‘The Zone Of Interest‘ is an unusual Holocaust movie. It shows the daily life of the head of the Auschwitz concentration camp inside his home abutting the vast killing factory. Living a peaceful life with his wife and children, the viewer is struck by the carefree life of the Nazi officer and his family, treating the annihilation of European Jewry as simply a normal 9-to-5 job which supports the family in the way they always desired.
Part of the funding for the movie was from the government of Poland, and its influence can be seen in directing the audience to see that the true evil actors were the German Nazis and not Poles, who were portrayed as trying to help Jews in some way, dropping apples around the camp for Jews who managed to escape. Modern Poles are shown at the end of the film, keeping today’s Holocaust museum at the site tidy for tourists who can view the Jewish possessions which were not seized by the Nazis and their families. The actual rampant Polish Jew hatred is invisible in the film.
Vile Jew-hatred continues today, as do new movies, shows and museums focused on the global scourge. Many contrast past antisemitism to modern Jew-hatred such as the remarkable play ‘Prayer for the French Republic‘ as well as ‘Leopolstadt’. Others are devoted just to the Holocaust like the new museum in Amsterdam. Some try to tie antisemitism into the Arab-Israeli conflict like the opera ‘Death of Klinghoffer.‘
Tragically, many of the works of art about noxious Jew hatred have become awash in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It would appear that Jews being cast as victims – whether with posters of kidnapped Israeli Jewish civilians, or a Holocaust museum – is too much for Palestinian Arab supporters who want to see the Jewish State crushed.
At the March 2024 opening of the new Holocaust museum in Amsterdam, hundreds of protestors gathered outside to shout “Free, free Palestine” and “Viva, viva Intifada,” screaming for the destruction of the Jewish State and murder of Jews.
Anti-Israel demonstrators at the opening of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. Pic: AP
In the U.S., The New York Times published a grotesque opinion that compared Israel’s activities in trying to save its hostages and root out the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to the Nazi family in ‘The Zone of Interest.’ Over-and-again it wrote of the “military siege of Gaza” and “Israel’s assault on Gaza” in a movie review about a Holocaust film.
NY Times lead opinion piece on March 9, 2024
The author, David Klein, could have stated his opinion about the War From Gaza without attaching his comments to a film about the systematic killing of 6 million Jews but he, and many like him, don’t want to. They want to strip Jews of any protection – offensive or defensive. The end of the article makes clear that he is against supplying Israel with weaponry to prosecute the Palestinian terrorist army of Hamas; appending his opinion to a Holocaust film is designed to also remove America’s shield for Israel at the United Nations and with resupplying the Iron Dome missile defense.
To make his refuse stink a bit less, Klein peppered the “AsAJew” line to protect himself from accusations of antisemitism.
Eli Lake penned an article in Commentary Magazine in March 2024 called “A Brief History of the ‘AsAJew’“. Lake sees this as a phenomenon of far-left diaspora Jews, as even progressives in Israel know that Hamas must be destroyed after the heinous barbarous attack which the terrorist group has threatened to repeat.
Lake described a long history of AsAJews during moments of Jewish suffering appealing to the antisemitic attackers to continue to persecute. He wrote that centuries ago, “the AsAJews of their day lobbied their hosts in the Diaspora to banish or convert the Jewish people to Christianity and to confiscate and burn the Talmud.” He details the story of a man in the 15th century named Johannes Pfefferkorn who converted from Judaism and helped fuel a mini crusade against his former co-religionists.
Times have changed some of the nouns in the anti-Semitic Mad Lib, but the story reads familiar.
Lake wrote, “In the Middle Ages, AsAJew converts were pawns the Church used to spread lies about the Talmud. In 2024, the AsAJews are not converts to Christianity. They are instead converts to the false prophecy of left-wing social-justice activism…. The anti-Semites of the Middle Ages needed AsAJews to provide credentials for the lies that justified their pogroms and expulsions. Today, Hamas and its allies in Iran need the AsAJews to persuade the Hague, European governments, and the White House to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I will add some observations on top of Lake’s. For centuries, antisemites including AsAJews, came for the Jews by attacking the religion itself. They concocted stories about Passover matzah in blood libels and the Talmud teaches black magic. Today’s cohort attack Jews and Jewish history, not the religion. They mock the Holocaust. They claim Jews have no history in the land of Israel and are “colonizers” who stole land from Arabs, and that Jews never had holy temples in Jerusalem so should be banned from prayer in a site that is solely holy to Muslims.
