PS My own feeling is that people respond this way to the "threat" of equality because they are deeply aware of all the harm they've inflicted on the people they've subjugated, while believing (or trying to believe) that the subjugation has been necessary for their own protection - and they know in their hearts that if they were treated that way themselves, if given the chance, they'd want revenge. Because as humans we feel the desire for revenge so strongly, it doesn't really work just to site historical examples of revenge not happening, especially when there are many counter examples. Anyway, please go deeper into this.
This is spot on. Oppressors assume that the oppressed would do to them what they are doing to the oppressed if only they could. Freud called this "projection," and violent resistance only reinforces that. The irony is palpable as Israel was founded in part by the Haganah, the Stern Gang and other Zionist terror organizations. (There's even a Haganah museum in Tel Aviv.) We saw psychological condition this not just in the apartheid period in South Africa, but it carries through to this day. Traveling in South Africa I was struck by how white South Africans (and, frankly, whites elsewhere) find it very difficult to accept that the black majority is NOT oppressing them.
Is zionism fear wrapped in supremacy, or supremacy wrapped in fear? Regardless each requires the other.
This is apparent when zionist say with all seriousness, nonsensical statements like “antisemitism is the oldest form of hate” and “ the Holocaust was the worst crime in history”.
Michal, I totally agree. We have to stop giving fellow Jews the “fear of antisemitism pass” and start insisting on responsible personal behaviour and antiracist thinking in the here and now. My exploration of “When Victims became Victimizers” can be explored in a chapter in my own writings here: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/items/cab26fca-8e42-4f9d-93fa-38d3a0092934
Terrific insight, Michael! What you wrote here is one reason why I prefer two states to one state, at least in the interim, even though I am opposed to Zionism and believe it to be a false idolatry.
There would still not be total equality between Jews and Palestinians because the West Bank is not connected to Gaza, and Palestinians would face barriers and checkpoints, when traveling from one location to the other. But there would be enough equality so that Israel would no longer be an apartheid state that is engaging in the systematic oppression of Palestinians.
And Israel would no longer be a shanda for the goyim, whose reprehensible conduct plays into the worst antisemitic stereotypes, and, therefore, endangers the lives of Jews in Israel-Palestine and the Diaspsora.
After some trust develops between Jews and Palestinians, it may be possible to transition to one state where everyone has full equality. The policy of the United States government should be to suspend most, perhaps all, U.S. economic and military aid to Israel until Israel fully withdraws from Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank. The international community will somehow have to disarm Hamas simultaneously.
Anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists will need to form a coalition in order to accomplish this, just as Peter said here.
This is tremendously important. I have too many friends who feel exactly as you describe. Please explore it more deeply with us, either here in your solo comments, or in one of your longer weekly conversations.
With all due respect, your conflating "supremacy" with "fear"? First of all Itotally disagree with you rsupremacy label...from whence it came to you, I cannot imagine. The Fear,though (from my and my family's history) is very real. We all have, or should have, learned to believe what people say. Mamdani has voiced his Jew Hatred over the many years. That some people wish to believe that he suddenly "saw the light", is at best wishful thinking and at worst disasterous. My parents were Holocaust survivors and have left in me and my generation antennae to lurking danger...these antennae are working overtime in NYC.
It seems like the crux of the matter is that expressions of compassion and respect for the human rights of Palestinians are translated to mean "Jew hatred." I think this is the moral injury getting in the way of seeing mutual humanity.
Are expressions of compassion and respect for the human rights of the descendants of the Nazis viewed the same way?
"Seeing the light" -- I think you mean developing his viewpoint., something that people do, something we all should do. This is not disastrous. Changing, evolving into a more sophisticated understanding...isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't everyone do that? Shouldn't developing a view in which one can see the complex humanity in others be a good thing?
Two phrases for you to ponder: "By their fruits ye shall know them" and "A man is known by the company he keeps". Unfortunately, too many bodies are buried around the globe of people who had not believed what they saw or heard. Do leopards change their spots? I am too much a pragmatist to hope as you do.
