Jews may have a lion’s share of the Nobel Prizes ,
but I’m beginning to think that the smartest people on Earth are
Palestinians. Make that Gazan Palestinians. No, Gazan Palestinian
terrorists. Only geniuses could make a proud, strong country like Israel
a universal pariah in six short months; Israel, a country full of
freedoms and democratic ideals, much admired, armed, educated, and
moneyed, courted by even its most powerful Arab neighbors. What
subterranean think tank created the plan to force it to stand alone
against the world after brutalizing it in a manner unthinkable to the
civilized mind?
And how did that brain trust prepare the ground for such a coup? Perhaps long before October 7 ,
these meddling geniuses took note of growing worldwide antisemitism,
sowed seeds of the same in American and European universities and
streets, while magnifying Israel’s fractured politics. Presto! An army
of activists were nestled in their palm ready, eager for deployment.
Most American students ,
like those who mounted an antisemitic protest at Columbia University in
April, will tell you that Israel is guilty of genocide, which trumps
all other guilts. It would help if these instruments of social justice
knew what the word meant, especially to Israelis and Jews.
How Hamas terrorists turned Israel into a pariah It
would also help if they did some due diligence and read Hamas’s
genocidal charter, calling for the elimination of the Jewish people
“from the river to the sea,” a fundamental phrase conveniently obscured
or falsely denied by its authors. Meanwhile, attacks from the South,
attacks from the North, and death by urban terrorism plague Israel
daily, and none of these cap-and-gown warriors raise a fuss.
Do
they listen when respected, worldwide experts report that the Israelis
employ more methods to prevent civilian injury than any other army in
all of military history? According to the UN, a normal war statistic
would reflect nine times as many civilian as combatant deaths, while
Israel statistically reflects 1.5 civilian to each combatant death.
A STUDENT protester waves a Palestinian flag above Hamilton Hall on the
campus of Columbia University in New York City on Tuesday. But the young
adults-made-children incapable of hard analysis by authoritarian,
proselytizing professors do not believe it. Their minds are closed,
their reading perversely curated. Across the US, cowards cancel the
Jewish concert, book talk, speech, fundraiser. By their mealy-mouthed
protestations about the safety of the public and their employees, they
endorse the shutting down of museums, the defacement of paintings, the
blocking of highways because it is easier to cancel Jews than it is
stand up to the intimidation of bullies, even intellectually juvenile
ones.
How did
this happen, this sea change in American consciousness? We are less
religious than ever before, that’s part of it. We are barely connected
to community, apart from the ephemeral, endlessly seductive type online.
We marry less, have fewer children, are not especially tied to our
jobs. Having in our slumberous excess discarded a heritage of ideals and
law, we are rootless, empty, prey to whoever wants to fill our heads
with their self-serving ideas. Even those clinging to the old ways will
not be saved by them. The propagandists are legion, and we are all lost.
In a world where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are
filled with passionate intensity” (thank you, W.B. Yeats), there is no
path out of darkness.
The
God of the Jews instructed His people to be “a light unto the nations.”
But it seems a multitude of American Jews cower before the escalating
antisemitism of our time. They remain silent in the shadows but whisper
their despair only to each other. They grieve the taking of hostages but
fail to defend Israel’s prosecution of a just war. This must end.
Voices must be raised and shouted from the rooftops.
If
they do not, some day a new, braver generation may rise up, one fierce
in rebellion against its elders, quick to spot hypocrisy and corruption
and act against them. If the beatniks and the hippies could rise up
against the gray flannel that smothered and cowed young people in the
1950s and ‘60s and transform the world, this new generation in a reborn
age might breathe back reason into us.
But
where will they get this wisdom? Imagine all the books that might teach
them are suppressed, canceled, while the entire world suffers the same
disease of willful ignorance. The heel of intolerance will be on their
necks. How will their souls come to understand that they have been
muted, restrained, and that if they rebel, they will blossom? Who will
guide them there?
Damn sure they’re going to need some Jews. May enough of us survive!■
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-799565?