When Tucker Carlson described the Book of Esther as celebrating a “genocide of Persians,” he did the world a favor. Not because his perspective was correct or well-informed, but just the opposite. His obvious lie, so clearly detached from reality, unwittingly revealed the true nature of the more contemporary charges of genocide leveled at the same People of Israel.

The Book of Esther offers no possibility for error regarding who was responsible for the violence. It tells us that Haman convinced the Persian king, whose empire stretched to the very limits of the civilized world, to issue a decree seeking annihilation of the Jews. When Queen Esther intervened, disclosing that she was a Jew herself, the king was bound by Persian law that his decrees not be rescinded. Instead he issued a second one, permitting the Jews to defend themselves. The fighting that followed, per the Biblical text, was not an offensive campaign, but self-defense against a genocidal mob.

The text emphasizes this in the same verse that tells us that 75,000 were killed (Esther 9:16). It tells us that, contrary to Carlson’s delusional retelling, the dead were neither Persians nor members of any one nation or faith. Instead, the casualties are described as “from those who hated them.” Their one unifying characteristic was that they had come out to kill Jews.

Yet in Carlson’s twisted version, all of this context was erased. The initiating threat vanished. The murderous mob disappeared. All that remained was a single statistic reframed as evidence of Jewish aggression, self-defense recast as “genocide.” Carlson only found the Book of Esther “controversial” after he had deprived the sacred text of both meaning and value.

This was no innocent misreading of the Bible. On the contrary, it exposed a broader pattern which is as evident regarding Israel the modern country as Israel the ancient people. The side responding to violence is recast as the initiator, while the culpability of those that launched the attack is ignored. The mechanism is simple: remove chronology, agency, and intent. Reduce everything to a single, emotionally charged statistic, and then use that casualty figure to invert reality.

And that brings us to the recent conflict in Gaza.

Here, too, numbers were presented without the events that produced them. The initiating attack was omitted, along with the stated intent of the attacking party. The distinction between targeting civilians and combatants was blurred or erased. And what remained was a false narrative in which the party responding to violence was portrayed as the aggressor, while the party that initiated the violence was treated as a passive backdrop.

To be clear, the parallel is not between Esther and Gaza as historical events, but between the use of the same rhetorical mechanism to distort them. In both cases, context is erased in favor of an immoral calculus in which the side with the lower casualty count is presumed to be the villain. Numbers alone determine guilt, while history is deemed irrelevant.

Reality, of course, does not work that way, but all too many political and media figures routinely partner with Haman’s ideological descendants to demonize Jews.

It is a criminal violation of the laws of warfare to store weapons in a school, or to use a hospital as a military base. Moreover, once this crime has been committed, the former school or hospital becomes a legitimate military target as a result. Yet Hamas knew that it could commit such crimes with impunity, because global media outlets would falsely report that Israel bombed a school or hospital, rather than the Hamas base that they had become.

To take a specific example, when Israel bombed the Hamas Command and Control center located in the Nasser Hospital building in Khan Younis, CNN reported upon the “outrage” that Israel bombed a hospital and “killed journalists, health workers and emergency response crews.” It failed to mention that the erstwhile hospital was a base for Hamas fighters that had been used to imprison hostages.

This sort of omission of relevant context happened far too often to be brushed away as an innocent error. In a just and decent world, CNN executives would have faced federal charges under the Antiterrorism Act for having provided material support to Hamas.

Such lies have a real human cost: Hamas puts journalists, doctors, and children at risk knowing both that Israel will risk her own soldiers’ lives to take more efforts to avoid harming them than would any other military force, and that despite this, when civilians are inevitably harmed, Israel rather than Hamas will be blamed. Gazan children died in the conflict because Hamas knew it could rely upon CNN to cover for its crimes.

Antisemitism does not merely harm Jews.

The Book of Esther is deliberately structured to highlight the reversal of fortune-the oppressed rising up against their would‑be oppressors. But the story is also careful to preserve the moral logic of that reversal. The Jews defend themselves; they do not plunder, nor do they initiate violence. The text is a celebration of survival, not slaughter.

When Carlson stripped away that context, he was not offering a “new interpretation” but a grotesque distortion. He took a story of self‑defense and deliverance and turned it into a false tale of aggression.

The lesson of Esther, and Carlson’s distortion thereof, is not that numbers are irrelevant, but that numbers without context are dangerous. They can reverse victims and villains. They can invert the moral order of a story. And they can mislead us into condemning those who are simply fighting for their survival.

In an age saturated with data but starved for context, the ancient text offers practical lessons as applicable today as at any time in the past.