Sometimes it's hard to develop a deeper understanding if the main discourse is too infused with metaphors and allusions. Let's not talk about leopards; let's talk about people. I think that it's not an uncommon progression for a young person to make to start by being outraged at the treatment of the people of Palestine at the hands of the occupying military force with no civil protections, and to question why it's happening and to question who is it that seems to support this inhumane policy, and to gradually come to understand the systemic nature of the problem and to grasp the complexity that pretty clearly dictates that some people shouldn't be punished for the actions of other people in the same ethnic/religious/national grouping.
IOW, I don't think you're a pragmatist. I think you're being rigid and basing that on platitudes about leopards and fruits rather than doing the hard work of understanding the underlying causes of oppression and of other people's development of their understanding of the underlying causes.
Rather than talk about leopards and fruits, why don't you try to figure out how Mamdani's politics matured and developed to what it is today? His humanitarian view extends from the people of Palestine to the people of New York including people who are Jewish, as well as Black people, Asians, Latinos, etc. He's gone out of his way to make that clear.
With all due respect, Mamdami is an excellent politican. That Trump admires his style speaks volumes. Please don't speak to me about "oppressors" and "oppressed"; as you know not of what you speak. We Jews have been oppressed, murdered and abused for millenia and continue, even here, to this day. I agree, his politics have matured, but his core beliefs remain the same; the same as he practiced with his fellow travelers. You write of the oppression Arafat's Palestinians suffer; why not write about the Jews recently murdered in cold blood in Tel Aviv? Perhaps, just perhaps, the checkpoints, separation barriers and raids would not be necessary if the cold blooded murder of Jews & Israelis would cease. Every action has a reaction & this oppression you & he so decry are the reaction any government would have to protect its citizens.
As a student at Bowdoin College, he co-founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group notorious for its pro-Hamas stance and for fostering hostile environments for Jewish students on campuses. SJP’s “National Day of Resistance” following the October 7 Hamas attacks, praised the massacre as a “historic win” and called for “armed confrontation” against Israel. Mamdani’s early leadership in SJP reflects his alignment with its anti-Zionist agenda, which often crosses into antisemitism by denying Israel’s right to exist.
Mamdani has also participated in rallies organized by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a New York-based pro-Palestinian group led by Nerdeen Kiswani, who has expressed support for Hamas and glorified violence against Jews. WOL’s rallies, including one on October 9, 2023, just days after the Hamas attacks, celebrated the “heroic Palestinian resistance” and called for the “full liberation of Palestine” by “any means necessary.” WOL’s rhetoric has incited clashes with police, with around two dozen arrests at a Brooklyn rally in 2023. Mamdani’s presence at these events signals his tacit endorsement of WOL’s violent tactics and anti-Israel extremism.
His ties to the DSA are extremely concerning. The New York DSA branch endorsed a 2023 rally that lauded Hamas’s actions, refusing to condemn the terrorist group and framing the attacks as “not unprovoked.” The DSA’s support for groups calling for Israel’s destruction aligns with Mamdani’s own activism, including his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which many Jewish organizations view as an attack on Israel’s legitimacy.
Every example you give there is about Mamdani's affiliations with organizations that are critical of the state of Israel, and are not even about "Jew Hatred." And your post doesn't quote a single word that Mamdani has said or written -- which is what "voiced" means. Your assertion that "Mamdani has voiced his Jew Hatred over the many years" was a bait-and-switch!
The idea that one's people are more special, more moral, more intelligent, more deserving, etc, etc, than anybody else is a corrupting influence. It corrupts people's commitment to equality, erodes empathy for people outside of the group. I think that these beliefs (really: moral injuries) are the underlying elements of the fear of equality.
What we know about racial identity development tells us that when we grasp that "our people" are just as good or bad or smart or dumb as any other people -- that's a healthy identity grounded in humanity. It's an identity that can build trust between groups with different languages, cultures, religions.
