One thing I think about every day (as an Israeli, I have to think about this every day) is how sad it makes me that the v-a-s-t majority of people who think I am a monster without knowing a thing about me don't actually _know_ anything about Israelis. We're evil caricatures in their heads that they made up and then "substantiated" through online videos. There is never even the slightest modicum of curiosity as to who we actually are, how we experienced life, what makes us laugh or cry. There is never the slighetst attempt to actually get to know us.
Not because we're actually angels rather than demons, but because we're... human. We laugh at certain jokes. We have certain customs. We're just people. Not better or worse than anyone else.
I find that particularly weird because, as someone with more than one holocaust survivor in his family, I've always found the topic of who the N4zis really were *as people* to be fascinating. Even if you think an entire group of people are evil (and I will say without a blush that I think the N4zis were evil), not even being remotely curious as to what these people even are and what made them tick is a sign that you don't actually... care about anyone in this story. This is just about you. This isn't about Jews or Palestinians to these people because they don't know either of us and don't care.
These people will recite to you like scholars about Shiekh Yassin and the Nakba, but they won't know who Gali Atari or Dalia Rabikovich are. They won't dare to entertain the thought that Israeli humans born and raised produced poetry, music, medicine and joy. As small children, as pacifist singers. As someone just like them.
They don't see my childhood experiences in Israel's parks and swimming pools. They won't care that this is the place I had my first kiss and my first heartbreak. None of that exists. My entire lived experience as a human being is just noise to them, and I'm supposed to either erase all that because of a story they tell about me, or justifiably be destr0yed.
I am a priori *not a person* and everything about my life and what happens to me is just a prop in some clueless westerner's morality play.
It's infuriating how people so utterly smug about their righteousness are so extremely obtuse and devoid of any empathy. There is zero effort to actually consider us to be human beings. We're evil by definition, and that's that.
I'm very glad we got people like you on our side. I truly appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
As always, a great read, Chico. I'd pick Israel every day this week and twice on Sunday. By what claim do these people have, by what historic lands, this made-up place at best adopting a Roman slant used against the Jews, then the British mandate for a huge region covering Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt a term hijacked by the KGB and an Egyptian man called Yasser Arafat. No maps, no land, no history that takes us back 3000 years, as the Merneptah Stele shows us. 'Israel Is'.
99% of "Israel Critics", "Genocide" accusers a.o. don´t (want to) know anything about Israel and "the Jews" and the history of the region in which there now once again is a Jewish state as several times before.
They spout hair-raising statements completely divorced from reality—statements teeming with total, willful ignorance, outrageous lies, and smug certainty. This suggests that all these distortions, fractional "truths," and their near-total ignorance have been drilled into them for decades by parents, teachers, "journalists", politicians—while officially "Holocaust Remembrance Days" were being absolved.
Their statements are no different from what Nazis in Germany, other fascists, and most "perfectly ordinary people" across Europe "knew" a hundred years ago.
The more their utter ignorance is exposed, the more obstinately they defend and entrench themselves in their lies; acknowledging the full extent of their ignorance and falsehoods seems unbearable to them—it appears more bearable to simply keep lying and hating.
That is why it is practically impossible to engage in a rational, argument-based conversation with them.
A fundamental addressing of ages old antisemitism and the Shoah—has never taken place anywhere, not even after the "Third Reich".
When from a very young age I listened mainly to "Black Music"—even before that term actually existed— while everyone around me preferred what I would call „White Trash Rock&Pop“, a neighbour disparagingly remarked at her birthday party, a few years after the last Concentration Camp had been closed, that what I prefer would be all "N*gger music“.
Then in protest I left the birthday table and ran through the streets of my small German town shouting to anyone around: "Mrs. X says that *this* and *that*—the music I scrape together the money for from my allowance and my own earnings—is 'n*gger music'!" "I won't come back home or return to the party until Mrs. X explicitly apologizes." Even the "majority" of passersby on the sidewalk agreed with me that "that just isn't on. It´s disgusting.“ - maybe or surely they perceived me as „a little boy who doesn´t know what´s right“ and „showed leniency“.
Then the neighbour Dame performed something that should be accepted as "apology".
I was around 8 or 9 years of age those days; and I haven´t "changed" concerning that, as people and their dull behaviour hasn´t changed also.
Nowadays I should run around the streets in favour of Israel and rage against its haters, and sometimes I do, wearing an Israel Button or a „F*ck Hamas“ shirt, and often get spat at, attacked and insulted.
If everyone of those "Democratic Voters“ nowadays would say to anyone suitable "I won´t take place anymore at your table until you reject and set straight all those lies about "The Jews", there would hardly be any birthday party these days, around 80 years after the last Concentration Camp has closed.
Two years after that birthday the News came that it was found out her husband (who was around 20 years senior to her) had committed a vast number of crimes in Concentration Camps and faced a trial.
But apart from such trials a genuine "reckoning with the past"—addressing the comprehensive background of millennia-old antisemitism and the Shoah—has never taken place anywhere.
The accusations and feelings of guilt borne by the perpetrator nations were—and remain—apparently that unbearable to the murderers that they now relish the chance to "pay back to the Jews“.
Why do the Islamists and the Hard Left make the phoney racism charge when someone criticizes Islam? The answer is quite transparent. In the United States, with our shameful history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and the treatment of Native American, many Americans feel ashamed of our past in that respect. Thus, the effort to somehow insinuate Islam into the Black and Native American historical and discriminatory experience, which is kind of disgraceful. There’s a term for that: cultural appropriation.
