Cheeky_Blinders

I often watch how people in the West speak about “ending the occupation.” They believe we’re asking Israel to leave the West Bank; places like Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem, or Jenin so we can live freely in our own country beside them. To them, it sounds fair, peaceful, and reasonable. But here’s the truth they don’t understand: When most Palestinians talk about “occupation,” they’re not talking about 1967. They’re talking about 1948. They mean Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be’er Sheva, Acre, Lod, Ashdod. Every single part of Israel. For many, the phrase “end the occupation” doesn’t mean ending control over territories. It means ending Israel’s existence altogether. And that’s exactly why peace never moves forward. You can’t build peace when your goal is to erase your neighbor.

I'm sorry this is so long. And probably incoherent and uninteresting. It looks like a political diatribe, but it's actually a Jewish homily. I just had some thoughts I needed to put down in words to see if they make sense. The horrors in Nigeria and Sudan deserve mass marches in Western capitals. Attention would make a difference. But, well, as Bill Maher points out, no Jews. And that raises the interesting point that the marches for Gaza are a truly unique and extraordinary phenomenon, unique enough to be worth exploring. Do they signal a positive moral shift? Or, as critics would have it, a return of old bigotries? How would we know? In some important ways, the marches are completely unprecedented, even in comparison to the Vietnam and anti-apartheid campaigns. Their regularity, duration, visual coherence (flags, slogans, rituals), repetition across cultures and countries, and the diversity of the marchers all make them pretty close to exceptional. But what caused such an unprecedented outpouring into the streets of so many for so long? Why this war (or, as the marchers would say, genocide), and not any war (or genocide) before it? It could be social media. In the age of TikTok and Instagram, any war anywhere can be experienced viscerally by everyone everywhere. If that's the cause, then are we seeing a new radicalization against war qua war, against the injustices of occupation and the suffering of civilians as such, irrespective of the specific parties to the conflict, simply because it's all so present and immediate on everyone's phone screens? If so, then the marches are an extraordinarily good thing, even if they occasionally draw some bigots into their ranks. I mean, yes, we Israelis are now in the dock for a genuinely horrific war that is nevertheless far less harmful than half a dozen other conflicts just in our region just in the last few years. But if the only difference is these new platforms, then we find ourselves in this position only because we're the first major target of a great and general moral awakening against war. That would mean that the unique response to the Gaza conflict is basically a function of its timing - and that the one silver lining of this horrible, destructive war is that it is occurring amid a sudden extraordinary shift in the world's consciousness that will ultimately make my children - all children - safer and happier in the coming years. If that's the story, then this is what redemption feels like in its first fitful steps. And I welcome it. Let's make this the last damn war. Or at least let's make whatever war came before it the last ignored war. But there's another possibility: That these marches aren't just unique in the history of the West - nothing ever mobilized you quite in this way - but that they will remain unique in the future as well. That nothing unrelated to Israel will ever mobilize you like this again. And this is a truly awful thing to contemplate. Because it means that the salient fact underlying the marches isn't the situation in Gaza but the identity of the Israelis, and the never-ending flood of propaganda and rage that's only really imaginable against Jews. It would mean that it is easier for Westerners or Middle Easterners to train their sights on Jews than on themselves, and that this fact is playing a significant role here. It would suddenly become relevant that Jews have served for nearly two millennia as a canvas on which Christian or Muslim societies painted their anxieties and fears and failures, and that "decolonization" and anti-Western and Islamist ideologues today are eager to continue to do so. If indeed this moral awakening remains exclusive to Gaza, then all the outrage will have been so surgically selective that it was never actually outrage, but the old and comfortable and wild little prejudice that always made your ancestors feel better about themselves and that retains its mobilizing usefulness in the present day. This would be true even if most of the marchers are ordinary decent people responding to what they see on social media. The structural bigotry would enter into the equation in the simple fact that the Gaza war was the only war the activists and the algorithms ever demanded that they be made to see. What if social media isn't a new dawn of freedom but merely a more direct tool of mass manipulation? Or more simply: What if Gaza is the only war you'll ever see images of because the algorithms aren't trying to make you more decent or more human, but more radicalized and pliable? What if they don't so much overturn power structures as provide tools of information control to those in power? What then, O paladins of the West? What if this moral rage, inherently, structurally, can only ever direct itself at one target? I'll admit, I suspect it's the latter option. Not just because I'm Israeli, and so somewhat more primed to notice the selectivity, but also because of a general distrust of sudden moral awakenings. They seem to come fast and furious and shallow and self-absorbed and exceedingly short-lived in the social-media age. By here's my real point: What if you, dear marcher for Gaza, can make it so that it doesn't actually matter which of the above options is true? Hear me out. The Talmud teaches in Tractate Yoma, page 69b, that the "evil inclination," the selfish, animalistic side of our psyches, is a great source of corruption and pain in our lives, but also a great engine for good when its hungers are properly channeled. Indeed, that without it, there is no life. Without lust and selfishness, the Sages explain, no one would build a home, marry, have children or work the land. When these base, objectifying instincts are corralled into the covenant of marriage, they are transformed into engines for new life and loyalty and meaning and holiness. Elsewhere, in Tractate Bava Batra, the Sages say the same thing about jealousy. Jealousy is destructive, but also creative. When funneled through competitive meritocracies, it becomes a driver of excellence: "The jealousy of scholars increases wisdom," we read in Bava Batra. Noble and beautiful things can flow from baser instincts. Indeed, those baser instincts are often the only things inside us strong enough to drive fundamental, powerful change. In that spirit, let me offer a humble prayer for the marchers for Gaza now that there is some hope, however fragile, that the days of bloodshed are over, now that they are in search of purpose and an effective way to continue their advocacy. Even if what we're witnessing in the streets of Western cities is driven at its cultural core by the reawakening of an old prejudice, as I and so many of my fellow Jews believe, it can nevertheless set you on a path to that first possibility, to that larger moral shift. I pray that the Jews' own harping on your extremely predictable selectivity - or perhaps your own embarrassment at it - ignites in you a deep desire to prove us whiny Jews wrong. That you learn and march and rage about Sudan and Nigeria and all the rest of suffering humanity, even if only to rob the Israelis of the satisfaction of victimhood. That'll show us. Sorry, that wasn't snark. That'll actually show us. Then, even if there is something darker and less noble at work here that you're refusing to notice, it'll hardly matter. You will have harnessed that base thing to the greater good. And there's nothing embarrassing about that. As with all cases of the harnessing of the evil inclination, no other part of the human psyche is powerful enough to do the job. Let latent antisemitism and some small shred of shame over it mobilize marches for Nigeria's Christians and Sudan's ongoing catastrophe, and so be a net good in the world. Don't stop marching for Gaza. But do start marching for Nigeria.