This fear ... I hope it can be addressed and healed. Its existence is horrifying and tragic.
the south African example is really problematic. South Africa today is a dangerous place. from a community of around 200,000 jews only about 50,000 stayed.
What's the saying "By their fruits shall you know them"..His fruits to-date (hob-knobbing & declaring his solidarity with the Jew Hating organizations) lays, in my eyes, a dangerous path for Jewish people in NYC. But some would say give him enough rope...then the question remains; who will get hung?
Hmmm...treat your neighbors as yourself......so the cold-blooded murders by Arafats Palestinians of Israeli men,women and children, for the 77 years, should be handled, how?
They are resistance fighters. If you treat people like sh*t don’t expect them to love you. October 7 was Karma. Israel should give everyone equal rights and stop fulfilling every Antisemitic trope ever levelled at those who were killed in The Holocaust and before that. Israel is the biggest exporter of antisemitism… real and imagined. Btw don’t come back at me with “Israel left Gaza in 2005”. Israel controls water, electricity, imports and exports, bombed their airport and prevents freedom of movement… and has since 1967.
Resistance fighters? Resistance fighters don't massacre, brutalize and rape women & children. Resistance fighters (as time immemorial) target armies, uniformed soldiers & supply lines. What you have here are nothing less than cold-blooded murderers; calling them terrorists, in my mind is a mistake...calling them resistance fighters gives resistance fighters insults the memories of true resistance fighters over the centuries.
I refuse to indulge you further in the lie of rapes or beheaded babies for that matter. All of that has been refuted even in the Israeli press. The only rapes that have been proven even on video were perpetrated by the IDF and in prisons for as little as administrative detention. Israel has become a Frankenstein.
If you talk about Israel with "normie" non-religious non-Jews who identify themselves as pro-Israel, if they are aware of the Nakba, they say that expelling 85% of the non-Jews from the area that came to be controlled by Israel was justified because if the Jews hadn't done that, then what the Arabs in Palestine would have done to the Jews in Palestine would have been even worse. When I hear that, I think, if that is true, then how wonderfully convenient it was for the Zionists that the Palestinian Arabs had such intentions! Because that meant that the Zionists had a good reason to do what they always wanted to do!
If one is a Jew and one recites or prays the Liturgy, within Judaic Liturgy, is return to Zion. For two thousand years Jews have been praying for return to Jerusalem and Zion. Thus, as the Palestinian enablers shout and carry-on, all Jews are Zionists and must be eliminated. You see, Peter, when they come for me, they'll come for you too.
MAGA and the fear that white cis hetero Christian men are under attack fits in here.
"When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression" (author unknown)
This fear - albeit a delusion - feels real. AND the trauma and fear activated brain cannot access critical thinking. So how do we engage productively with people, from MAGA to Mamdani-fearing Zionists? Until they can regulate their nervous system, there is no link or book or evidence they will convince them otherwise.
Peter, I thought yours was a noble try but I am not convinced...Jews from the Haskala onwards supported grand liberal causes like ending child labor in England, and the communist revolution in what became the Soviet Union. There were some regrets concerning that one.
I believe that we, a global humanitarian we I embed in my notion of judaism, earnestly believe in the liberation of peoples, and their right to those Jeffersonian vagaries of Life, Liberty and what Gore Vidal rightly mocked as "The Pursuit of Happiness." I, like you, Peter, became a slow convert to what was there for me to see: the history of Israel, not the censored fairytale version that has been dispensed in Israeli schools since the creation of the State, but the kind of history historians like Nurit Peled Elhanan have revealed in her decades' long research on Israeli school textbooks. The very sorry truth of repression, expulsion and exclusion. The Israeli-American propaganda effort has been so massive, so sustained, and so very successful that the notion of our inevitable destruction if we are not surrounded by an impregnable wall of weaponry has become almost impossible to challenge. Israel has not been in true danger...ever. Even in 1948 historians show that the better armed, better organized, and more experienced Israelis despite their heavy losses compared to other wars (except the Yom Kippur War in 1973) soundly defeated their Arab opponents over a nine month period. And every war since then.