Image Credit: Book of Esther by Anita Gould with CC BY-NC 2.0 license on Flickr

Provoking outrage from the United Nations, human-rights organizations and Arab governments, Israel is blocking further aid to Gaza. It comes as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has ended and Hamas refuses to agree to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire extension. But even without this valid reason, and despite the condemnations, Israel has adopted the morally correct approach.

For more than a year, the Biden administration’s insistence that Israel provide support to its mortal enemies prolonged the conflict, trapped Palestinian civilians in a war zone, and condemned innocent hostages to months of torture, abuse and death.

There is a saying in the Midrash: “Those who are compassionate to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the compassionate.”

The billions of dollars that have flowed into Gaza over the past two decades under the guise of humanitarian aid enabled the governing genocidal junta to solidify its control, arm for war and indoctrinate the Arab populace to seek death and destruction. Hamas then carried out the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust and has broadcast its intent to repeat its atrocities if allowed to survive. The requirement that Israel sustain the same terrorists it must eliminate only further demonstrates the truth of this aphorism.

Days after Oct. 7, 2023, I predicted and dismissed the disingenuous calls for “restraint” that would hound Israel in the aftermath of the slaughter. This did not reflect a lack of concern for the costs of war; it was born of a commitment to human rights and an opposition to antisemitic double standards. As I wrote then, world leaders and members of Congress don’t call for restraint when people are fighting totalitarian regimes or terrorists, unless the victims are Jews.

In late October 2023, amid closed border crossings into Gaza, Biden administration officials predicted a humanitarian crisis, saying that fuel supplies were expected to last “a couple of days.” They did not mention at that early date that Hamas was considering trading hostages for that fuel. Rafael Hayun, an analyst and civilian hacker who monitors Hamas communications, went further in a recent interview with Ami Magazine. He claimed that had the siege lasted longer, “we would have had everything,” with Hamas fighters flying a white flag and turning over Yahya Sinwar, architect of the Oct. 7 murderous assault, to Israel.

Even as Israel worked to provide Gazan hospitals with fuel, the Biden administration forced Israel to surrender its critical bargaining chips and supply Hamas with all the fuel it needed, plus enough food and other aid to stock every pantry in Gaza. This is why—after months of cries from the United Nations and others of “impending famine”—healthy, well-fed Hamas fighters and supporters were dancing and cheering as they paraded the coffins of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, babies they kidnapped and slaughters had slaughtered. The only emaciated victims in sight were the surviving hostages they had deliberately starved.

None of these lies were incidental, they are key to the strategies of Hamas and its Iranian, Qatari and European allies throughout the conflict. For nearly two decades Hamas built tunnels under civilian buildings and stored weapons in mosques, schools and shelters. They set up a data center beneath and borrowed connectivity from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters. Palestinian Authority officials noted that Hamas was maximizing civilian casualties for PR reasons, while world outlets unanimously blamed Israel for Hamas Health Ministry death counts so inflated and unrealistic as to be statistically impossible. Despite the cries of “genocide,” Israel remains the only party in the conflict working to save civilians from harm, and it has succeeded to an unprecedented degree.

It is also worth considering how innocent Gazan civilians truly are. During the Nazi era, civilians in every country under Hitler’s control—including Germany, Poland, France, Holland, Austria and Hungary—saved Jews from harm at great personal risk. Since Oct. 7, Israel has broadcast Arabic-language announcements on radio, television, social media and in print, promising security and a generous financial reward to anyone helping rescue a hostage. Not one Gazan has responded. Instead, they participated in the kidnappings, rapes, imprisonment, humiliation, torture of hostages and desecration of their bodies.

Where are the decent, innocent Gazans? Sadly, they are dead. Hamas has long since murdered anyone identified as gay or as a supporter of the Palestinian Authority, as well as anyone who opposed their iron-fisted and antisemitic agenda.

The withholding of aid has always been, and remains, a just and moral course of action. Hamas must release the hostages, abandon its explicitly genocidal mission and permanently disband. Aid should only come afterward to support the de-Nazification and rebuilding of Gaza. Until then, blame for all of the suffering in both Israel and the Strip must be placed firmly at the feet of the terrorists and their supporters around the world.

Photo Credit: Israel Foreign Ministry video on X/Twitter.

CJV President Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld issued the following statement:

The accusation of “genocide” against Israel is not merely risible, but was created by Jew-haters anxious to cover for the atrocities committed by the Hamas terror organization and its declared intent to implement Hitler’s Final Solution.
 
Pope John XXIII prayed in 1963, ‘Forgive us for the curse we falsely attached to their name as Jews.” Pope Francis should recall these words by his predecessor, and the improvement in Catholic-Jewish relations they helped bring about.

Photo Credit: “General Audience with Pope Francis” by Catholic Church of England and Wales on Flickr.