By ignoring religion, the modern day antisemites refuse to carry the antisemitic mantle because they are not attacking the religion, just bad actors who happen to be Jewish. The AsAJew allies provide a wide fig leaf for the charade, much as they’ve done for centuries.
Museums and films devoted to the heinous slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust, which would normally demonstrate the profound need for Jews to have self-determination, are being used by the alt-left and Islamic radicals to argue that Jews should be left to the wolves of Hamas. Some are not as shrill, and offer a tepid “both sides” support, blind to their echoing former President Donald Trump’s Charlottesville remarks.
‘The Zone of Interest’ Winning Best International Film on March 10, 2024, with callout to Israeli and Palestinian victims of terror
As antisemitism scales to terrifying levels around the world, the alt-left and Islamic radicals are turning works of art and remembrances of the deliberate mass butchering of Jews on October 7 and during the Holocaust into calls to attack Jews and the one Jewish State. Many progressive Jews are appalled and are abandoning their former partners-in-crime as now-revealed naked antisemites. But the AsAJews have remained steadfast and will share names and addresses of the Zionists, marking Jews as zealots who need to be punished for the good of mankind once again.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation on March 7, 2024 to discuss the state of the union. He discussed many points about situations abroad including Ukraine, Israel and China, and items on the domestic front such as immigration, abortion, education, the economy and crime.
President Joe Biden delivery State of the Union address on March 7, 2024
Biden put a very positive spin on the crime rate in the U.S. “All Americans deserve the freedom to be safe, and America is safer today than when I took office…. Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.”
Sounds great.
But not for Jews.
Jews are being attacked and vilified on public streets and in schools. They watch university presidents smile when asked about calling for the genocide of Jews, and professors shout that they were exhilarated by the mass slaughter and rape of Jews in Israel.
In November 2023, Jewish Federations published a report that “70% of Jewish respondents said they feel less safe than they did a few months before [the Hamas war]…. Jews were twice as likely to say they worry very much about their personal safety compared to the general public.”
In February 2024, the American Jewish Committee released its own poll which found “63% of American Jews say the status of Jews in the U.S. is less secure compared to one year ago. In 2022, this number was 41%. In 2021, it was 31%.” The spike is found among the general public too in which “74% of U.S. adults say antisemitism is a problem in the United States today, compared to 68% who said so in 2022, and 60% in 2021.”
Biden knows about the tsunami of Jew hatred. In May 2023, five months before Palestinian jihadists butchered 1,200 people in Israel, Biden announced The U.S. Strategy To Counter Antisemitism. That document narrowly focused on the alt-right, with “Nazis” mentioned twelve times and “white supremacy” five. The more prevalent forms of Jew hatred from Islamic extremists, Blacks and the alt-left went completely unmentioned in the report.
The Biden administration was so blind to radical Islamic antisemitism that it put CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, on the antisemitism committee at that time. The administration only removed CAIR after the head of the group said how pleased he was with the October 7 jihadi massacre.
The unwillingness of the Biden administration to clearly call out every manifestation of Jew hatred – not just from the alt-right – has upset many Jews. According to a February 2024 Siena College poll, the majority of Jews, who normally vote Democratic, are switching to Donald Trump for president in November 2024, buy a margin of 53% to 44%.
Joe Biden seems to be banking on math, that Jews are a minority-minority who are unlikely to tip the scales in any state. Or perhaps he just decided to “love the one your with” and cuddle up to the insidious jihad taking over America, protecting vile antisemites if the are Muslims or Blacks, who make up a much larger swatch of “minorities.”
Now in the 2024 election, Biden has informed Americans that the country is extremely safe, and is unwilling to acknowledge the tsunami of Jew hatred by his supporters in the Muslim, Black and progressive communities. Should Trump win the presidency, those left-wing and jihadi groups will surely come for the Jews in even greater numbers and ferocity than they are currently.