To recapitulate, we have been able to disseminate the myth of our imminent extinction and constant endangerment, a situation which was very much the case in Europe from 1932 to 1945...But this is not the case now. Can anyone seriously believe Israel is truly endangered? The remarks against Mamdani strike me as hysteria, narratives spinning through the minds of people who are mired in visions of the past and an imagined future. I do not mean to say that anti-semitism does not exist, it does, and thanks to Netanyahu it has become more widespread and potent than ever...But while slavery was a reality in the US and a lived in truth for 246 years the Israeli experience is 77 years old, and the statements such as those from the Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz originating from what you call a "threat of equality" would thus appear to cover over a mountain of unrecognized guilt, of responsibility, not tinged with remorse. The dehumanization and massacre of the Palestinians and takeover of the West Bank are a State knowing it can act with something approaching impunity because the myth of its ethical standards and putative democracy have been hammered into our minds and and media for decades. The truth appears grimmer by far. To conclude, a two state solution would be Plessy v. Ferguson all over again because the base conditions of respect, equality, humanizing our enemies (and this works both ways obviously) are far from being met.
Israel as a Judaic country and the Jewish people (as a distinct people) are today in danger...the internecine conflicts within the country and disapora reminded me of the civil war that lead to the Maccabees and the short-lived Hasmonean Dynasty.
As Chanukkah is approaching I wanted to research that period in time to share with my grandchildren. In doing so, I went on-line to Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I was and still am stunned. This world-renowned publication does not even mention the Jewish People....it refers not to Judea but names the area Palestine. Any person reading this would be lead to understand that the Jews had no hand in defeating the Selucids and re-establishing the Judaic Kingdom. Has Arafats Palestinian propaganda machine been that successful? Branding Jesus as Palestinan was not enough, they also need to take away a seminal part of Jewish history and peoplehood? Who and how many among our people has enabled, gave platform and credance to all those wishing to erase the essence of the Jewish People...becasue they sadly are succeeding as there has been no pushback!
Election Subversion: Nazi/GOP Plan To Stay In Power Indefinitely
Cheeto seems unfazed by last week’s Democratic landslide which potentially bodes poorly for the Nazis in the 2026 midterms
Why unfazed? Cheeto and the Nazis know that they were able to rig the 2024 election as supported by the Election Truth Alliance(ETA) data at This Will Hold(https://bit.ly/49Ihyeo)and Common Coalition’s substack channels(https://bit.ly/47xXjyQ) Along with Marc Elias at Democracy Docket(https://bit.ly/4qOtUrt) there is complete awareness that the Nazis will go pedal to the medal in all future elections
Why worry when you can cheat, says Cheeto? Last week the Black House hosted Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, the Nazi right’s wunderkind who was there to advise Cheeto about how to hold onto power by manipulating the system That’s how Orban got into power 15y ago and has not relinquished it since that time
So now we are here, take away any governmental agencies that monitor elections, decrease monitoring of voting equipment, stack local election official positions with Nazis, precincts report more votes than registered voters, get rid of mail in ballots, redistricting mid decade red states, use of the military to monitor elections, government confiscation of voting machines, vigilante challenges of registered voters: all and more will be on the table in future elections
Really helpful! I have been horrified by some of the post-election diatribes against Zohran Mamdani, particularly some of those delivered from pulpits, ones which seem deliberately to fan the fears. I will try to calm down and recognize what we are dealing with. Something I hope you will explore further: Beyond recognizing what it is and understanding how this kind of fear comes up with people in many different contexts, how do we deal with this? Even your thoughts on what to do on the level of personal conversations.
I think you mean to say: What he is proposing to do is seen by supporters of Jewish supremacy as enormously dangerous threat to the safety and well-being of Jews in Israel, and indeed, by extension, Jews around the world. Correct me if I'm wrong.