CJV President Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld issued the following statement:

While the First Amendment requires that even the most repugnant voices have a chance to be heard, the first obligation of a university is to provide a safe environment in which students can learn. The judge simply ignored the fact that the rally will, like similar events at schools across the country, descend into not just glorification of hatred but actual harassment and threats to the safety of Jewish students—the reason the University correctly decided to prohibit the event in the first place.

We commend Governor Moore for the correct tenor of his response, recognizing that incitement to violence is unacceptable, and that October 7 should be remembered for the “heinous terrorist attack on Israel that took innocent lives.” Instead, thanks to distortion of law by a federal judge, that day will see students and others march across the UMD campus in support of bigotry and hate, couched in the obscene claim that it is somehow “genocidal” to halt the effort of the genocidal Hamas terror organization to murder innocent Jews.

Image credit: Ryan Kosmides at Unsplash

We are drowning in a sea of clichés that purport to provide guidance needed to navigate the manifold strategic challenges that confront us. The problem is that clichés contain some truth but rarely furnish a complete picture and, as such, tend as much to obscure as to enlighten. Some examples present.

One incessantly repeated refrain is that “ransoming captives (Pidyon Shvuyim) is the most important mitzvah in the Torah,” to which all other interests are secondary, if that.

Most highways in Israel feature such signs. It is certainly understandable that the relatives of hostages feel this way. Their loved one is the world to them and little else matters.

The kernel of truth is that Rambam (Laws of the Gifts to the Poor, 8:10) stated that “there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives,” so great that Rambam repeats this point again in the same paragraph. Yet, the context sheds a different light; Rambam did not include this law in the “Laws of Preservation of Life” or the “Laws of War” but in the “Laws of Tzedakah.” That is to say, ransoming captives is a great mitzvah because it incorporates all the different varieties of tzedakah, “for a captive is among those who are hungry, thirsty, unclothed and is in mortal peril.” In terms of tzedakah there is no greater mitzvah – but even in terms of tzedakah, there are limitations derived from the Talmud (Gittin 45a) that Rambam also embraces (ibid 8:12), that “we do not redeem captives for more than their worth for the benefit of civilization.”

How can these two ideas – the importance of the mitzvah v. the inherent limitations imposed on its fulfillment – coexist? It is quite comprehensible as long as we do not reduce the teaching of our sages to a simplistic cliché. Our sages assumed that ransoming captives required only money, and even then placed limitations on its practice, because the survival of the community takes precedence over the survival of any one individual. (For that reason, the laws of Pikuach Nefesh [preservation of life] are much more liberally applied when the endangered party is the community than when it is an individual.)

Thus, the Talmud taught that we do not ransom captives for “more than their worth” either “due to the financial pressure on the community,” which could be bankrupted by recurring kidnappings for monetary ransom, or because “an exorbitant ransom will incentivize the seizure of additional captives.”

In our agonizing situation, winning the release of our innocent hostages by paroling vicious murderers places enormous pressure on the community, which has paid and will again pay an awful price for such releases. Unrepentant terrorists, pledged to murder Jews, will once again be afforded the opportunity to do so. This is not speculation; this is reality. It has happened, it is happening (just a few weeks ago a precious Jewish soul was extinguished by an Arab murderer released in November’s hostage deal), and it will happen again.

Just as egregious, these deals “incentivize the seizure of additional captives.” There is no way to avert our eyes from that fundamental and infuriating reality. If we continue to make these deals, as we have for 40 years, we are stating quite clearly to our enemies that this tactic works, and they might as well do it again. Why wouldn’t they?

Add to this the insanity of withdrawing from Gazan territory we have conquered for the seventh time, which mocks the sacrifices of our soldiers and paves the way for the next round of conflict and more dead Jewish soldiers fighting over the same land. It is a poor reflection on our leaders that they have acquiesced so readily and for so long to these execrable exchanges instead of categorically ruling them out and applying real pressure on our enemies and the civilian population that supports them.

It is heartbreaking for the families and a trauma for our nation. It is reminiscent of a terminal illness in which the family is left to pray for a miracle because multiple life-saving organ transplants would require the deaths of the donors. We can only pray alongside them.

It is a trauma that will remain with us for decades which, perhaps, only victory can somewhat alleviate.

Another empty cliché frequently uttered is that the government must take every risk because “it breached the fundamental covenant with the people.”

There is a kernel of truth in that as well. There is an unwritten compact between the government and the governed in which the primary obligation of the former is to provide security for the latter. The Hamas invasion and subsequent atrocities breached that covenant as October 7 was a colossal failure at all levels of the establishment – military, security and political.

