is also small-C conservative. We prefer incremental change, and we intend to hang on to our civil liberties.
You are not alone.
I think it’s admirable that you realize belatedly that you’ve been conned and you admit the truth. That’s brave. I just hope you do realize that this won’t change. And I hope you take to heart the lesson that people who are prone to virtue signaling and latching on to the latest thing, even when it’s endorsing homicidal maniacs are low quality people.They know nothing about the ME and they don’t care. It’s a social exercise for these bozos. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends with all kinds of people. It does mean that there’s a large group of people who are fine with seeing Jews suffer and die, and who will use that suffering as a way to virtue signal for the bad guys. Think about how sick that is. BTW the hatred that goes across the political spectrum these days is not something to be celebrated. It is an idea planted and nurtured by the progressive Left and from these seeds the virulent anti-Semitic attitude we see in bastions of liberalism has sprouted. Jews are just another scapegoat target for their ideology of envy and misery.
Serious question: do you think it's possible for someone like me/us to maintain a friendship with someone who regularly attends anti-Israel protests in a kaffiyeh?
I couldn’t do it. I can answer it that way. How can you be friends with somebody who is advocating for the wholesale destruction of Israel and the murder/displacement of its Jewish population? I can’t tell you what to think.
You have to figure it out yourself, but I think you already know the answer to this question at a deeper level.
Yes. The problem is that some of these people I've known for over a decade, and if you put this aside, I know they are fundamentally good people. *They* do not believe that they are advocating for the destruction of Israel but rather for the livelihood of what they consider to be a group of minorities experiencing danger. Taken at face value, it's well-intentioned. But they're ignorant as to how much it affects me personally.
I haven't told any of them how hurtful it is to me, maybe because I'm afraid of what would come out of such a conversation.
Jill, again, it's complicated, and agonizing, and I know you know that, maybe better than I do. If it were just as simple as, oh, the poor Gazans are suffering, etc., that would be one thing, but there is more to it. I won't even get into the complexities of Israeli politics because I don't follow them closely. What concerns me more about what happens here is the fact that many of not most of the organizers of the protesters are agitators who manipulate underinformed young people for their own antisemitic purposes.
Yeah, and the sad thing is that most of the antisemitism is unconscious on their part despite their blatant expression of it.
Well, you’ll have to decide for yourself how uncomfortable you are or aren’t with the situation. Ignorance is a dangerous excuse all by itself when it’s persistent in the face of copious information.
No. Not a friendship. But you can explain that if they are ever open to the listening or asking a question that is not informed by inherent bias, if they are willing to “do the work” as they either said they would or expected us to do when it came to BLM (and which we did and continue to do!), then let them know you are open to sitting down with them for a coffee (don’t do it electronically/virtually as those are monologues). In that way, you can also ask them questions … be Socratic in your approach. Have you been listening to the Hartmann Institute podcasts? They are reflective of the “who” we are at our core as a people. I don’t always agree with all the analysis or phrasing … but I deeply appreciate the tone (which I need more of in my life as the raging form wherever it comes is just too much to bear and leaves me exhausted.)
On the contrary , I think it would be foolish of you to do so.
I can’t tell you what to do but for me that’s beyond a deal breaker. I wouldn’t want anyone in my life like that, it’s telling me our core morals and values do not align whatsoever.
No.
I don't like what you are saying, but I think you are correct. It's sad, but true. Antisemitism remains strong, after all this time. It's depressingly resilient.
I don’t like saying it any more than you like reading it. But unfortunately it is what it is.
He’s not correct. It’s well-documented that the far right considers the far left useful idiots and hijacked the movement to launder their message of wanting to destroy Israel. The Islamist movement is a right wing movement. And of course then there’s just the garden variety non-Islamist right wing that also wants to rid the world of Jews, but sees us as useful idiots against Muslims - and some of us are more than happy to oblige.
That’s totally incorrect and it’s well documented that the current rash of antisemitism in the West has been promulgated and financed by the far Left, including the CCP and many leading institutional donors to the Democrat party along with Iran and Iran and Palestinian linked NGOs. The finance part is imoirtant because a lot of this is not organic but purchased. There is no equivalent far right financial or protest scheme. There are of course anti-Semites on the Right. But what you are saying is hogwash.
The CCP is not left, and neither is Iran. This story lays it out nicely. It’s a right wing op, just like most terrible things in the world.
https://airmail.news/issues/2024-8-10/hamas-in-america-the-untold-story?utm_campaign=share&utm_source=share
Ok now you’ve crossed the Rubicon of stupidity. There is a well documented Green-Red alliance. It began with the Soviet Union decades ago. So now Communists are not the Left? GTFO with that BS. Who funds the BDS movement? Which university is full of conservative professors supporting calls for jihad and river to the sea crap? You’re wasting everybody’s time with this line of nonsense.
