Update

The past six weeks have been very illuminating

On October 7th, Hamas engaged in its pogrom against Israel. Over 1,200 people were killed, hundreds were kidnapped, and with the exception of two who were released and those whose bodies (or horrifyingly, body parts) have been discovered. Initially, the world’s reaction was horror and revulsion……………as it should have been. Yet, even that day I KNEW with complete certainty that usual suspects (the UN, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, etc.), and media outlets (BBC, NY Times, CNN, AP, etc.) would within a short time revert to their usual, anti-Israel mantra—I wasn’t “disappointed”.

What I did NOT foresee was the explosion of antisemitism that erupted across the planet. I watched as college campuses immediately became filled with kids chanting “Intifada, Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, or parading around with “Keep the world clean” (with a Jewish star in a trash basket) posters, which is a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to eliminating Jews from the planet. I saw college professors blame Israel for the massacre and have seen countless videos of people walking around and tearing down posters of those who were abducted.

And, I have watched as countless people or groups I viewed as allies or friends proved themselves to be anything but. Many were simply indifferent to the suffering of my fellow Jews and I; others actually reveled in it. There was a lot of “Israel deserved this” and more generally, “Jews brought it on themselves”. For more on that, see the attached e-mail which I received on Saturday. It was actually a notification that someone commented on my last post. The “hero” did so by posting several antisemitic comments, linking to his Substack, and then blocking me, presumably so that I couldn’t respond.

At my age, I can’t claim to be shocked or surprised by a lot of things, but the hatred against Jews everywhere has taken me aback. One can be supportive of Palestinians, but how is (for example) defacing a Starbucks helping in that regard? How does spray painting swastikas on Jewish gravestones improve the life of one single Palestinian? How does harassing and intimidating Jewish students on campuses across North America do anything?

All in all, it’s been an incredibly disheartening time to be a Jew. I won’t hide who or what I am, but it’s still shocking to find out just how many people still hate us.