WHY PEOPLE THINK JEWS AND ISRAEL ARE EVIL — Part 4: Implications
I will begin at the end….
Jews and Israel are Evil because we have all been trained to believe that Jews and Israel are Evil through a concentrated, systematic, and coordinated effort stemming back four decades.
This is not to defend Israel. Israel has done deplorable things. But it is to say that BOTH SIDES have done deplorable things.
But these concentrated efforts are not presenting both sides. These concentrated efforts are overtly and purposefully one-sided and biased and are aimed at undermining liberal democracies around the world. These concentrated efforts have eroded any chance of meaningful coexistence between Israel and Palestinians.
The ramifications are extremely dangerous:
- Dooming the Palestinian citizens in Gaza to continued oppression
- Promoting Violence and Destroying any chance of coexistence in the Middle East
- Dehumanizing Jews and rampant unfounded antisemitism
- Eroding liberal democracies
Part one explored Social Media. Part two explored Academia. Part three was a review of traditional News and Media.
Now we will look at the ramifications of all three.
I encourage you to read below with an open mind — all the way to the end — because this affects all of us and it is important to understand what has been going on behind the scenes for 40 years, how it has led up to what we are seeing today, and how it will destroy any path toward peace in the future.
The ramifications of forty years of a biased one-sided narrative is reverberating across the globe.
The overt and deliberate bias we have been exposed to has destroyed any chance for progress toward coexistence because extremist views have become entrenched. The biased one-sided narrative is the core of the Double Standard, as explained recently by Prof. Scott Galloway. It also underlies a lot of the hypocrisy we see concerning this war.
We can see it in the continuous accusations of Genocide, even though the the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is not committing Genocide. And even though Joan Donoghue, former president of the ICJ, and the one who actually gave the ruling, went on the BBC in April to reiterate again that “This is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media — it [the ICJ] didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
We can see it in the continuous accusations of War Crimes, even though the global authorities on modern military warfare like Col. Richard Kemp, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Four-Star General and former head of the CIA David Patraeus, and John Spencer — the chair of Urban Warfare at WestPoint — have gone on record multiple times explaining how the civilian-to-casualty ratio is the lowest ever recorded in modern warfare and that eliminating Hamas is what is best for the people in Gaza.
We see it in the continuous accusations that Israel is butchering women and children even though the UN recently admitted the numbers that everybody has been quoting from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health are erroneous, and even these new numbers are probably falsified.
We see it in the incessant claim that Israel is denying access to food and aid in Gaza, even though over 710K TONS of aid has gone in, and that every single day there are 3rd party international inspectors who verify these figures. And even though the UN’s very own Famine Review Committee found that the claims about insufficient food being sent to Gaza were unfounded — translation: there is no famine in Gaza.
We see it in the public resurgence of Anti-Jew conspiracy theories, like that Jews control all the money, even though China pretty much controls the banking industry and the Gulf States control the majority of private sovereign wealth.
We see it in the continuous claim that Israel is an Apartheid state, even though, well…:
The one-sided bias has already seeped into wider society and is part of the increasing calls for “Death to America” from many in the far left (and the far right) and the unabashed antagonism to run-of-the-mill American cultural symbols like Memorial Day. It is these same people who enjoy individual liberties and freedom of of speech that do not exists, especially for women, in other countries.
And in extreme cases, the one-sided bias creates a complete disassociation from reality:
It is very important to note that in no way does this imply a defense of Israel’s actions.
Many Israeli actions over the years should be rightfully criticized.
But the reality is that both sides have done deplorable things.
Both sides. BOTH SIDES.
All countries have committed sins. Politicians will massage the truth, ignore or manipulate facts that counter their narrative, or just straight up make things up.
Rashida Tlaib lies. Ilhan Omar lies. Matt Gaetz lies. Laruen Boebert lies. And of course Trump.
Every country does things that can be deemed “Evil”. Every politician will skirt around facts at some point or another in order to push an agenda.
But what makes Jews and Israel unique is the perception that Jews and Israel are uniquely and only evil, all of the time. And this is because we have been trained to believe Jews and Israel are evil and not to be trusted.
It is a perception that has been percolating underneath the surface for forty years — in academia, in media, and most recently online.
Only looking at one side, and only acknowledging one side of the complex history between Israel and Palestine is extremely dangerous and undermines any hope for any type of reconciliation and possible peace.
