I did something I’m not proud of. It was the first time I’ve ever done something like it, and it gave me pause.
Earlier this year, I was invited to join an online Zoom group, so I attended two meetings. There was some lively discussion, sharing of creative work and ideas. I tend to be pretty “unfiltered”, and at the second session, I made a remark about the Israel-Hamas conflict, and how I feel about it as a Jew. “Uh oh,” murmured one of the other participants, an older woman, also Jewish. “We may have some conflicting political views here! I’m very pro-Palestine. I consider myself an anti-Zionist Jew, and I raise money for the relief effort in Gaza.” Being a newbie, and not wanting a tsuris, I made a conciliatory comment that politics need not be part of the discourse in the group. But I was unsettled.
Before the next Zoom meeting a few weeks later, I emailed the coordinator of the group and said I’d have to bow out, citing a busy schedule. But the truth is, I didn’t want to spend my free time, volunteering, in a group with someone whose views I find ludicrous and wrong, and who had already formed a judgment of me. I’d only attended two sessions, hadn’t taken on any particular project; so the inconvenience to the group was nil, but I chose not to be truthful about my reason for leaving the group. I just didn’t want to have to defend my position, which the social justice types—especially the profoundly ignorant ones—inevitably challenge one to. A friend of mine joined the Zoom group recently (coincidentally also Jewish) and asked why I wasn’t participating anymore. I said, honestly, I couldn’t engage with a Jew for Hamas.
I don’t believe one can be a Jew and be anti-Zionist, for several reasons, but the best one? Hamas, and all the other Islamist terror groups in the Muslim Brotherhood don’t care about your politics or your activism. If you’re a Jew, they want you dead. Period. They want all Jews dead. They put no value on human life, even the lives of their own people, who they use as human shields, and indoctrinate as suicidal jihadis.
You don’t have to support Zionism, but if you are anti-Zionist, if you are against the Jews having a state, you are against the Jews. —Natasha Hausdorff, Director, UK Lawyers for Israel
I highly recommend the Munk Debate on Antisemitism, with Hausdorff and Douglas Murray squaring off against Mehdi Hasan and Gideon Levy. I just consider American Jews who hold anti-Zionist views deluded. They’re indulging what Rob Henderson terms “luxury beliefs.” Such liberal and left leaning folks, who have bought into the oppressor/oppressed/antiracist/critical social justice ideology, seek to separate themselves from “the bad Jews” and be on what they imagine will prove to be “the right side of history.” You can disagree with the way Israel is conducting the war, and oppose its leadership, but how can you be a Jew and be against Israel? Zionism is quite simply the belief that the Jews have a right to a state in their ancient homeland. Only someone with no understanding of history and certainly, no understanding of Jewish faith, could hold anti-Zionist views. For Jews to choose to be willfully ignorant—or in denial—of history betrays everything it means to be Jewish. Our entire faith is built around commemorating, sharing and affirming our history, thus ensuring our survival as a people.
Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered. —Elie Wiesel
Not even one year out since the terrorist atrocities of October 7, to be a Jew and declare oneself anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian (pro-Hamas) requires willful amnesia of the horrors perpetrated against the Jewish race, and a bewilderingly callous disregard of the inhuman massacre Hamas perpetrated last year. They started a war. Then, less than one day later, college students and professors on American campuses were declaring the attacks Israel’s fault—and the war they knew would come, bringing inevitable casualties, as a “genocide.” Do we not remember 9/11? Do we not remember that the Islamist terrorists who attacked us that day justified the massacre by declaring all Americans culpable for the actions of our leaders—the “infidel?” Does it not occur to people that Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is the U.S. in microcosm? Don’t they realize that If Israel goes down, we go down? Is it any wonder I wouldn’t want to sit on a Zoom call twice a month with such a person?
I really pity all Westerners who support Hamas and consider them "freedom fighters" without fully understanding radical Islam. —Loay Alshareef, Arab Peace Activist
Why aren’t more American Jews following heroes like Rudy Rochman, Israeli activist and IDF reservist, who shared video during his deployment in Gaza? Or Douglas Murray, who was boots on the ground in Israel from the very start of the war and is a brilliant, knowledgable voice on the history of the conflict there. Why aren’t people listening to Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the founding leaders of Hamas, and his impassioned warnings to the West?
I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope. —Mosab Hassan Yousef
Why don’t more people listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, human rights activist and former Member of the House of Representatives of The Netherlands, who escaped the oppression and indoctrination she was subjected to in Somalia?