On January 29, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly published document A/75/729 which provided an update about Al Qaeda and ISIS, seemingly the only groups which the world agrees are terrorist groups. It contained a section called “Increasing support for the victims of terrorism,” which noted the importance of “healing” for victims and the need to be sensitive to events which might be “triggering or adding to their trauma.“
It was an interesting document for the UN, as two weeks earlier on January 16, 2021, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed the news that the Palestinians would be holding elections, which he said would give “renewed legitimacy to national institutions, including a democratically elected Parliament and Government in Palestine.” It is baffling and alarming that the head of the United Nations would want to give “legitimacy” to an election which included the deeply anti-Semitic terrorist group, Hamas.
Guterres added that the election would “contribute to restarting a process towards a negotiated two-State solution based on the pre-1967 lines, and in accordance with relevant UN resolutions, bilateral agreements and international law.” Perhaps he never read Hamas’ foundational charter which is vociferously opposed to the basic existence of Israel and a peace process, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time.” (Article 13)
Now, three years after the leader of the United Nations called for Hamas to be part of the Palestinian political process while also calling for support for terrorist victims’ trauma, we are witnessing countries calls for Palestinian unity in the aftermath of the Palestinian armies of Hamas and PIJ butchering 1,200 innocent Israelis.
Last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh resigned from office in light of the current war saying “I see that the next stage and its challenges require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the new reality in Gaza and the need for a Palestinian-Palestinian consensus based on Palestinian unity and the extension of unity of authority over the land of Palestine.“
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov welcomed the move towards Palestinian unity offering “Jesus Christ was born in Palestine. One of his sayings is: ‘A house divided against itself will not stand.’ Christ is honoured by both Muslims and Christians. I think that quote reflects the challenge of restoring Palestinian unity.” Leave aside that Jesus was a Jew and born in the land of Israel, the gist of Lavrov’s desires are understood.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed a call for Palestinian rule over both the West Bank and Gaza while being unclear whether he supported a unified Palestinian government as he has denounced Hamas’s rule in Gaza. He shared in November 2023, “we need to see and get to, in effect, unity of governance when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately to a Palestinian state.”
Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad speaks in an interview with Lebanese channel LBC on October 24, 2023 calling for more butchering of Israelis. (Screenshot: X; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
A Palestinian government that is peaceful and demilitarized which governs all Palestinian territory can theoretically make peace with Israel, however, the majority of Palestinian Arabs approve of Hamas and its aims of destroying Israel and ethnically cleansing the land of Jews. Therefore, one can either have a “legitimate” Palestinian government which speaks for local Arabs which is at war with Israel, or an illegitimate Palestinian government which does not truly represent Palestinian Arabs making a peace agreement with Israel.
The United States seems to be pushing for the latter – a peace agreement over enduring peace – hoping that Israelis will ignore the leadership farce and that the Palestinian street will grow to accept the Jewish State over time.
Coupled with such approach, the United States will be demanding that the Israeli victims of terror and the entire country, ignore their profound trauma.
The sadistic massacre committed by Palestinian Arabs from Gaza on October 7 will impact the emotional and mental health of Israelis for a generation. That thousands of Palestinians could enter Israel and rape, mutilate and burn alive 1,200 people, brought back closeted inherited memories of the atrocities of the Holocaust and pogroms for Israelis and global Jewry. That Palestinians cheered the event and a majority support the heinous attacks, has scorched the sensibilities of Israelis, a trauma of the past that they will carry every day.
Palestinian leaders remain in control of Gaza and broadcast that they are committed to repeating the massacre, that “there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight…. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.” The deep-seated evil ideology makes Israelis fear for their future.
Outside of Israel, hearing college professors say that they were “exhilarated” by the mass rape and butchering of Jews and felt “jubilation and awe” at the attacks has infused terror into the hearts of diaspora Jews, the 55% of global Jewry who live outside of their homeland in the land of Israel. Jews see that the attackers are not just Gazans but their global supporters.
For Jews, October 7 was a continuum of thousands of years of antisemitism brought forward to today and tomorrow. After centuries of instilled knowledge that nothing has ever appeased anti-Jewish zealots, Jews around the world look at the Israeli Defense Forces – a new army which was absent for 2,000 years – to reshape their future.