The dangers of only looking at one side are palpable:
1. Dooming the Palestinian citizens in Gaza to continued oppression.
The focus of organizations like SJP and others has never been about helping Palestinians. They have never made attempts to address issues like economic opportunities, bilateral negotiations, building infrastructure, or anything else that actually benefits the day-to-day lives of Palestinians.
The BDS campaign, for example, actually harms Palestinians. There are nearly 200k Palestinians from both the WB and Gaza who work and earn a living from Israeli enterprises. Tens of thousands work remotely in the Israeli high tech sector as well. The BDS campaign directly harms economic opportunities for Palestinians. The same economic opportunities that Hamas failed to create.
By focusing solely one biased dehumanization of Jews and Israel, media, academia, and TikTok trolls actively ignore what Palestinians actually need.
Bassem Eid. Amjad Taha. Luai Ahmed. Ahmed Al-Khalidi. Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib. Dalia Ziada. Hoda Jannat. Raheel Raza and Mohammed Rizwan. Mo Husseini. Loay Al-Sharif. Amir Pars. Salman Rushdie. Hamza Howidy. Noor Dahri. Sana Ebrahimi. Sophia Khalifa. Anila Ali. Hussain Abdul-Hussain. Rawan Osman. Nazanin Boniadi. The Council of Muslims against Anti-Semitism. Salman Sima. And countless more.
Actual Palestinians and Muslims are bravely speaking out and sharing with the world their experiences and telling us exactly what the people in Gaza really need and what are the actual facts on the ground. They are telling us exactly how Hamas is willingly putting citizens in the line of fire just for added clickbait.
But instead of heeding their advice and warnings, the trolls, bots, and sockpuppets refer to them as “traitors”, “Zionist Pigs”, or much worse, and issue them death threats.
By focusing efforts solely on pushing biased disinformation against Jews, Israel and the West we will be dooming Palestinians to more decades of ruthless brutal Hamas authoritarianism.
British journalist Jake Wallis Simons summarized this point recently:
2. Promoting Violence and Destroying any chance of coexistence in the Middle East
“Globalizing the Intifada” and “Resistance by any means necessary”, are direct calls for violence. “Intifada” means “Uprising” in Arabic, but the de facto meaning of Intifada is deadly attacks against civilians. We know this because of the thousands of civilians that were slaughtered under the guise of “Intifada”.
“By any means necessary” is justification for war crimes, including the weaponization of mass rape, as a means to an end.
These terms, and many others, are frequently promoted by those pushing a one-sided narrative, and have become the calling card of many protests around the world.
But what they are really doing is only promoting more violence and destruction, pushing the two sides farther and farther away from each other.
Very recently SJP took it one dangerous step further when they publicly shared their desire for a one state solution:
SJP is actively not promoting reconciliation with this message. They are promoting the Genocide of Israelis — 7M Jews and over 2M Muslims.
Any realist who understand that Palestinians are going nowhere and Israelis are going nowhere should be extremely concerned about the potential ramifications of this stance.
3. Dehumanizing Jews and rampant unfounded antisemitism
This is the ultimate goal of the biased disinformation that has been running rampant for the last two decades. And it is working.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have tripled in the six months after October 7th. Every day we hear news of another horrendous act, like the shooting at a girls’ elementary school in Toronto. Or the rampant victimization of Jewish students — who have nothing to do with Israel at all.
There is absolutely no correlation between a 1st grade girl in Toronto and what is going in Rafah. The only reason that the girl is being targeted is because she has been dehumanized and is considered a “Dirty Jew”- guilty simply because she was born to Jewish parents.
Recently two well known British film directors, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned from their roles as patrons of London’s Phoenix Cinema in protest against a special screening of a new documentary on the Nova Music Festival Massacre.
Loach and Leigh’s action perfectly reflects the dehumanizing effects of decades of Anti Jew/Israel/West misinformation. For Loach and Leigh, and others like Cynthia Nixon and Briahna Joy Gray, the life of a gang-raped Jewish girl is less valuable than the life of her rapists. #Believewomen… unless that woman is Jewish.
Every act of violence against Jews, simply because they were born Jewish, is another proof point that the line of “I’m not Anti-Semitic, I’m Anti-Zionist” is a sham.
40 years of one-sided bias has successfully led to the dehumanization of Jews for a frighteningly large amount of people around the globe.
4. Eroding liberal democracies
Years of biased one-sided misinformation against Israel, Jews, and the West has already begun to affect the stability of liberal democracies.