Nevertheless, if we think a little more deeply, that was not the only breakdown of the covenant. Every time a Jew is rammed, shot, stabbed, or hammered to death, or cannot live in his or home in the north or south – that is a breakdown of the covenant. The government of Israel had a covenant with the residents of Gush Katif whom it sent there to settle – that covenant was brutally mocked. If we cannot ride our roads without being stoned or sit in restaurants without being blown up, then these “covenants” are empty clichés, or, better, clichés recently invented for the purpose of bringing down this government.

The government owes all of us security – not just some – and the governments that supported Oslo, invited in our enemies and gave them money and weapons (what could possibly go wrong with that?), and then have coddled our enemies for decades, “mowing the lawn” rather than seeking solutions, and then releasing thousands of terrorists (including Sinwar) who then indulged in more barbarism against us, those governments also abrogated whatever covenant might exist.

Furthermore, we are entitled to be governed by the leaders we elect and not by unelected Supreme Court justices and unelected bureaucrats, both of whom have usurped the people’s power.

And we have the right to expect to live in our homes anywhere in our country without the constant fear of missiles, rockets, and drones falling on our heads.

A “covenant” between government and governed in Israel has hardly existed for many decades.

Such a cliché might play well in television studios and in opposition politics, but it is disconnected from reality.

A third clichéthat confounds us is the pursuit of “total victory.”

That is surely a worthy goal and most of the people who oppose it are the defeatists who have (mis)guided security policy for decades. The desire to surrender, to acquiesce in Hamas’ survival, to make another lopsided terrorist exchange that will just kill many more Jews in the future, are all products of self-loathing and/or a hatred for the Netanyahu government.

My objection to the cliché is not its substance; it is that our government’s current strategy cannot achieve it.

There is no way around this basic truth: the Arab world equates defeat with loss of land. That is why the establishment of Israel in 1948 sticks in their craw – but that is also why Egypt no longer perceives the Six Day War as a defeat and does construe the Yom Kippur War as a great victory. We have already surrendered most of the land won in 1967 in a war of self-defense. And the Yom Kippur War ended – at least the diplomacy ended – with Egypt (and Syria) gaining territory at Israel’s expense, and within a decade, Egypt had recovered every inch of land it lost in 1967.

There cannot be victory, total or otherwise, unless Israel controls Gaza, period, and resettles it. Seeing Israeli flags flying over thriving Jewish communities is the only image of “total victory” that the Arabs will recognize, grieve over, regret their ruthless assault, and be deterred from attempting again.

The sad reality is that we do not – maybe even cannot – understand the mentality of our enemies. When they say they “prefer death to life,” we shrug our shoulders and deem it hyperbole. The devastation of their buildings and infrastructure means nothing to them. The arrest and incarceration of their terrorists, rapists, and butchers mean nothing to them. They diverted billions of dollars in international aid just to build underground terror tunnels with which to harass us, leaving Gazans as indigent as they were before the money poured in.

They do not think like we do.

Sure, they might laud “martyrdom” and then (falsely) accuse us of genocide, which, if you think about it, is a reasonable means of achieving the martyrdom they crave. It is somewhat inconsistent – but is logical when we realize that the accusations are only made as part of their rhetorical warfare designed to weaken us, make us reassess our strategies and objectives, and allow them to continue to murder Jews unimpeded.

They really believe that they are entitled to murder Jews because of the “occupation” but Jews are not entitled to defend themselves because that is “genocide.” They are genuinely evil – but this belief is sincerely held.

If defeat is synonymous with loss of land, and Israel’s government has ruled out permanent Jewish sovereignty over Gaza, then “total victory” will never be achieved. Why then are we wasting our soldiers’ lives for an unachievable goal? Why would we even consider giving Hamas at this point the gift of survival through a deal that will only endanger all of us?

They need to fear us, and only then will they be deterred and learn to respect us.

The main obstacle that is still unaddressed is that Gazans – most or all of them – remain implacably opposed to Israel’s existence. They have been brainwashed or believe naturally that Jews are malevolent usurpers and that eventually they will succeed in destroying Israel. We cannot wish this away. We can kill ten Sinwar’s and he will be replaced instantly with ten other rabid haters who will rebuild Gaza – again – as a terror nest.

The only solution that secures Israel and provides a better life to Gazans is evacuation to other countries; if not, we are staring at the same morass that will bedevil us in just another few years. If they remain, they will rebuild in order to attack us again. Nothing will change and we will manufacture new clichés for the next massacre, the next brief conflict, and the next series of negotiations – all as equally vacuous as the current ones.

Right now, we are negotiating with ourselves and against ourselves.