Those who see the conflict as a simple territorial dispute between a colonial state and a dispossessed minority fail to recognise Hamas for what it really is: a gang of genocidal Islamist thugs backed by a theocratic, anti-Semitic regime in Iran. Useful idiots on the far-Left in Western countries, who blindly support Hamas because they see it as a freedom-fighting group, harm the very people they claim to defend.—Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Why don’t more people listen to Muslim Israeli journalist Lucy Aharish? Her interview with Bari Weiss, and account of October 7 is staggering. What of Hamas hostage Mia Schem’s account of her captivity? Or the heartbreak of Rachel Goldberg, mother of 23 year-old American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg Polin, held eleven months by Hamas, whose body was found just a few days ago in Rafah? Did Hersh “have it coming,” because…“colonialism?” An “apartheid” that doesn’t exist? Was it just, that Mrs. Goldberg lost her child at the hands of terrorists, because you’ve hopped on the anti-Zionism train to earn activist street cred at your next progressive women’s book club meeting? Do you actually think for one minute that Hamas would hesitate to kill your kid? And you?
Well… clearly it was a good thing I quit that Zoom group when I did…
If you require me to hate or betray my ancestry, ethnic heritage and family legacy, to dishonor all three by either actively or passively supporting those who seek the annihilation of Jews and the Jewish state, as well as the U.S. and all it stands for—you will be disappointed. We Jews are the stewards of memory. We survive because we do not, will not, cannot forget.
In a recent essay, I called out pro-Hamas activists who liken Israelis to Nazis:
When I see a pro-Hamas protester waving a sign that equates Zionists (see: Jews) with Nazis, and Israel with The Third Reich, I can see both Mr. Imm’s and Mr. Godwin’s points. Disgusting bad taste, combined with an insanely specious comparison. Only an ignoramus with all the sensitivity of a steaming turd would promote such an idea.
I shared this quote in Notes here on Substack, along with a photo of one such protester. An anonymous someone shared my note, tagging me with the comment: “I found another one guys! Another genocidal Zionist!” I deleted the note, and blocked the prick. But one wonders who “the guys” are, eh…?
I was attacked last fall, in the middle of the city I’ve made my home for 30 years, in Times Square, following a pro-Hamas rally earlier that day. A random man came out of the crowd, punched me in the face, and called me a kike. I’d never been hit in my life. Was never attacked for being a Jew. What hurt more than the attack was the skepticism I was met with on social media, when I posted a photo of my bloody face and gave an account of what had happened. How could my black attacker know I was Jewish? He didn’t know I was Jewish. He just wanted to punch a Jew.
So, I gave myself a gift recently. It’s a gleaming, stainless steel Mogen David (Star of David). I haven’t worn one since my Bar Mitzvah. With the exception of High Holy Days, Chanukah and some other annual observances, I have not practiced my Jewish faith since then either. But I’m a Jew. When I wear my new necklace, I hope that to my fellow Jews, the symbol speaks of courage and a stubborn refusal to be erased. For the antisemites, Jew haters, anti-Zionists; the poseurs and cowards who turn their backs on our allies abroad; to those who want me to join them in hating our own people and our own country to be “on the right side of history”: well, now you know who to punch. But know this: I’m ready this time.
Good for you and an excellent essay.
I found Jake Wallis Simpson's book Israelophobia really instructive when I read it back in October. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the subject. He makes much the same arguments that you do and does trace the history of the demonization of Israel.
It is impossible to be pro-Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood/takfiri movement and not be antisemitic as it curled its ways around the entrails. People who deny this are engaging in taqiyya or dissembling for 'pious purposes' as it furthers the aims of the movement. Once one understands about the taqiyya and its historical significance for the Muslim Brotherhood much falls into place.
It is possible to wish the Palestinian people well and that they start to live in peace and prosperity with their neighbours but I fear that will not happen until they turn their back on this poisonous strand of Islam (one which also falsely denies education and other rights to women -- see what the Taliban have done in Afghanistan for example - Hamas also have banned singing and dancing by women)
James: Although you are a “voice crying out in the wilderness” your beautifully crafted words move those who are ready to hear. I know the group of which you speak, and I still participate. I share, however, your discomfort, which was amplified a couple months ago when I stated “Islam is a problem.” The response was “what about the history of Christian domination and violence?” “I am,” I said, “referring to modern religions. Christianity accommodated, in fact contributed to, Western liberal values; Islam has not.” (Judaism developed differently, of course, but, like Christianity, it endorsed “Enlightenment values,” not to mention having a mature humanistic tradition.)
Technically, I should have said “Fundamentalist Islam”—if only to convey I am not a bigot, and I do not oppose reasonable Muslims—but as Obaid Omer discusses in his article at Quillette on Aug 23, Islam, by and large, is Fundamentalist.
There is a common delusion on the Left that all civilizations are equally valuable and all religions share the same vision. (I’m ignoring for a moment that cohort on the Left that is distinctly anti-Western). All we need to do is sit down to tea, listen sympathetically, and the bell of peace and freedom will resound throughout the land. People of this ilk are shockingly ignorant of history, religious texts, and human nature.
Keep the up good fight James. Your writing, in form and content, is exceptional. I’m upgrading to a paid subscription.
Shalom!