PS My own feeling is that people respond this way to the "threat" of equality because they are deeply aware of all the harm they've inflicted on the people they've subjugated, while believing (or trying to believe) that the subjugation has been necessary for their own protection - and they know in their hearts that if they were treated that way themselves, if given the chance, they'd want revenge. Because as humans we feel the desire for revenge so strongly, it doesn't really work just to site historical examples of revenge not happening, especially when there are many counter examples. Anyway, please go deeper into this.
This is spot on. Oppressors assume that the oppressed would do to them what they are doing to the oppressed if only they could. Freud called this "projection," and violent resistance only reinforces that. The irony is palpable as Israel was founded in part by the Haganah, the Stern Gang and other Zionist terror organizations. (There's even a Haganah museum in Tel Aviv.) We saw psychological condition this not just in the apartheid period in South Africa, but it carries through to this day. Traveling in South Africa I was struck by how white South Africans (and, frankly, whites elsewhere) find it very difficult to accept that the black majority is NOT oppressing them.
Is zionism fear wrapped in supremacy, or supremacy wrapped in fear? Regardless each requires the other.
This is apparent when zionist say with all seriousness, nonsensical statements like “antisemitism is the oldest form of hate” and “ the Holocaust was the worst crime in history”.
Michal, I totally agree. We have to stop giving fellow Jews the “fear of antisemitism pass” and start insisting on responsible personal behaviour and antiracist thinking in the here and now. My exploration of “When Victims became Victimizers” can be explored in a chapter in my own writings here: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/items/cab26fca-8e42-4f9d-93fa-38d3a0092934
Terrific insight, Michael! What you wrote here is one reason why I prefer two states to one state, at least in the interim, even though I am opposed to Zionism and believe it to be a false idolatry.
There would still not be total equality between Jews and Palestinians because the West Bank is not connected to Gaza, and Palestinians would face barriers and checkpoints, when traveling from one location to the other. But there would be enough equality so that Israel would no longer be an apartheid state that is engaging in the systematic oppression of Palestinians.
And Israel would no longer be a shanda for the goyim, whose reprehensible conduct plays into the worst antisemitic stereotypes, and, therefore, endangers the lives of Jews in Israel-Palestine and the Diaspsora.
After some trust develops between Jews and Palestinians, it may be possible to transition to one state where everyone has full equality. The policy of the United States government should be to suspend most, perhaps all, U.S. economic and military aid to Israel until Israel fully withdraws from Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank. The international community will somehow have to disarm Hamas simultaneously.
Anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists will need to form a coalition in order to accomplish this, just as Peter said here.
This is tremendously important. I have too many friends who feel exactly as you describe. Please explore it more deeply with us, either here in your solo comments, or in one of your longer weekly conversations.
Agreed! This is such an important one at this point in time. Thank you - and please do consider devoting more time to this.
What the Rabbi is really saying is that Nazi Germany was pretty good.
With all due respect, your conflating "supremacy" with "fear"? First of all Itotally disagree with you rsupremacy label...from whence it came to you, I cannot imagine. The Fear,though (from my and my family's history) is very real. We all have, or should have, learned to believe what people say. Mamdani has voiced his Jew Hatred over the many years. That some people wish to believe that he suddenly "saw the light", is at best wishful thinking and at worst disasterous. My parents were Holocaust survivors and have left in me and my generation antennae to lurking danger...these antennae are working overtime in NYC.
It seems like the crux of the matter is that expressions of compassion and respect for the human rights of Palestinians are translated to mean "Jew hatred." I think this is the moral injury getting in the way of seeing mutual humanity.
Are expressions of compassion and respect for the human rights of the descendants of the Nazis viewed the same way?
"Seeing the light" -- I think you mean developing his viewpoint., something that people do, something we all should do. This is not disastrous. Changing, evolving into a more sophisticated understanding...isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't everyone do that? Shouldn't developing a view in which one can see the complex humanity in others be a good thing?