Israeli Defense Forces sing Israeli national anthem of “Hatikvah”, “The Hope”
For Palestinian Arabs, the IDF is their sworn enemy. Raised to believe that Israeli Jews are an illegal occupying force who stole Arab land, the IDF represents the boot on their necks enabling that crime to continue. As they watch tens of thousands of Gazans die and their infrastructure get obliterated by that army, they seethe in the present.
So despite the clear military trouncing of the Palestinian army of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the local Arabs are optimistic for their future. They are playing the long game and believe that Israel will soon cease to exist. In a June 2023 poll, “two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will be able in the future to recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes.”
The Islamic jihadists in the region believe that the IDF and Israeli Jews are evil but temporary. They see the tidal wave of global support crushing the “occupation army” and sweeping Jews from the region. The United States is Israel’s last column of support, and Islamic extremists see it buckling in the polls. With the help of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, they see a “liberation” of their land before Israel celebrates its 100th birthday.
Palestinians take dead Israeli bodies as trophies as part of October 7 atrocities
The IDF is the perceived game-changer for global Jewry, a chance to fight the toxic and violent antisemitism that has been killing Jews for thousands of years. It is the instrument to terminate their collective trauma and protect the ability to coexist in peace.
That same IDF is viewed by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters as deeply evil, causing a “genocide” of Gazans who, in their view, just want to live in peace in their land: everything from the River to the Sea, devoid of Jews.
Cornell University professor Russell Rickford celebrating the October 7 raping and slaughter of Israeli Jews
October 7th is fading in the world’s memory and is losing influence on opinions and policies. There is declining empathy for the ongoing Jewish trauma, as people focus on the latest body count of Palestinians. As part of that transition, the IDF is becoming the story as intended by the jihadists. The anti-Zionist extremists believe that neutering the Israeli army is the pathway to alleviating Palestinian trauma and perpetuating Jewish suffering.
Hamas might soon fade from public discourse. The political-terrorist force will blend into a new organization, having met its primary goals: the end of American support of the IDF as the pathway for the destruction of Israel. The political-terrorist group always knew that it could never defeat Israel militarily; its war mission was to weaken American support for the Jewish State, for its jihadi allies in Iran, Syria and Lebanon to strike the fatal blow.
ACTION ITEM
Write your politicians to maintain military aid to Israel to not only confront the Palestinian army but Hezbollah, Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Some far-left extremists have taken up the cause of Palestinian Arabs under the framework of being anti-colonialist, falsely believing that Jews have no history or connection to the land of Israel.
The bold lie is just the opening problem. They also protest blanketed in hypocrisy.
While standing firmly with Hispanic immigrants coming to the United States, the alt-left radicals demand that Jews “go back” to the concentration camps in Poland. As they demand full rights for gay people, they side with Gazans who execute homosexuals.
One such gay Palestinian was Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh. He was granted asylum in Israel – along with roughly 90 other Palestinian homosexuals – because he correctly feared for his life among Palestinian Arabs. One year before Gazans raped and massacred over 1,000 people in Israel, Palestinian Arabs decapitated Ahmad and dumped his torso on the streets of Hebron. The killers took a video of the murder and shared it on social media, much as they did with the butchering of Israelis one year later.
Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, 25, decapitated by Palestinian Arabs because he was gay
There is a sick evil ideology amongst Gazans who want to kill Jews, murder those who sell land to Jews, behead gay people, and stone people who convert from Islam. Yet the alt-left looks away from the Palestinians’ jihadi manifesto and shouts their support for those who despise everything in which they believe.
Well not everything. Palestinians and the alt-left both agree on death to Israel and death to America.
Many commentators about the 2023-4 Hamas-Israeli War quote body counts to not simply frame and update the situation but to drive emotions and policy. While it is true that every civilian death is a tragedy, using statistics distracts from the core problem.
And it’s intentional.
Mainstream media and pro-Palestinian voices use Hamas-fed figures of Gaza’s dead and injured to make the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of the enclave. Pro-Palestinian lawmakers compare the roughly 1,200 people in Israel killed to the much larger number of Gazans. They append the figures of the hundred-plus Israelis held in Gaza with finger-pointing to thousands of prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Yet there is no mention of the qualitative chasm between the perpetrators.