Hamas is not an interlocutor so Israel is the only party that can be pressured and pressured without end. No one can say yes for Hamas, even their “yes” will not be credible, so we assume we hear “no” and keep conceding, but never enough for our enemies, or for some of our friends.

Unilateral negotiations are never sensible so here is some advice:

Antony Blinken has visited Israel nine times since the war started but has never visited Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar is nominally the other party to these discussions. Blinken should visit Sinwar and find out what he will offer, what concessions he is willing to make, and how Sinwar proposes to realize Blinken’s dream of a “secure and prosperous Middle East for all.”

Of course, Blinken might rightfully argue that he cannot trust Sinwar, that Blinken himself might be taken hostage in Gaza, and that he would rather not take the word of a homicidal maniac.

Then he would know how we feel. Blinken will not even visit Sinwar and yet expects us to live next door to him and give him the means to survive and kill us another day.

It would therefore be helpful if Blinken learned to keep his clichés to himself, for empty clichés are potent, time bombs that will harm us.

He should be asked at a news conference if he (or Biden or Harris) wants Hamas to survive. That will tell us all we need to know – and how total victory, if it is to be achieved, will require Israel to act in its own interest, resettle Gaza, evacuate those in the local population who refuse to accept Israel’s sovereignty or generally see no future for themselves under any Arab rule, and exact a real and enduring price from those who attacked us.

Then the better world we all want will be much closer.

Originally published in the Israel National News

At this writing, businesses in downtown Chicago have been boarding up their windows in preparation for “mostly peaceful” protests during the Democratic National Convention. The purpose of these protests is ostensibly apolitical, given that the protesters intend to oppose the current position of both major American political parties and the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign: supporting Israel in its battle against a genocidal, antisemitic adversary. The question, though, is whether that will remain the case after the convention—and whether pro-civilization Democrats, not to mention the DNC’s new list of sponsors, will cry foul.

Past conventions have seen a slow but steady decline in support for Israel in the party platform, ever since Barack Obama became the party’s nominee. The 2000 and 2004 platforms declared that Jerusalem “should remain an undivided city” as the capital of Israel; the 2008 version, however, said that although it “is and will remain the capital of Israel,” how it is governed should be “a matter for final status negotiations.”

The 2008 platform was the first to separate “Palestinians” from “Arab leaders.” Critically, it removed the “Palestinian” issue from the context of peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, when in reality it was the hostility of the Arab League that created the “Israel-Palestinian conflict.” Only in the most current draft platform is there a new reference to “historic normalization” between Israel and Arab states; this is due to the successful Abraham Accords, signed just a month after the 2020 platform emerged.

In both 2004 and 2008, the party expected Palestinian refugees to find permanent homes in a Palestinian state, rather than Israel, and dismissed the notion that Israel might return to the 1949 armistice line as “unrealistic.” These positions disappeared in 2012 in a platform that explicitly referred to Palestinians as a “people” distinct from Jordanian and other Arabs—a claim that Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas himself would later reject. Despite Abbas’s own words, the 2016 version went even further, claiming that “Palestinians” needed an independent state for their “dignity.” Twice. That year was also the first time the platform declared Jerusalem a “matter for final status negotiations,” saying that it “should remain the capital of Israel” only after making this point.

This did not satisfy the “activists.” Delegates in 2016 flew the Palestinian flag on the convention floor while holding up signs in support of “Palestinian rights;” some said that Palestinian flags outnumbered the American ones. Others burned the Israeli flag outside while calling for violence against Israelis by chanting, “Long live the intifada.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, the 2020 platform was worse, kowtowing to the antisemitic wing of the party. For the first time since 2000, the platform condemned “unilateral actions” but the example given was “annexation” by Israel, rather than a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. The platform maintained previous opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) as “unfairly” singling out and delegitimizing Israel, yet appended support for “the Constitutional right of our citizens to free speech” as if that were somehow at risk. Since the 2020 convention was held entirely virtually at the height of the COVID pandemic, there was no way to measure the strength of opposition outside in the streets.

Against this backdrop, the newest draft platform might seem a welcome reversal. “The United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas,” it says, along with “the United States wants to see Hamas defeated.” It touts “a strong coalition to counter and deter Iran,” “stand[s] against incitement and terror,” and seeks a Lebanon “free from the grip of Iran-backed Hezbollah.” It retains support for Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” opposition to BDS—albeit with that “free speech” proviso—and says that Jerusalem “should remain the capital of Israel,” though with that proviso that its governance “is a matter for final status negotiations.”

To call this platform an improvement, however, would be myopic. None of the foregoing positions are actually new, nor do they represent a turn back towards fairness to Israel. Instead, the platform repeatedly focuses upon the needs of the “Palestinian people,” as if “Palestinian” were a descriptor uniquely applied to Arabs. Never mind that this is antisemitic historical revisionism, erasing 2000 years during which, to the contrary, the only people identified as “Palestinian” were Jews.

