Reflections On One Year Since October 7, 2023
“Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe. It’s the only ultimate guarantee.” -President Joe Biden, October 12, 2023
Normally, I talk about motorcycles here. But it’s hard to believe that a year has passed since the most heinous massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Even harder to believe that over a hundred hostages (including 4 Americans) remain captive in the labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza, held in horrific conditions. I pray they will be rescued. October 7, 2023 has proven to be a learning experience for many, on all sides of this conflict. Here are some that stood out to me:
- Perhaps no minority in America has been more attached to progressive causes than the Jew. Betty Friedan for feminism. Harvey Milk for LGBT rights. Samuel Gompers for labor. Abraham Heschel for civil rights. Robert Bernstein for human rights. We are less than 2% of the population, yet we founded some of the most prominent organizations in these struggles that still stand today. We wrote the foundational books that guided generations in these subjects. Stood shoulder to shoulder in the marches. Got beaten and arrested and sometimes even killed in the process, as in the Freedom Summer murders and many other cases.When the time came for reciprocity – for the progressives that we stood with for decades to stand with us – American Jews found not a comforting hand, but a slap in the face. The cause du jour of today’s leftists who claim to stand for human rights and every related cause under the sun is to simp for 7th century barbarians whose “culture” considers women as chattel property, gays as rooftop projectiles, minority rights as nonexistent, and fundamentalist Islamic theocracy as the only end goal. Make of this alliance what you will, so long as it’s beneath contempt. (If you’re curious to learn more about this bizarre coupling, formerly secular Jewish public intellectuals who “woke up” to this post October 7, such as Sam Harris and Professor Scott Galloway, are worth listening to.)
- The public faces of this moral rot and ideological insanity are most infamously the college presidents at ivy league institutions, hauled before congress to explain how they allowed encampments on their campuses which kept Jewish students and professors out of class, and in very many cases subjected same to violence and intimidation. The same people who obsess over “microaggressions” and “misgendering” as capital crimes told us, under oath, that calling for the genocide of Jews is “nuanced” and “depends on the context.” These presidents and administrators are the wolves, and the students are their sheep.
- The sheep are happy to oblige, filling their empty existences with a shapeshifting devil which encompasses every great evil there is today – the Jew. The Jew as a colonizer, as a white supremacist, as a baby killer, as a genocider. Aging hippies naively compared these students to themselves fighting against the establishment in the 1960s – but the students of today are fighting on behalf of the establishment: Professors who were “energized” and “exhilarated” and “in awe” (to use their words) of the GoPro footage showing the mass slaughter of Jewish kids dancing at a music festival.I went to Princeton University to see it for myself. I will never forget it. 400 of them, rampaging through campus, with the same hatred on their twisted faces that my parents told me they saw when they were young and under attack, and that their parents told them they saw too, and so on back for thousands of years. There is nothing new here, except the bursting of the bubble American Jews were temporarily living in.
- Israelis are a tough bunch. They have to be, in order to live surrounded by religious fundamentalists that want to kill them. Israel’s enemies don’t hide their intentions, like the Germans did. They blare it from every rooftop, scream it at every sermon, and publish it in their official state charters. Hamas did exactly what it has always promised to do, when Israel let its guard down. And they were gleeful, as they raped and burned and shot their way through the countryside. What Israelis found painful was not Hamas’ expected orgiastic reaction to death, but the west’s. The protests in New York and elsewhere calling for “intifada” started on October 8, before anyone even knew the full body count or the final number of hostages stolen (240 people, from 40 different countries.) They were howling about “genocide” and “ceasefire” days before a single retaliation came their way, setting the stage for their propaganda. The atmosphere was celebratory. The smug glee on the faces of those college presidents and professors as they cheered on the macabre scenes of Jewish death. The smug glee on the faces of students as they bullied Jews from attending classes. The smug glee on the faces of people (including Hollywood producers, graduate students, and professors) as they tore down posters of the hostages on American streets. Normal people don’t tear down posters of missing dogs – but here, there was a pleasure in ripping down posters of abducted Jewish children. Schaedenfruede on steroids, reserved just for us, as always.
