Mostly peaceful barbarism
No longer can the Palestinian cause's real goal - bloodshed and death - be concealed as one of national liberation.
This past weekend Hamas terror operatives invaded Israel and wreaked havoc starting the first formally declared war involving that country since 1973. Like many other Jews, I heard about it on the sabbath in the synagogue during the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret. Several months ago I shifted this newsletter from just being a self-publishing outlet for my articles to a platform for First Amendment support from within the Jewish community. I wanted to exclude as much as possible issues outside of the United States, because the fight to protect the First Amendment was the real focus of the newsletter. I've been called an isolationist many times over my stances on war and peace and foreign policy. And as for commenting on issues related to Israel, it's always been a narrow needle to thread because the fact is that there are several areas of policy where I think they are dead wrong. Ever since I became a writer and video content maker I've had an antiwar position, and have opposed US intervention throughout the world and foreign aid to any nation. I have defended the freedom of expression of people with opinions that are certainly not politically correct, including some that are outright hateful. Whether someone is Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or any other religion, or no religion at all, I believe in their First Amendment rights. None of that has changed.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had at least one objective dispassionate news source, even if it is just one reporter, to be able to give us the news without feeling like we're being taken for a ride? We don't have that, in part because it wouldn't make money but mainly because we are all human and not angels.
So after this appalling weekend on the holy day of Shemini Atzeret, this is a time to break with the normal newsletter format if only for a moment. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had at least one objective dispassionate news source, even if it is just one reporter, to be able to give us the news without feeling like we're being taken for a ride? We don't have that, in part because it wouldn't make money but mainly because we are all human and not angels. I am too human to be objective when I have seen images of young children snatched with or without their parents and bundled onto motorbikes to serve as hostages and human shields by Hamas and its allied terror groups. I'm also too human to ignore the fact that people from my family and friends are in the line of fire across the country. Several years ago, it feels like a lifetime, I served as I was obligated to in the IDF. And while it felt like a setback in my life, I still cannot cancel the personal connections and experiences with many friends over there.
What we saw or heard about is barbarism manifested in real life. I recognize that this isn't the only place it happens, but again I have a personal connection. When I first moved to Israel after high school I still thought it was not a right or wrong issue. There were Jewish Israelis I met there that went farther than that and said that the conflict is in fact the fault of Israel's and that in order to fulfill the humanistic vision of what a Jewish state would be the occupation of Palestinian lands must end even at the price of "painful sacrifices". Other Israelis had a term for them "Yefei nefesh", loosely translating to "pretty souls", which they would apply derisively. A "pretty soul" is similar to what was later described in the west as a "social justice warrior" or "woke" person: someone with such profound feelings of loathing about the majority culture that they actively foment hate in the name of fighting it. I happened to be assigned in the IDF to serving as an inspector on open air checkpoints at the exits of the Palestinian city of Nablus (Shechem in Hebrew). I got to see and speak to Palestinians every day and gain a lot of knowledge about their behaviour and culture. A lot of them were simply going through the checkpoint in order to get to the other side and have a normal day.
However, every once in a while I would witness something else surface. Sometimes it would be a group of people brawling with the soldiers or other Palestinians. Once I saw a woman arguing who lost her temper and threw here infant as a projectile at a female soldier before attempting to punch and kick her. I remember for several months there was a stray dog that would wander the checkpoint. Soldiers would often play with it, which was actually a no-no, but Palestinians see dogs as impure animals and some of them killed her after she wandered to their side of the checkpoint. It was also extremely common for the explosive belts (or demo kits of them used to test our alertness by the bombmakers) were detected being carried by boys as young as 12. In one incident at Hawara checkpoint that occurred before I served there a 16 year-old named Hussam Abdo autistic boy ran towards soldiers before being confronted. When he stopped out of fear they ordered him to disrobe revealing an explosive belt that a bomb disposal robot removed. Abdo is alive today 19 years later, no thanks to the terrorist manipulators that sent him out - and they were from Fatah, Hamas’s “secular” rival. And at the same time there would be a group of ladies called Makhsom (Checkpoint) Watch who would loiter at the checkpoint, complain, and pretend that they were doing effective advocacy on behalf of human rights.
The conclusion I reached was that it is unreasonable to ask one side to care about human rights that the other side has no interest in observing. Maybe some of you are reading this and saying "stop pretending Israel cares about human rights". You're free to think that, but answer this: How could my colleague ensure the human rights of an infant who was thrown at her by the mother like a sack of potatoes? We all want to believe that somewhere inside every human being is a good core self whose evil actions are explainable by abuse, neglect, or injustice. That belief is wrong. The people who broke into a music festival and murdered hundreds of revelers, many of them from abroad, and kidnapped women in order to bring them back to Gaza and gang rape them, are not the huddled masses yearning to be free. The people that broke into an Israeli agricultural community and butchered 11 Thai workers, attempted to behead one of their corpses with a gardening tool, and kidnapped another 10 are not victims. Where is the human rights advocacy on behalf of these victims? How about the Filipino caregiver that was murdered with his elderly patient?
The throngs of lowlifes that crowded streets in London, Sydney, New York, and Chicago seemed like they were ready at the drop of a hat to go out with their placards, t-shirts, stylish keffiyehs and megaphones in order to exult in those acts. All my life the Palestine advocacy movement has married itself to the anti-war and human rights labels, but it's all a smokescreen. They say they are anti-Zionist and anti-colonialist, but the perpetrators of the violence are yelling about “gas the Jews” not the “Zionists. If someone is willing not only to excuse acts of wanton carnage like mutilation of corpses by yelling about the need for "context" and to look at the "big picture", but also to get dressed and go out in a crowd to sing the praises of the people that did them, then he is pro-war and human rights are just a buzzword for him. I'm also not surprised that western feminists have learned shyness again given the revolting acts of sexual depravity against women and girls of all ages, or the alleged beheading of infants.
This brings me to my last point: What can be learned from this? It would be useless for me to reiterate the same principles I've stood by that affirm freedom of speech even for terrible people. We are now talking about issues that go beyond speech and into action. When you go about your daily lives after what's happened don't think that the images from the Gaza border cannot happen in your vicinity. With the unfettered immigration over the past several years, terror operatives with the same vision as those that breached those fences and unleashed mayhem are likely to have come in among them. Don't let your house be easy prey if the wrong visitor comes knocking and won't take no for an answer. Get trained, get armed, and don't take for granted that if such a thing happens there will be police and rescue services to save you from being the latest atrocity trophy.