Two phrases for you to ponder: "By their fruits ye shall know them" and "A man is known by the company he keeps". Unfortunately, too many bodies are buried around the globe of people who had not believed what they saw or heard. Do leopards change their spots? I am too much a pragmatist to hope as you do.
Sometimes it's hard to develop a deeper understanding if the main discourse is too infused with metaphors and allusions. Let's not talk about leopards; let's talk about people. I think that it's not an uncommon progression for a young person to make to start by being outraged at the treatment of the people of Palestine at the hands of the occupying military force with no civil protections, and to question why it's happening and to question who is it that seems to support this inhumane policy, and to gradually come to understand the systemic nature of the problem and to grasp the complexity that pretty clearly dictates that some people shouldn't be punished for the actions of other people in the same ethnic/religious/national grouping.
IOW, I don't think you're a pragmatist. I think you're being rigid and basing that on platitudes about leopards and fruits rather than doing the hard work of understanding the underlying causes of oppression and of other people's development of their understanding of the underlying causes.
Rather than talk about leopards and fruits, why don't you try to figure out how Mamdani's politics matured and developed to what it is today? His humanitarian view extends from the people of Palestine to the people of New York including people who are Jewish, as well as Black people, Asians, Latinos, etc. He's gone out of his way to make that clear.
With all due respect, Mamdami is an excellent politican. That Trump admires his style speaks volumes. Please don't speak to me about "oppressors" and "oppressed"; as you know not of what you speak. We Jews have been oppressed, murdered and abused for millenia and continue, even here, to this day. I agree, his politics have matured, but his core beliefs remain the same; the same as he practiced with his fellow travelers. You write of the oppression Arafat's Palestinians suffer; why not write about the Jews recently murdered in cold blood in Tel Aviv? Perhaps, just perhaps, the checkpoints, separation barriers and raids would not be necessary if the cold blooded murder of Jews & Israelis would cease. Every action has a reaction & this oppression you & he so decry are the reaction any government would have to protect its citizens.
"Mamdani has voiced his Jew Hatred over the many years."
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, that is your interpretation of some things he has said in the past that you are not sharing with readers here.
As a student at Bowdoin College, he co-founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group notorious for its pro-Hamas stance and for fostering hostile environments for Jewish students on campuses. SJP’s “National Day of Resistance” following the October 7 Hamas attacks, praised the massacre as a “historic win” and called for “armed confrontation” against Israel. Mamdani’s early leadership in SJP reflects his alignment with its anti-Zionist agenda, which often crosses into antisemitism by denying Israel’s right to exist.
Mamdani has also participated in rallies organized by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a New York-based pro-Palestinian group led by Nerdeen Kiswani, who has expressed support for Hamas and glorified violence against Jews. WOL’s rallies, including one on October 9, 2023, just days after the Hamas attacks, celebrated the “heroic Palestinian resistance” and called for the “full liberation of Palestine” by “any means necessary.” WOL’s rhetoric has incited clashes with police, with around two dozen arrests at a Brooklyn rally in 2023. Mamdani’s presence at these events signals his tacit endorsement of WOL’s violent tactics and anti-Israel extremism.
His ties to the DSA are extremely concerning. The New York DSA branch endorsed a 2023 rally that lauded Hamas’s actions, refusing to condemn the terrorist group and framing the attacks as “not unprovoked.” The DSA’s support for groups calling for Israel’s destruction aligns with Mamdani’s own activism, including his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which many Jewish organizations view as an attack on Israel’s legitimacy.
Every example you give there is about Mamdani's affiliations with organizations that are critical of the state of Israel, and are not even about "Jew Hatred." And your post doesn't quote a single word that Mamdani has said or written -- which is what "voiced" means. Your assertion that "Mamdani has voiced his Jew Hatred over the many years" was a bait-and-switch!
"A man is known by the company he keeps" in this case his affiliations reflect who he is. History, unfortuantely, has shown how true this phrase is.