These new, exclusively non-Jewish “Palestinians” also warrant the platform’s only mention of “food insecurity,” even though the World Food Program USA lists Israel, its territories, and Gaza nowhere among the “10 Countries Suffering the Most From Hunger,” and food insecurity affects tens of millions of Americans even today. It is difficult to explain this without referencing humanity’s long history of inappropriate finger-pointing at Jews.

The platform even disparages former president and current candidate Donald Trump for “refus[ing] to endorse the political aspirations of the Palestinian people,” as if Jordan never existed or Abbas never declared their people to be one and the same. Caring for “humanitarian suffering” in Gaza is appropriate in context, but when the DNC expresses support for a populace distinguished by support for antisemitic massacres to the exclusion of Ebola patients in the Congo, it’s appropriate to wonder what their true priorities are.

And don’t forget: This is merely the draft. Democrats have yet to produce a platform acknowledging that Vice President Kamala Harris is now at the top of the ticket. We also have no idea how many who supported the burning of Israeli flags outside the 2016 DNC might now be seated as delegates inside. The amended platform may be much, much worse.

What has also changed at the DNC is the list of sponsors. With the exception of AT&T, which, with its predecessors, has provided communications services to both major conventions for more than a century, this year’s corporate sponsors all seem to be new. Per The Chicago Tribune, these include United Airlines, McDonald’s, Archer Daniels Midland Co., CME Group, Cboe Global Markets Inc., and Peoples Gas.

It could be that these corporations, whose reputations are newly tied to the actions of this year’s DNC, are the only ones who can step on the brakes, preventing the party from lurching further into anti-Israel and antisemitic territory. It seems unlikely that backhand support for Hamas and genocide is what they signed up for, and they can condition support for the DNC and the Harris campaign upon a platform that—as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so aptly put it—favors civilization over barbarism. One can only hope that this will prove to be the case.

Originally published in the Jewish News Syndicate

Photo Credit: Steve Bott on Flickr

Candace Owens launched into a rant on her YouTube show last week claiming that the Star of David is tied to child sacrifice and black magic. She “explained” that King Solomon, builder of the Holy Temple, had a ring that he used to command demons. All of this, she said, shocked her “to the core” but “if it’s on Wikipedia … that just must mean that it’s such an irreversible fact.”

This was not the first time Owens based one of her wilder conspiracy theories on the ubiquitous online resource. In her opinion, “It’s gotta be true if it’s on Wikipedia.” But endorsing Wikipedia fits neatly into Owens’s new position as a leading promoter of antisemitism because the web-based encyclopedia has what others have called its very own “Jewish Problem.” And unlike Owens, Wikipedia owes much of its spread to its generous connections to Big Tech.

Wikipedia’s antisemitism is practically ubiquitous across the website. It features an extensive article accusing Israel of “war crimes,” “indiscriminate attacks” and “genocide” as Israel seeks to eliminate the Hamas terror organization.

Regarding Hamas itself, however, Wikipedia merely says that “authors have characterized” (emphasis added) the Hamas charter as genocidal, although Hamas leaders themselves repeatedly declare that genocide against the Jewish nation is the group’s very purpose and mission. Instead, Wikipedia claims that the Hamas position regarding Israel has “evolved” from seeking its destruction to seeking its annihilation.

Readers of Wikipedia “learn” on multiple redundant pages that the wholesale expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from Israel is an uncontested fact. Never mind that Robert F. Kennedy documented the pride that Zionists took in Arab immigration, the genocidal intent of the Arab League when it attacked Israel in 1948 and that local Arabs were advised to voluntarily leave their homes until the Jews were exterminated. Yet according to Wikipedia, the real aggressors were unquestionably the Jews.

According to Wikipedia, an “apartheid” state is a Middle Eastern country in which both Jews and Arabs have civil rights, “Palestine” is a country that actually exists and Arabs are natives of the region. Wikipedia also has a long piece celebrating the propagation of this sort of bigotry via “Israel Apartheid Week” with “criticism” of its antisemitic hate relegated to the end.

Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger abandoned the organization in 2002. As documented on Wikipedia itself, Sanger noted that the site is dominated not by experts with actual, relevant knowledge, but by those who edit most frequently and insistently, not to mention the “trolls.” This is why major universities dismiss Wikipedia as an unreliable source that is unacceptable for academic work.

In June, Wikipedia took its bias to a new level, unironically stating that it considers the ADL an “unreliable” source on the Israel-Hamas War. The statistically impossible casualty counts provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, on the other hand, are cited as if they were credible.