Gazans invaded Israeli homes in the early morning and pulled women in their pajamas outside to be raped and mutilated. Members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad burned families alive. They spent hours going house-to-house to butcher and slaughter children and the elderly. Fellow Palestinians celebrate and applaud those actions, and their leaders have promised to commit the atrocities again-and-again.
Meanwhile the Israelis simply want to bring their hostages home and the perpetrators to justice. The Jewish State wants the fighting to end quickly with as few casualties as possible to achieve their aims, while the goal of Palestinian terrorists is the death or expulsion of over 7 million Jews.
And people are deliberately silent about these critical facts when they discuss the war, all in an effort to shield Hamas and its aims to destroy the Jewish State.
Palestinians take back the dead body of an Israeli woman to parade through the cheering streets of Gaza
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) just spoke about the evil ideology of Hamas at a UN Watch panel and opened (0:53) with a quote from the prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials saying “‘The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish are so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that we cannot tolerate them being ignored, because we cannot survive them being repeated.‘ Those same words should be said about October 7th.”
The number of dead on each side of the conflict has nothing to do with the disproportionate intentions of each side. Knowing this full well, pro-Palestinian activists ignore or deny the barbarism of Gazans and only repeat figures as a way to shield Hamas.
All decent people want the violence to stop but it can only end when Palestinians are freed of their toxic ideology seeking the death of Jews and destruction of the Jewish State.
Sunday morning is a time for protests in Barcelona, Spain. Advocates for Peru took their customary spot on top of La Rambla. About ten people listened to a woman yelling into a megaphone.
Just ahead of the small gathering were thirty people protesting Russia’s war on Ukraine. They held placards and then marched together through Catalunya square of people feeding pigeons.
Further ahead were 2,000 people marching with Palestinian flags down the main street of Pg. de Gracia. Led by a ten people wearing kaffiyehs on a truck, they marched with signs calling to “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel.”
Thousands marched for Palestinians in Barcelona, Spain on February 25, 2024 (photo: First One Through)
Many of the marchers wore kaffiyehs and held signs “it did not start with Hamas.” They chanted in Spanish about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blamed the United States for “Genocide.”
There were no counter-protestors.
The Jews of Spain have long since been vanquished. Once the greatest center of Jewry in the 1400s, Spain is amongst the dozens of countries which now have fewer than 25,000 Jews. By way of comparison, there are 27 cities in the United States with over 25,000 Jews.
But Muslims have returned to Spain. After the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War brought thousands of Muslim refugees and immigrants to Europe, many have once again settled in the Iberian peninsula.
Consequently, the street narrative – populated by many local Catholics – was neither nuanced nor balanced. There was no mention of the Israeli hostages or Hamas burning families alive. No demand for the Hamas rapists to face justice. Just for Israel to be replaced “from the River to the Sea.”
Pro Palestinian protestors in Barcelona
Catholic religious fanaticism routed Jews from Europe 500 years ago. Today, Muslim jihadi extremism is attempting to do the same in both Europe and the land of Israel.
There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.
While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.
The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.
Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.
In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.
Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.
These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”
The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.
An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.
In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.
What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?
A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.
Post-9/11 World
Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.
For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.
Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.
When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.
Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.
Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.
As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.
While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
UN and Human Rights Groups Slander
Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.
The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.
Racial Overview of Youth
Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.
America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.
Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.
The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.
Race In Colleges
The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.
At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.
More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.
Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.
While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.
Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.
Social Media
The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.
While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.
People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.
And here also, race plays a part.
According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”
According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.
So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.
The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.
While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.
Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites
Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.
Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.
Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.
Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.
After the heinous butchering, raping and slaughtering of 1,200 people in Israel, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres did not call for Hamas to be brought to justice nor did he lambast Muslim extremism. Instead, he called for Israel to use “maximum restraint” against the killers. It seemed bizarre to excuse mass terrorism but the rationale soon became clear.