Liberal democracies were created as a bastion against authoritarian regimes that suppressed personal liberty, especially for women and minority groups.
But after decades of one-sided bias against the West, we are seeing American flags burned by the same people who enjoy the civil liberties that exist in America. (Same with France, UK, Germany, and other countries).
We should be extremely concerned when young people in liberal democracies are promoting Osama Bin Laden on TikTok — justifying the killing of American Civilians.
We should be extremely concerned when the flag of Hizballah is gleefully paraded on the streets of New York, to the delight of Iranian Jihadi Islamofascists. The same Hizballah that killed nearly 250 active US servicemen in a horrible suicide attack in 1983.
We should be extremely concerned when Pro-Hamas protesters threaten to burn Toronto to the ground. Toronto is over 9300 kilometers from Gaza.
Decades of one-sided misinformation and bias have made us numb to what terrorism actually is, and to the destabilizing effects of terrorism around the globe.
We have normalized death and destruction and blatant hatred to the point where people fear retaliation when they call it out.
A German police officer was stabbed to death in June. A priest and bishop were brutally attacked during a public mass in Australia in April. A 12 year old Jewish girl was raped in France. Russia just went through a second mass casualty terrorist attack- only four months after 140 people were killed in February. Iran has redoubled efforts at enforcing Gender Apartheid and suppressing the rights of women. Islamic Jihadi terrorism is on a rampage throughout the entire Sahel. The Houthis took 13 UN employees hostage. Three police officers were assaulted in Westminster. Actual genocide and ethnic cleansing is happening now in Sudan.
These events are shrugged off or ignored entirely. In many corners of academia and social media, and sometimes even in traditional media, these events are sometimes even exalted.
More concerning is that normalizing terror and one-sided bias has crept into the political sphere as well.
Jamaal Bowman, who recently lost his seat as US representative for New York’s 16th congressional district, has a well documented history of extremism, including 9/11 conspiracy theories. More recently, Bowman made waves by stating publicly that reports of mass rape on Oct 7th were Israeli propaganda.
Irish journalist Ian O’Doherty explained in the Spectator how the actions of Ireland, Norway, and Spain will plunge the broader Middle East into further chaos.
Ireland is rewarding Hamas. This is a reward for mass murder. This is a reward for committing the single greatest crime against Jews since the dark days of the Holocaust… In other words, in a post-October 7 world, this is incontrovertible proof that crime really does pay.
In the long term, fanaticism, extremism and hate only breeds more fanaticism extremism and hate, and much like certain factions of the far left have embraced authoritarianism, the far right will respond in kind.
We are seeing this play out already with the recent resurgence of the Right (and far right) in the European Parliament elections, and the highly probable upcoming election of Trump 2.0 in the US.
We are seeing this play out already with the alarming increase in Jihadi terrorist activity, as scarily described in The Economist. ISIS already has made landfall in the US.
Palestinians are not going anywhere, but neither is Israel.
We have lost our collective sense of balanced, rational reasoning of this simple fact. Instead of working toward peace, we have all succumbed to the successful brainwash of one-sided biased misinformation over social media, academia, and traditional news that has only fostered more division and hate.
In countless “gotcha” videos of Pro Hamas protesters we see exactly what has happened from 40 years of biased misinformation. Yes, these are edited “gotcha” videos meant to push an agenda, but they are both shocking and scary in the sense that the people in the video are profoundly unaware of reality and lacking any historical context.
The people in the videos espouse authoritarianism, dictatorship, the subjugation of women, totalitarian Jihadi fanaticism, an odious “us vs. them” mentality that quells free speech and dialog, and a blatant disdain for the liberal democracies that have given them civil liberties that are unimaginable in most countries.
Instead of bilateral understanding and empathy, the people in the video parrot the blatant propaganda that has been festering for four decades without any understanding of basic facts.
(here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here. here for a funny one. and many, many, many more…)
It is our collective responsibility to increase our skepticism of biased misinformation from all sides — far left and far right. It is our collective responsibility to see both sides in order to dismantle the extremism and hate that has been brewing for years in order to foster mutual understanding and empathy.
The modern-day Progrom that very recently happened in Los Angeles is a perfect example of what happens when we as a collective society succumb to years of misinformation and bias that was never about supporting Palestinians, reducing tension in the Middle East, and certainly not about coexistence or peace.
May we all see better days.
And I highly recommend watching this video