No need to be rude. You’re just mistaken. It’s ok. Feel free to read that article. And don’t embarrass yourself any longer with takes like “oh, you think the National Socialists were right wing, hennnnnggghh! Socialism is right in their name!” silliness.
Jason and Tanto: you both are just arguing over semantics. There are antisemites on both extremes of the aisle and their goals re: Jews and Israel are far more aligned than they each care to admit.
Right there with you in loneliness, Jill. In the days after October 7, when the details started coming out, one word came to mind: “pogrom”. I was surprised to learn how few young adults I know (my grown children and their friends) were familiar with this word. I learned the word from my grandfather, whose parents left imperial Russia when he was a child, due to the pogroms. He taught this word to me, when answering the question: why did our family come to the United States?
Prior to October 7, the word was an abstraction, a terrible thing from another century. Never, ever did I imagine that a pogrom would occur in my children’s lifetimes, in our refuge, the United States, or the aftermath could happen here, or anywhere in the Western world. And that has changed everything.
Keep finding your friends. Count me as one. Am Israel Chai
❤️🇮🇱❤️🇺🇸
Loved your post. It was brave. Just think that you may be less lonely than you imagine. Remember also that "OFTEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE AT THE END OF SOMETHING, YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING ELSE".
I definitely have found a strong community of fellow Jews having similar experiences around the world via my blog here and on Medium!
I hope some good gentiles too!
Most definitely I have. In a time when it feels like we have few allies, it's refreshing to hear from people like you!
My culture comes from yours. Whoever attacks yours is attacking the basis of mine. We’re intertwined, that’s why our enemies try to erode that bond as much as they can. Am Yisrael Chai.
As a non-Jew I am surprised at the polarization in the Jewish community. My late, great father fought with Patton’s armor divisions and, although he would never speak of it, saw the camps. As young man I studied the Holocaust at length. I have worked for a couple of Jewish businesses and loved and admired my employers for their fairness and generosity. Israel needs to exist. We should support it in every way. The Hamas assault shows why. God (if there is one) Bless 🇮🇱.
I resonate with what you've written here. I lost my synagogue and most of my face to face Jewish community as well as most of my trust in non-Jewish friends after October 7, because I had built my social circle out of activist types.
I HIGHLY recommend looking up the YouTube videos of Haviv Rettig Gur about Jews, the People who Lived Through History (or something like that) and what the Palestinians really want. Then look up the interview series Bari Weiss conducted in Israel. So much valuable perspective to be had.
Catch-67 by Micah Goodman was also a really helpful dose of understanding.
I also liked the note you posted about "Apartheid Israel" celebrating the liberation of Israeli citizen Qaid Farhan al-Qadi and the clueless Liberals in America being surprised.
This is yet another example of the interesting realities that don't conform to the fake narrative imposed on us by the powers that be:
https://substack.com/@foreignlocal/note/c-66989506?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2vnoe2
I wrote about the same thing. I'm extremely grateful for non-Jewish leftists like Catherynne Valente who called out that bullshit.
Sadly she seems to be an outlier.
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/job-chapter-19
This is timely as I was just reading the latest substack from Seattle's favorite social justice darling ijeoma oluo: "Shortly after October 7, I noticed a shift in some of my Jewish friends that was shocking. Friends who had been openly critical of Israel, even some who had considered themselves anti-Zionist, were suddenly making excuses for genocide."
No dummy. On September 7th Jews witnessed people like you openly cheering on the massacre of over a thousand Jews. And many of us who were previously in denial woke up and realized nobody has our backs but us.
Preach!
I'm not sure how my innate Jewish affinity developed. My mother selected school districts in Cleveland and KC that had higher Jewish enrollment, I joined a Jewish Boy Scout troop. I should have converted, LOl!. I'm 6 months into Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, a book I casually picked up in Mexico last winter. It has been life changing. It's very dense! It has made me more Pro Israel than ever b4, probably more so than my own cousins that live there. I too am alarmed at casual antisemitism among my "liberal" crowd in California. I don't back down on this issue and make my sentiments clear.
We'll call you an honorary Jew!
You are not alone. 🙏🏻 So many of us are feeling this pain & disillusionment.
Jill,
You do know, don't you, how surprised Polish and German Jews, for example, were when neighbours they considered to be good and close friends betrayed them to the Nazis? They had visited in each other's home, their kids played together in the street and they regularly exchanged birthday gifts and yet they were actually on the dark side. And when the Jewish neighbours were taken way their betrayers quickly moved in stealing the Jews' possessions including their homes.
So you are reliving an old behaviour. Despicable, isn't it? I am non-Jewish and an atheist but I am "fighting" these ignorant bastards everywhere and in any way that I can. I will never give up.
Stay strong and safe.