- We have witnessed that the staggering level of cynicism that Israel’s enemies depend on is, in fact, justified. Hamas was correct in its calculations that they could literally upload hundred of hours of butchery from their own cameras, and the world would in short order say “What rapes? What murders? What babies?” The same exact people who told us to “Believe all women” and “Bring back our girls” and “#Metoo!”are silent when it comes to our women and our girls being raped, and mutilated, and murdered. Hamas depends directly on copious quantities of useful idiots to thrive in the west, and they are thriving because the hearts of useful idiots bleed too – but only for the rapists and the murderers. Never for the victims.
- We have watched as the hopelessly confused carnival of buffoonery that passes for this administration’s foreign “policy” reaches its inevitable conclusions. Shoveling money to friend and foe alike, with no moral clarity whatsoever. Providing Israel with a few munitions to defend itself, while simultaneously gifting tens of billions dollars in “sanctions relief” to Iran, which then uses that money to fund Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and dozens of other militias to attack Israel. Sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine, which is attacked by the Iranian drones built with American money and sold to Putin by the newly enriched Ayatollahs. Advocating for some perverse anti-concept of “proportionality” to ensure that nobody ever wins or loses, and the conflicts drag on forever. Holding out hope for diplomacy with religious fundamentalist maniacs, while shrieking for a “ceasefire,” to boot. Give America’s enemies credit – they know when the getting’s good, and boy, is it ever right now!
- We have internalized that every accusation is an admission. The Jew as the colonizer for having one scrap of land smaller than New Jersey in the whole world – as though Islam rampaged through north Africa and the Middle East and Asia via the Socratic method. The Jew as the genocider – brought to you by organizations that literally call for the genocide of Jews worldwide in their published charters, and by entire Middle Eastern societies ravaged by sectarian warfare since forever. Tell us why you hate the Jews – and, as always, we will show you what you’re guiltiest of.
- If nothing else, the Jews are great at unifying folks. Ideology is not a linear spectrum, but a horseshoe! Where else can you find Nick Fuentes praising AOC’s policy positions? Where else can you see David Duke endorsing Ilhan Omar? When it comes to us, the Klan right and the Jihadi left are in lockstep, without a trace of irony….
- I could go on…. About the UN which the whole world funds, and its employees engaging in the rape, murder, and transportation of Jewish corpses on video. And this administration shielding them from prosecution in American courts. About the mobs in the street every weekend in every “blue” city – burning our American flag, while proudly carrying the flags of proscribed terror groups. (They’ll be out there today, too.) About a few lapdog Jews who show their lefty friends what “good Jews” they are by denigrating Israel, as though they’ll ever be accepted as more than proverbial fig leaves. About prosecuting an urban war where suddenly the civilian body count as announced by a terror organization is taken as gospel, including by the American president. About fighting on SEVEN fronts against existential threats and being told not to “escalate” by Western leaders who themselves have taken out exponentially more innocents with less than half the precision Israel has managed under much more difficult circumstances. “Take the win,” they tell us Jews, when they themselves would never do so, and have never done so. There are double standards, and even triple standards, and then there’s how Israel is treated. There are no words to describe it. We’re used to it, yes, but why the hell should we be?
- I also saw a silver lining – Jews coming together. At least, as much as can be expected from such an argumentative people! I personally heard from acquaintances and friends I hadn’t heard from in years. We checked in on each other, and still do. I see a generation of young Israeli kids, 18-22 years old, rising up like lions in defense of their home. They’re true fucking warriors, as brave and as strong as any generation in history. They’re not cosplaying Jihadis trying to find meaning like our Ivy League imbeciles here – they’re executing James Bond level tactics on the battlefield and beyond. Because of them, the same enemies who were jubilantly handing out candy and spitting on our kids’ corpses on October 8, 2023 are now crying “genocide” in the rubble that surrounds them.
So to Israel’s enemies, the message is simple: Cry harder. Until our babies and grandparents and parents are returned, you will live in ruins, if you live at all. Look around you at the devastation, and realize that Jewish blood is no longer cheap.
To the awakening American Jew, I say: Our blood is no longer cheap for one reason, and one reason only – We finally have one state in this world, and that state has an army. They’re both miracles, and we owe that state and that army our support. Because, were they not to exist, well… I’ve got about 3,500 years of history as evidence of how well we would fare as the “guests” of our benevolent hosts in the diaspora.
Am Israel Chai!