The connection between Wikipedia and Big Tech is easy to establish. Though Wikipedia likes to beg regular users for money, its Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) features a who’s who of Big Tech donors: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce and more. Besides direct grants from these firms, woke programmers, engineers and other staff at companies like Apple and Google, as well as LinkedIn, Intel and Netflix have used matching gift programs to multiply their contributions.

The truth is that WMF, together with the Wikimedia Endowment, holds over $350 million in assets. This means that with no further donations or investments, Wikipedia can continue operating comfortably for over a century. Yet its relationship with Big Tech has only deepened and diversified.

In 2021, Wikimedia launched Wikimedia Enterprise, providing paid services for companies and organizations that reuse Wikipedia content on a large scale. A routine search using Google, Alexa or Siri often brings you a highlighted result drawn from Wikipedia like the Google “Knowledge Panel” at the top of search results. This is, in part, why a Google search for “apartheid” features recurring instances of antisemitic fiction on its first page of results.

Besides Big Tech, there is one more Wikipedia donor to consider: the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides has also given millions of dollars to groups that instigated and supported the antisemitic protests across America since Oct. 7. This is the company Wikimedia keeps.

Through direct links, integration with Wikimedia Enterprise and generous donations, Big Tech is enabling the spread of antisemitic hatred via the trolls of Wikipedia. Only the same Big Tech firms are positioned to compel Wikipedia to improve its contribution, editing and review processes to demonstrate the commitment to fairness and accuracy that should be the hallmark of any true source of knowledge.

Originally published in the Jewish News Syndicate

Photo Credit: Nohat on Wikimedia Commons

The new anti-Semitism — let’s call it Jew hate, since that is what it is, not a study of ethnography — realizes that Hitler really ruined it for Jew haters big time. If he only had been allied with America and Churchill, maybe it would be a political sacrament.

But instead he was a true war criminal, a criminal against all humanity, a Satan whose sole existence on earth led to 40-50 million deaths. His entire raison d’etre — reason for being — was to destroy Jews, to implement anti-Semitism. Along the way, he destroyed millions of American lives and millions of all others. So, no matter how much someone hates Jews, he simply cannot say in America “I happen to hate Jews because, well, I just hate all Jews. I am and anti-Semite. Y’know, like Hitler. I don’t just hate Bernie Sanders and George Soros. I also hate Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin and Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and Albert Einstein and the whole bunch of them.”

You can’t say that after Hitler. Hitler ruined a good thing for people who found Jew-hatred a nice way to make a pretty penny: Father Charles Coughlin of the Dearborn area, Gerald L.K. Smith, William Dudley Pelley, Fritz Kuhn, Robert Edward Edmondson, the whole priesthood of those warlocks.

If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then Jew hatred is its oldest hobby and sport. There’s a Jew out there for everyone to hate. Bigoted landlords can rant about their Jewish tenants who ask for heat in the winter, and bigoted tenants who are eight months behind on the rent can rant about their Jewish landlord.

Jew-hating capitalists point to Trotsky and Bernie Sanders and even fabricate that non-Jewish communists like Lavrentiy Beria were Jewish. (He was born and raised Orthodox — Russian Christian Orthodox.)

Jew-hating socialists blame Milton Friedman or even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for capitalism. Anti-Semities would not hire Jews into America’s elite banking system as late as the 1960s; yet jealous and ignorant common people, even former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George Brown, accused Jews of owning the banks.

When one-third of Christendom died during the mid-14th Century from Bubonic Plague — the Black Death — Jews throughout Europe were accused of poisoning all wells in the continent to kill them, even though Jews were dying in similar numbers, though a bit less because of religious rituals that require Jews, as a matter of Judaic law, to wash their hands before eating bread, before dipping foods, and after exiting the lavatory. It is what it is.

Because Hitler has made it uncool to say out loud “I hate all F – – – ing Jews,” and since such haters still linger among us, they have had to find new ways to identify themselves.

The Language of the Anti-Semite

After trial and error, with the benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into American higher educational institutions and Middle Eastern Studies departments, a new term that was barely used in the 1950’s entered our lexicon with all the frequency of other new terms like LOL, ROTFL, FOMO, ICYMI, microaggression, meme, AI, virtue signaling, safe space, mojo, deplatform, deep state, inclusive, and pickleball. That term?

“I am not anti-Semitic. I have nothing against Jews. My husband is a Jew. I have Jewish friends. I was just at a rally for Bernie Sanders with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m just anti-Zionist.” Anti-Zionist. Get it? Got it? Good.