The idea that one's people are more special, more moral, more intelligent, more deserving, etc, etc, than anybody else is a corrupting influence. It corrupts people's commitment to equality, erodes empathy for people outside of the group. I think that these beliefs (really: moral injuries) are the underlying elements of the fear of equality.
What we know about racial identity development tells us that when we grasp that "our people" are just as good or bad or smart or dumb as any other people -- that's a healthy identity grounded in humanity. It's an identity that can build trust between groups with different languages, cultures, religions.
This fear ... I hope it can be addressed and healed. Its existence is horrifying and tragic.
the south African example is really problematic. South Africa today is a dangerous place. from a community of around 200,000 jews only about 50,000 stayed.
What's the saying "By their fruits shall you know them"..His fruits to-date (hob-knobbing & declaring his solidarity with the Jew Hating organizations) lays, in my eyes, a dangerous path for Jewish people in NYC. But some would say give him enough rope...then the question remains; who will get hung?
Your “ Fruits” are complicity with genocide not since October 7 but for 77 years prior. You seem to forget several Torah references to treating neighbours as you would want to be treated. The most famous commentary coming from Hillel: https://etzion.org.il/en/tanakh/torah/sefer-vayikra/parashat-kedoshim/kedoshim-shammais-approach-loving-your-neighbor
Hmmm...treat your neighbors as yourself......so the cold-blooded murders by Arafats Palestinians of Israeli men,women and children, for the 77 years, should be handled, how?
They are resistance fighters. If you treat people like sh*t don’t expect them to love you. October 7 was Karma. Israel should give everyone equal rights and stop fulfilling every Antisemitic trope ever levelled at those who were killed in The Holocaust and before that. Israel is the biggest exporter of antisemitism… real and imagined. Btw don’t come back at me with “Israel left Gaza in 2005”. Israel controls water, electricity, imports and exports, bombed their airport and prevents freedom of movement… and has since 1967.
Resistance fighters? Resistance fighters don't massacre, brutalize and rape women & children. Resistance fighters (as time immemorial) target armies, uniformed soldiers & supply lines. What you have here are nothing less than cold-blooded murderers; calling them terrorists, in my mind is a mistake...calling them resistance fighters gives resistance fighters insults the memories of true resistance fighters over the centuries.
I refuse to indulge you further in the lie of rapes or beheaded babies for that matter. All of that has been refuted even in the Israeli press. The only rapes that have been proven even on video were perpetrated by the IDF and in prisons for as little as administrative detention. Israel has become a Frankenstein.
If you talk about Israel with "normie" non-religious non-Jews who identify themselves as pro-Israel, if they are aware of the Nakba, they say that expelling 85% of the non-Jews from the area that came to be controlled by Israel was justified because if the Jews hadn't done that, then what the Arabs in Palestine would have done to the Jews in Palestine would have been even worse. When I hear that, I think, if that is true, then how wonderfully convenient it was for the Zionists that the Palestinian Arabs had such intentions! Because that meant that the Zionists had a good reason to do what they always wanted to do!
If one is a Jew and one recites or prays the Liturgy, within Judaic Liturgy, is return to Zion. For two thousand years Jews have been praying for return to Jerusalem and Zion. Thus, as the Palestinian enablers shout and carry-on, all Jews are Zionists and must be eliminated. You see, Peter, when they come for me, they'll come for you too.
MAGA and the fear that white cis hetero Christian men are under attack fits in here.
"When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression" (author unknown)
This fear - albeit a delusion - feels real. AND the trauma and fear activated brain cannot access critical thinking. So how do we engage productively with people, from MAGA to Mamdani-fearing Zionists? Until they can regulate their nervous system, there is no link or book or evidence they will convince them otherwise.
Peter, I thought yours was a noble try but I am not convinced...Jews from the Haskala onwards supported grand liberal causes like ending child labor in England, and the communist revolution in what became the Soviet Union. There were some regrets concerning that one.