Just last week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths was more explicit about excusing Hamas’s atrocities and said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
The UN is correct at some level: Hamas is a popular Palestinian political party which was elected to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. It has had complete rule over Gaza since 2007. So it is indeed a political group. It is also a terrorist group and a deeply antisemitic group, but the UN refuses to acknowledge those two plain facts.
That is because the United Nations has long tried to distance the idea of “terrorism” and “Islamic extremism,” which are both at the heart of Hamas’s evil ideology.
On March 17, 2016, the then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon addressed the UN Human Rights Council about a “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.” At the event, the then-UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore said that “selective application of the term “violent extremism” only to Muslim believers reinforces intolerance and discrimination.”
UN Secretary General visits Gaza in 2010, even though the region was not a UN member state, and it was ruled by Hamas, a terrorist Group (Photo: Reuters)
At least in regards to Islamic extremists. The media and United Nations talk about “Israeli settler extremism” and “right-wing Israeli government,” all of the time but whitewash the brutal attacks committed by Islamic fanatics.
US Politicians And NGOs
Aggravating this horrible situation, people attempt to smear people discussing terrorism and vicious antisemitism of jihadi radicals, as “Islamophobes.” Rep. Ilhan Omar made several comments which were widely viewed as antisemitic in her first weeks in office and then inverted the perpetrator-and-victim saying, “what I am fearful of is that because [Rep.] Rashida [Tlaib] and I are Muslim, that a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of our Jewish constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be anti-Semitic, because we are Muslim.”
Years later in 2024, when Congress passed a resolution condemning Hamas’s mass raping and mutilation of Jewish women, Rep. Tlaib refused to join civilized society and simply voted ‘present.’ The sadism of the emasculated Palestinian men was absolved by a sitting elected American official.
Tlaib’s sponsors like the DSA say much the same. The Democratic Socialists of America said that every Israeli Jew is fair game for annihilation by “resistance groups” in the months before the October 7 massacre. CAIR’s Zahara Billoo clearly called all Jews are the “enemy.” The “Mapping Project” in Massachusetts created by proponents of boycotting Israel, tried to make the targeting of Jews easy by providing names and addresses of Jewish organizations.
Notorious antisemite Rep. Rashida Tlaib being embraced by censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (photo: AP)
The Arts and Media
The art world found its muse in Palestinian jihadists.
John Adams composed an opera called “The Death of Klinghoffer,” with arias about Palestinian terrorists who killed an elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew and threw him off a ship. The New York Times said the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that the composer “John Adams said that in composing ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ he tried to understand the hijackers and their motivations, and to look for humanity in the terrorists.” The Times went on to call the opera a “masterpiece.”
The media world’s empathy and shield for non-Palestinian jihadists extends to those who murder Jews around the world.
In 2008, ten Pakistani men from the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist group entered Mumbai, India and started slaughtering people. After killing dozens of people at a train station and luxury hotel, the terrorists descended on a small Jewish community center run by a Chabad rabbi. The terrorists killed the rabbi and his pregnant wife along with others at the facility. At no point in the storyline did CNN convey that the Pakistani men were Muslim and that they belonged to a radical jihadi group.
In 2015, four radical Muslim men killed people at the publishing offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, and then entered a kosher supermarket to kill more Jews. While CNN mentioned that the terrorists were upset at Charlie Hebdo for printing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, it never wrote that the killers were jihadi extremists.
The problem is not limited to The New York Times and CNN. Reuters avoids calling Hamas a terrorist group in its articles while comfortably doing so for other terrorist organizations.
The jihadists and socialists have already entered the final phase of their war against the Jews. The Four Step Battle Plan started with 1) Denying the Enemy Rights and Legitimacy; 2) Gathering Masses to the Cause; 3) Removing the Enemy’s Defenses; and 4) Assembling the Armies for the Battle. They are now bringing the world into phase 2 at the International Court of Justice, to advance quickly to phase 3, to abandon the Jewish State and global Jewry.
When the United Nations says aloud what radical socialists and jihadists have argued for years, that Hamas is not an antisemitic jihadi terrorist group but a legitimate political actor, it is time to ring the alarm bells. Global “legitimate” actors are now backing Hamas and its supporters who attack Jews around the world, smearing Jews as supporters of an apartheid, colonizing Zionist regime, consequently not victims but fair targets for assault.