One thing I think about every day (as an Israeli, I have to think about this every day) is how sad it makes me that the v-a-s-t majority of people who think I am a monster without knowing a thing about me don't actually _know_ anything about Israelis. We're evil caricatures in their heads that they made up and then "substantiated" through online videos. There is never even the slightest modicum of curiosity as to who we actually are, how we experienced life, what makes us laugh or cry. There is never the slighetst attempt to actually get to know us.
Not because we're actually angels rather than demons, but because we're... human. We laugh at certain jokes. We have certain customs. We're just people. Not better or worse than anyone else.
I find that particularly weird because, as someone with more than one holocaust survivor in his family, I've always found the topic of who the N4zis really were *as people* to be fascinating. Even if you think an entire group of people are evil (and I will say without a blush that I think the N4zis were evil), not even being remotely curious as to what these people even are and what made them tick is a sign that you don't actually... care about anyone in this story. This is just about you. This isn't about Jews or Palestinians to these people because they don't know either of us and don't care.
These people will recite to you like scholars about Shiekh Yassin and the Nakba, but they won't know who Gali Atari or Dalia Rabikovich are. They won't dare to entertain the thought that Israeli humans born and raised produced poetry, music, medicine and joy. As small children, as pacifist singers. As someone just like them.
They don't see my childhood experiences in Israel's parks and swimming pools. They won't care that this is the place I had my first kiss and my first heartbreak. None of that exists. My entire lived experience as a human being is just noise to them, and I'm supposed to either erase all that because of a story they tell about me, or justifiably be destr0yed.
I am a priori *not a person* and everything about my life and what happens to me is just a prop in some clueless westerner's morality play.
It's infuriating how people so utterly smug about their righteousness are so extremely obtuse and devoid of any empathy. There is zero effort to actually consider us to be human beings. We're evil by definition, and that's that.
I'm very glad we got people like you on our side. I truly appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
As always, a great read, Chico. I'd pick Israel every day this week and twice on Sunday. By what claim do these people have, by what historic lands, this made-up place at best adopting a Roman slant used against the Jews, then the British mandate for a huge region covering Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt a term hijacked by the KGB and an Egyptian man called Yasser Arafat. No maps, no land, no history that takes us back 3000 years, as the Merneptah Stele shows us. 'Israel Is'.
99% of "Israel Critics", "Genocide" accusers a.o. don´t (want to) know anything about Israel and "the Jews" and the history of the region in which there now once again is a Jewish state as several times before.
They spout hair-raising statements completely divorced from reality—statements teeming with total, willful ignorance, outrageous lies, and smug certainty. This suggests that all these distortions, fractional "truths," and their near-total ignorance have been drilled into them for decades by parents, teachers, "journalists", politicians—while officially "Holocaust Remembrance Days" were being absolved.
Their statements are no different from what Nazis in Germany, other fascists, and most "perfectly ordinary people" across Europe "knew" a hundred years ago.
The more their utter ignorance is exposed, the more obstinately they defend and entrench themselves in their lies; acknowledging the full extent of their ignorance and falsehoods seems unbearable to them—it appears more bearable to simply keep lying and hating.
That is why it is practically impossible to engage in a rational, argument-based conversation with them.
A fundamental addressing of ages old antisemitism and the Shoah—has never taken place anywhere, not even after the "Third Reich".
When from a very young age I listened mainly to "Black Music"—even before that term actually existed— while everyone around me preferred what I would call „White Trash Rock&Pop“, a neighbour disparagingly remarked at her birthday party, a few years after the last Concentration Camp had been closed, that what I prefer would be all "N*gger music“.
Then in protest I left the birthday table and ran through the streets of my small German town shouting to anyone around: "Mrs. X says that *this* and *that*—the music I scrape together the money for from my allowance and my own earnings—is 'n*gger music'!" "I won't come back home or return to the party until Mrs. X explicitly apologizes." Even the "majority" of passersby on the sidewalk agreed with me that "that just isn't on. It´s disgusting.“ - maybe or surely they perceived me as „a little boy who doesn´t know what´s right“ and „showed leniency“.
Then the neighbour Dame performed something that should be accepted as "apology".
I was around 8 or 9 years of age those days; and I haven´t "changed" concerning that, as people and their dull behaviour hasn´t changed also.
Nowadays I should run around the streets in favour of Israel and rage against its haters, and sometimes I do, wearing an Israel Button or a „F*ck Hamas“ shirt, and often get spat at, attacked and insulted.
If everyone of those "Democratic Voters“ nowadays would say to anyone suitable "I won´t take place anymore at your table until you reject and set straight all those lies about "The Jews", there would hardly be any birthday party these days, around 80 years after the last Concentration Camp has closed.
Two years after that birthday the News came that it was found out her husband (who was around 20 years senior to her) had committed a vast number of crimes in Concentration Camps and faced a trial.
But apart from such trials a genuine "reckoning with the past"—addressing the comprehensive background of millennia-old antisemitism and the Shoah—has never taken place anywhere.
The accusations and feelings of guilt borne by the perpetrator nations were—and remain—apparently that unbearable to the murderers that they now relish the chance to "pay back to the Jews“.
Why do the Islamists and the Hard Left make the phoney racism charge when someone criticizes Islam? The answer is quite transparent. In the United States, with our shameful history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and the treatment of Native American, many Americans feel ashamed of our past in that respect. Thus, the effort to somehow insinuate Islam into the Black and Native American historical and discriminatory experience, which is kind of disgraceful. There’s a term for that: cultural appropriation.