The reality is that Zionism is part and parcel of the definition of Judaism. It is like saying “I am not against Jews. I am only against people who circumcise their sons (Gen. 17:10-14; Lev. 12:3), eat kosher meat (Lev. 11:1-31;  Deut. 14:1-21), and celebrate their Sabbath from eighteen minutes before sunset on Fridays until nightfall on Saturdays (Gen. 2:1-3). But I’m not anti-Semitic. I don’t have a single anti-Semitic bone in my body.”

It really is a thing. Hitler forced these poor Jew haters to find a new term for their anti-Semitism. Then they find their assemblage of useful idiots to parrot the term. “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m just anti-Zionist.” The less sophisticated often let the cat out of the bag a bit by erroneously letting slip, “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m just anti-Israel.” Ooops.

And the more sophisticated, realizing by now that “Anti-Zionism” and “Anti-Semitism” are identical, are test-running a new one: “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m not even anti-Zionist. I’m just anti-Netanyahu.”  Oh, that clears it up.

The thing is, Netanyahu has been elected repeatedly by the Israeli public to be their Prime Minister. As in any true democracy, he has occasionally lost, too. In the most recent polling, a plurality of those polled said they still prefer Netanyahu for Prime Minister if elections are held now. (The strong majority also endorse continuing the Gaza struggle until Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages, and oppose an Arab country being formed west of the Jordan River. In other words, no “Two State Solution.” From the River to the Sea, only one country.)

Identifying the Anti-Semite

Even so, how are the uninitiated to tell for sure when a self-described “anti-Zionist” really is a Hitler-quality Jew hater? OK. Here goes: the Dov Fischer Guide for Ferreting out a Jew Hater Who Says He Is Only an Anti-Zionist:

When you tear up your college campus for two months protesting Israel but don’t care about Xi’s China, Maduro’s Venezuela, Putin’s Russia, or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea you’re probably an anti-Semite.

When you boycott hummus made by a company based in Astoria, Queens and Virginia because it has a Hebrew name but don’t boycott Apple or Nike products made in China, you’re probably an anti-Semite.

When you force Jews at your campus to detour the main campus but don’t do that to anyone else, you’re probably an anti-Semite.

Just bear with me a bit before you write snarky comments that it never will happen. I know it never will happen. But that’s not the point here. Okay.

Imagine you wake up to news reports on Israeli television and in the online and print newspapers that on Saturday night 100,000 or 200,000 Gazan Arabs (there are no “Palestinians”) rallied, rioted a bit, blocked traffic, and fought with Arab (there are no “Palestinians”) police. Throughout their melee, these were the slogans:

1. Give back the Accursed Hostages!

2. Hamas Must Go Now!

3. Yayha Sinwar, Crime Minister

4. Sinwar to Death! We will blot out his name and turn his house into a field!

5. Death to Sinwar, Meshall, Deif, and Abbas (All Abbases)!

6. Peace with the Zionists at All Costs.

7. Let Them Have ‘West Bank’ and Leave Us Gaza City, Khan Yunis, and Rafiach.

Then more riots and demonstrations week after week at Hamas tunnels where Hamas leaders hide.

Then demonstrations at whatever Gaza “hospitals” still stand.

Then attacks on UNRWA buildings in Gaza.

All with red, green, and black flags for Arab Gaza and Arab Judea and Samaria. (There is no Palestine.)

Then even more and angrier and even larger mass demonstrations with major Gazan celebrities in the centers of Gaza City and Khan Yunis. The leaders: Yahir Najid. Ehab Barakat. Shakira Bresslafa. Yajir Ghulam. Gildun Halaby. All the superstars of Gaza. And the demands even stronger:

1. Salaam at All Costs!

2. Sababa Now!

3. Return the Hostages for Sababa!

4. Itbach al Hamas!

5. Leave the Accursed Zionists Alone!

6. You Are Our Misfortune, Hamas

7. From the River to the Sea, Let’s Drown Hamas in Both!

8. We Don’t Want Piers; We Want Peace.

9. We Aren’t Hungry for Food; We Are Hungry for Peace

10. UNRWA and Biden: Keep Your Pork Salami. We Want Halal Salaam.

Can you imagine the impact on the mindset of the average Israeli? Not Israel’s treasonous left, but the relatively sensible “uncertain” Israeli. The impact would be:

1. We are winning. They are getting desperate.

2. The nine months of bombing is breaking them and destroying them.

3. They know they are losing. and they can’t take it anymore.

4. We are precisely on the right course, and they will utterly break soon.

5. We have them where we want them, and we dare not let up for a moment now because they are starting to wave white flags.

6. Intensify the bombing and ground attacks now, and crush them.

Okay? That’s what we would think and say if they were doing that.

So what do you expect them to think and say when our treasonous Left does just that?

Originally published in the Israel National News

Photo Credit: United Nations Photo on Flickr