For the last few hundred years, Jews inserted three lines after their penultimate prayer in their daily services. Right after Aleinu and before the final mourner’s Kaddish, a sentence from Proverbs and two from Isaiah are found:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
Al-Tirah
Roots Of Al Tira Prayer
Leaving synagogue was often a traumatic affair when Jews were scattered around the world. Inside of the synagogue, Jews were both together and felt connected to God; outside was a starkly different reality. Sometimes the local non-Jews would attack the Jews with pogroms and edicts, and at other times, Jews would be fortunate to find salvation.
Today, very few congregations actually recite the prayer despite its inclusion in prayer books.
I suggest that perhaps it is now time for all congregations to begin saying it.
Israel has responded to the Palestinian barbarity. It has killed and injured roughly one-third of the political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and has leveled much of the terrorist enclave. Hamas has claimed that nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed at this point, with children accounting for over one-third.
On top of the frozen state of terror of Jews from the ongoing antisemitic attacks since October 7 is the sadness of watching the destruction of Gaza. Why did Hamas do this and why does the evil group insist that Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza rather than release the hostages and surrender the terrorists?
Hamas has an evil and twisted ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam that demands the destruction of the Jewish state, believing its presence is an embarrassment for Muslims. As it states in its foundational charter “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time… In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
For its part, Judaism has a different set of beliefs that stretches back thousands of years before the Islamic prophet Mohammed was born. It urges calm in the face of fear.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. (Proverbs 3:25)
Jews are carrying both the shock of October 7 in Israel and the sickening reaction of Hamas’s fans around the world. They are simultaneously witnessing the destruction of that enemy. It’s a lot to process – the “sudden fear” and the “desolation of the wicked” – and has led many Jews and Zionists to huddle together in synagogue, and hide symbols of being Jewish when they go outside.
Jewish Calendar And Numbers
The Jewish year 5784 is a Jewish leap year which adds another month, and the year 2024 in the secular calendar is also a leap year which adds a single day. Both the Jewish calendar and the secular calendars add the time in the winter to “correct” the calendar for the upcoming spring.
We are now in the first of two months of Adar. Jewish tradition holds that Adar is a month of happiness and when Jews defeated their mortal enemies who attacked the weakest Jews. The double month of Adar is meant as a moment of double celebration.
This year of 5784 is the eighth year of the 19-year Metonic cycle which marks leap years on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth year. Just as 2024 is the eighth year in the cycle, so was 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, as was 1948, the year that the Jewish State was reborn. From 1948 to 1967 was one Metonic cycle and from 1967 to 2024 were three full cycles.
Numbers have significance in Judaism. One is connected to the singularity of God in the Jewish monotheistic faith. Three symbolizes Judaism’s founding fathers, the sections of the Shema prayer, three holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the three groups of Jews.
Eight is also meaningful. Beyond the day that Jewish males are circumcised to join the Jewish nation, tradition is that eight connects man in the natural to the supernatural world. While God made the world in seven days and had seven branches on the menorah in the holy Temple, eight is the step beyond. The seven branch menorah was for the Temple, while Jews light an eight branch menorah in their homes and synagogues today to connect to the miracle.
Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. (Isaiah 8:10)
These months of Adar seem like important months to recite the oft-skipped prayer. A time to mark the third complete leap year cycle of Jewish control Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It is a time to remember that God is with us and he is the sole source of fear.
Amalek And Arms Aloft Together
When the Jewish people left slavery in Egypt they were attacked by the nation of Amalek. During the battle, Jews looked up to Moses who held his arms pointing to the sky with the assistance of Aaron and Hur who held the elderly prophet’s arms. The Jews were empowered when they saw Moses praying to God to vanquish the enemy, and prevailed as God enabled their success.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4)
Today, there is no Jewish leader like Moses to pray on behalf of the jews, and every Jew takes their own prayer book to talk to God. They gather in minyanim around the world to pray for Jewish soldiers fighting with weapons, and Jewish lay leaders who fight against Hamas’s supporters in governments, college campuses and everywhere.
Let us all recite Al Tirah together, holding the hands of the people to our right and left, and pray for God to deliver success in defeating all of our foes.
First One Through 