Peace In Our Time
A message for My Friends
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the publication of Mein Kampf, I am far more disquieted by the drinking of my peers than by the violence of my enemies. It has been 9 days since the greatest act of abject violence against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and most of my peers who stood in solidarity with me last Saturday, spent this Saturday out on the town. I know because they posted about it.
For me, and around 80-90% of the Jews I know, the thought of partying at a time like this isn’t just difficult; it’s impossible. The way that I feel is the way that I think most young Jews feel: There’s nothing to celebrate until the captives come home.
After the longest 9 days of my life, there is nothing I would like to do more than go to a bar with a friend and relax. Nothing. But that is a luxury I no longer have, and it’s something I took for granted. I took for granted that I could go out and celebrate and enjoy life whenever I wanted; I think we all did.
How many times have you canceled on a friend, just because you were tired? How many times have you postponed to next week, because the idea that one of you wouldn’t be there next week never even crossed your mind? We take this life for granted – this week, your Jewish friends found out the hard way.
A friend of mine and I, who I hadn’t seen since 2019 when he started his service in Israel, were supposed to get a beer together on October 10th. On October 9th, he was on a flight back to Israel.
Instead of drinking together this week, we’ve been fighting. Fighting for our people. If you aren’t Jewish, it might be difficult to understand this, but every single one of your Jewish Zionist friends has been called up.
When the Ancient Israelites went out to battle Ammon, there were three different brigades: the soldiers, the arms-bearers, and the pray-ers. Not every Jew fights, but every Jew serves.
Over the past 9 days, we have all been called up, and it has made me so proud to be a Jew to see how quickly we answered.
But make no mistake – our enemies did the same. The voices of antizionism, which at this point has clearly revealed itself to be an antisemitic cover, have been gathering their strength all across the world. They organized an international day of Jihad on October 13th, they have been spreading misinformation about the depravity of the attacks, and they have mobilized their social media mercenaries to turn the narrative around against the Jews.
I began writing about the rise of antisemitism in America in May of 2021. I have spent roughly 1000 days following the antizionist propaganda pattern, and it’s formulaic. This is how it happens.
Step 1: Violence happens in Israel/Palestine.
Step 2: Create an infographic/slogan about it. (i.e. “Save Sheikh Jarrah”) that does not explain the context of the issue (i.e. The Sheikh Jarrah dispute was a legal dispute over 100 years of different property laws for the same plot of land.)
Step 3: Spread that infographic/slogan until champagne socialists are also spreading it
Step 4: Wait for Jewish response explaining the context behind the event
Step 5: Reinforce the narrative that everything bad that happens in I/P is the result of the Israeli occupation.
Step 6: Do not offer any solutions – force the Jews to explain the problem, use their explanation as a demonstration of their guilt, and force them to generate a solution
Step 7: Reject their solution because it is still Zionist imperialism; shout ‘Free Palestine’ in their faces, and repeat again in 6 months.
Over the past 1000 days, I have seen this happen time and again. The way you know it has been effective is by asking yourself whether or not you know what a “Free Palestine” looks like. If the answer is yes, you know exactly what a “Free Palestine” looks like and you know what antizionists plan to do with the 8 million Jews who live there, please tell me. If, however, you cannot, the propaganda is working.
People usually think that the goal of propaganda is to make them believe something that they wouldn’t otherwise believe, but that’s actually not true. The goal of propaganda is to sow doubt in your mind about the things you once believed to be true.
Joseph Goebbels called this, ‘The Big Lie.’ Keep it short, keep it simple, and repeat it often. If you can create a phrase like this, you can win a debate in someone’s mind that never happened. Here’s an example:
“Israel is an apartheid state.”
5 words, 8 syllables.
You’ve heard that phrase repeated so many times that you may have actually started to believe it. And, not only did you believe it, but you believed it without question.
But, let me ask you, have you ever seen a debate about whether or not Israel is an apartheid state? Have you ever seen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar debate Brad Sherman or Nikki Haley?
If someone is going to make a claim that is as damning as labeling an entire nation as an apartheid state, they should have to defend that claim. But they don’t. They don’t because they don’t have to. They don’t have to because you already accepted their argument without even realizing it.
This is why I am so much more concerned with the partying of my peers than with the actions of our enemies. Hitler told the world exactly what he was going to do in 1923. Exactly. But, in 1923, with inflation so high, with a world coming out of years of international crisis and plague, with a sense of morality called into question by the tempest of modernity, the rest of the world drank. They drank, and they partied, and they even waxed poetic about peace. But the Jews weren’t drinking. The Jews were too busy trying to get to Israel by any means necessary.
In 1923, Hitler published Mein Kampf, in which he laid out his vision for the future extermination of Jews
In 1926, The U.S. Secretary of State and the French Foreign Minister signed the Kellogg-Briand pact, banning war for all time.
In 1932, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
In 1935, he passed the Nuremberg Laws, which made Jews legally different from other human beings.
In 1938, Neville Chamberlain famously announced to the British people that there would be, “Peace in Our Time.” The following year, Hitler invaded Poland. Two months later, the Nazis globalized their intifada with Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass where regular German citizens destroyed Jewish homes and businesses.
In 1939, on September 1st, Hitler invaded Poland.
For 16 years, peace was the order of the day. But you cannot make peace with a warmonger. You cannot make peace with Hitler, and you cannot make peace with Hamas. The antisemites of the world have been quite clear about their intentions: they wish to kill all of the Jews.
As Thomas Paine once wrote, if there must be trouble, let it be in my day, so that my child may know peace.
Understand something. There are Jews who survived Hitler, only to be later killed by Hamas. Our enemies have changed their names, but they have not changed their colors.
If there is to be peace in our time, it will only come after we destroy Hamas and all of its supporters. If you are comfortable enough in your life right now that you can go out drinking, ask yourself this question: what global event would need to happen to make you stop?