"Shattered"
When friends and neighbors and your kids' school administration won't condemn the mass murder, rape and kidnapping of Jews
As many of you know, I write a monthly column in my local paper that I often share here too since so many of you live far away and won’t be picking up our free weekly paper at the grocery store or coffee shop. This piece ran yesterday with a different title in The Valley Breeze here.
I believe this to be one of the most important pieces I’ve ever written.
I am not Jewish but I continue to feel sick over the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas in Southern Israel nearly three weeks ago. So how would I be feeling if I were Jewish? I can’t even imagine. My friend Laura used the word “shattered” to describe to me how she was feeling. She had a cousin gunned down trying to escape Auschwitz and her maternal grandmother’s parents and siblings were all murdered in a pogrom. Laura can’t help but feel like she has traveled back to the 1930’s as she tries to wrap her head around the fact that, in 2023, we just witnessed the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Entire families — including babies and toddlers — beaten, raped, shot in the head, burned alive and even decapitated in their homes, their hands tied behind their backs the whole time. According to The Atlantic, “the videos show pure, predatory sadism; no effort to spare those who pose no threat; and an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims."
But it gets even worse. In the days and weeks since the attack, Laura and countless Jews all over the US and abroad have had to grapple with reactions to the massacre that they can’t understand from celebrities, neighbors, colleagues, college presidents and even friends.
Silence. Equivocation. Rationalization. Sentences that start with “yeah but” and talk about “both sides.” They see video after video of people on college campuses and in their communities tearing down posters of missing and kidnapped Israelis. And while they may wish it weren’t so, this callousness, cruelty and bigotry can’t be explained away by white nationalism this time— instead, it is coming from self-described progressives and leftists. They are BLM supporters. And Green New Deal advocates. And members of the Democratic Socialists of America. They are Ivy League college professors. They are the “love is love” and “hate has no home here” crowd. They have “coexist” bumper stickers on their cars and “In This House We Believe” signs in their front yards. And yet, they can’t muster a word of condemnation or hint of outrage over the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Jews.
It gets worse.
Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rallies and marches fill the streets and chants of “from the river to the sea” and “by any means necessary” can be heard from London to DC to the steps of our own statehouse in Providence. When asked by reporters and others if they condemn the actions of Hamas, rally-goers (including here in Rhode Island) proudly say “No” into a microphone. In Sydney, Australia, chants of “gas the Jews” ring out. Feminists in “smash the patriarchy” t-shirts are silent on the rape, torture and kidnapping of young Jewish women at the hands of masked men with guns. Black Lives Matter puts out a statement that Hamas’ actions are a form of “resistance that must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense."
The ideology that has captured much of higher education, a significant swath of K-12 and currently drives almost all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives is one in which everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed and, based on the rules of this insidious identity game, Jews are oppressors. And that means they can’t be victims.
But they are victims. They are victims of a terrorist group that explicitly states it wants to eradicate the state of Israel and the Jewish people. There can be no silence or equivocation or justification. This is a moment that calls for moral clarity from all of us.
who wants to slow down and think when jew-hatred tastes so good?
but this is what happens when everyone is stupid. the alarm bells for jews of every political persuasion should have been screaming when "white" became an epithet everywhere. when ibram kendi's books became a resource for every grade in school districts everywhere.
when every liberal outlet tried to lynch kyle rittenhouse. when cities were set on fire because of lies that george floyd was murdered. when trump was repeatedly accused of anti-semitism..
there aren't any safe lies, or permissible mobs. or limited depictions of people as vermin. i read many of the tweets by jewish healthcare professionals and academics and social swans who reveled in being Good Germans towards the filthy unvaxxed and unmasked who needed to be stopped before tey killed us all.
it was useful though. now i know how many of my own people would never hide me under their floorboards.
and now all the liberal jewsish philanthropists see how the alma maters which eagerly drank their money have no guts to censure those who would drink their blood.
we needed the plague era to open our eyes but the job got only half done. here's the rest of it. and yet jews in congress like debbie wasserman schultz will maybe do a bit of crying and then continue to vote in lockstep with rashida tlaib et al.
i guess it still needs to get a little worse.
Thank you for writing this. You are an upstander and you know the difference between right and wrong. This tragedy has left Jews feeling shocked and scared. Some of us have known for a long time that love is not love and BLM is no friend to the Jews. It has been said historically that eventually the left eats itself. We can see that happening now. Thank you for using your voice to speak out!!!