October 7 was not a struggle for liberation. It was jihad against the enemies of Allah. The same battle Muhammad led against the Jews of Khaybar 14 centuries ago was replayed on that day. Jihad did not emerge as a response to imperialism or colonialism. It is not resistance. It is the divinely sanctified struggle to rid the world of the enemies of Allah, a war that has never ceased since the 7th century.

Let me explain what was happening in the mind of today’s attacker “Jihad” as he stabbed Jews in Manchester. Like all religions, Islam has its lists of do’s and don’ts. But unlike other religions, these lists cover every detail of life and are enforced through fear and shame. The vast majority of Muslims eventually give up on trying to live up to Allah’s endless demands. That’s why they can still live relatively normal lives. But the ones who remain religious and keep trying inevitably fall short. And that’s not accidental, it’s by design. Islam creates impossible standards, then offers one way out: jihad. When failure is inevitable and salvation is promised only through holy war, people are driven to embrace it. Jihad is the only guaranteed path to salvation in Islam. If you fight, kill, or are killed “in the path of Allah,” spreading Islam and enforcing his rule, you are promised immediate entry into paradise, no questions asked, no account for your sins. That’s why jihad, hating the enemies of Allah, and pledging loyalty to Islam are the real pillars of the religion. The rest, prayer, fasting, rituals, are secondary by comparison. So what happened this morning? Jihad prayed at dawn, maybe wept out of fear of Allah, then made the decision to declare jihad. And who better than the Jews, the number one enemies of Allah, to sacrifice to his god?

This is what so many women chasing power miss. Feminism has undermined female influence and has ushered in safetyism, endless HR rules, and a culture of “niceness” instead of real strength. Once, women held the deepest influence in our society not by grabbing titles, but by inspiring their men to fight fierce battles for them in politics, war, and life itself. When great men of the past said, “I owe everything to my mother and my wife,” they meant it. Those women pushed them to take risks, to lead, to sacrifice and the great ones listened. Not all but the great ones served their wives. But today? Risk-taking at work is punished, ambition is blunted, and the greatest men I know are exhausted. Not because they stopped listening to women, but because they’re forced to listen to everyone—mothers, wives, bosses, colleagues, committees. A cacophony that drains rather than inspires. The irony is, this isn’t anti-feminist. It’s pro-woman. Our society was stronger when women didn’t trade their unique power for imitation authority—when they inspired men to be great, and in serving them, men built greatness.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

This is the turning point. 🇺🇸

🚨 ERIKA KIRK: “Charlie just wanted to save the lives of young men… just like the one who took his life.” https://xitter.gq/t.co/GsdDBYl69t “That man… that young man… I forgive him.” Wow. That hits hard 😕

In order to move forward peacefully, “let the left say, ‘We were wrong. It is legitimate to vote for Donald Trump. It is legitimate to be pro-life. It is legitimate to believe that there are only two genders. And we were wrong to suggest that that is not the case. We were wrong to say that that is hateful.’ When they say that, I am waiting with open arms to take down the temperature.” Please listen to the whole thing. She nails perfectly what I’m thinking. What so many of us are thinking and feeling.