I believe that we, a global humanitarian we I embed in my notion of judaism, earnestly believe in the liberation of peoples, and their right to those Jeffersonian vagaries of Life, Liberty and what Gore Vidal rightly mocked as "The Pursuit of Happiness." I, like you, Peter, became a slow convert to what was there for me to see: the history of Israel, not the censored fairytale version that has been dispensed in Israeli schools since the creation of the State, but the kind of history historians like Nurit Peled Elhanan have revealed in her decades' long research on Israeli school textbooks. The very sorry truth of repression, expulsion and exclusion. The Israeli-American propaganda effort has been so massive, so sustained, and so very successful that the notion of our inevitable destruction if we are not surrounded by an impregnable wall of weaponry has become almost impossible to challenge. Israel has not been in true danger...ever. Even in 1948 historians show that the better armed, better organized, and more experienced Israelis despite their heavy losses compared to other wars (except the Yom Kippur War in 1973) soundly defeated their Arab opponents over a nine month period. And every war since then.
To recapitulate, we have been able to disseminate the myth of our imminent extinction and constant endangerment, a situation which was very much the case in Europe from 1932 to 1945...But this is not the case now. Can anyone seriously believe Israel is truly endangered? The remarks against Mamdani strike me as hysteria, narratives spinning through the minds of people who are mired in visions of the past and an imagined future. I do not mean to say that anti-semitism does not exist, it does, and thanks to Netanyahu it has become more widespread and potent than ever...But while slavery was a reality in the US and a lived in truth for 246 years the Israeli experience is 77 years old, and the statements such as those from the Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz originating from what you call a "threat of equality" would thus appear to cover over a mountain of unrecognized guilt, of responsibility, not tinged with remorse. The dehumanization and massacre of the Palestinians and takeover of the West Bank are a State knowing it can act with something approaching impunity because the myth of its ethical standards and putative democracy have been hammered into our minds and and media for decades. The truth appears grimmer by far. To conclude, a two state solution would be Plessy v. Ferguson all over again because the base conditions of respect, equality, humanizing our enemies (and this works both ways obviously) are far from being met.
Israel as a Judaic country and the Jewish people (as a distinct people) are today in danger...the internecine conflicts within the country and disapora reminded me of the civil war that lead to the Maccabees and the short-lived Hasmonean Dynasty.
As Chanukkah is approaching I wanted to research that period in time to share with my grandchildren. In doing so, I went on-line to Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I was and still am stunned. This world-renowned publication does not even mention the Jewish People....it refers not to Judea but names the area Palestine. Any person reading this would be lead to understand that the Jews had no hand in defeating the Selucids and re-establishing the Judaic Kingdom. Has Arafats Palestinian propaganda machine been that successful? Branding Jesus as Palestinan was not enough, they also need to take away a seminal part of Jewish history and peoplehood? Who and how many among our people has enabled, gave platform and credance to all those wishing to erase the essence of the Jewish People...becasue they sadly are succeeding as there has been no pushback!
Election Subversion: Nazi/GOP Plan To Stay In Power Indefinitely
Cheeto seems unfazed by last week’s Democratic landslide which potentially bodes poorly for the Nazis in the 2026 midterms
Why unfazed? Cheeto and the Nazis know that they were able to rig the 2024 election as supported by the Election Truth Alliance(ETA) data at This Will Hold(https://bit.ly/49Ihyeo)and Common Coalition’s substack channels(https://bit.ly/47xXjyQ) Along with Marc Elias at Democracy Docket(https://bit.ly/4qOtUrt) there is complete awareness that the Nazis will go pedal to the medal in all future elections
Why worry when you can cheat, says Cheeto? Last week the Black House hosted Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, the Nazi right’s wunderkind who was there to advise Cheeto about how to hold onto power by manipulating the system That’s how Orban got into power 15y ago and has not relinquished it since that time
So now we are here, take away any governmental agencies that monitor elections, decrease monitoring of voting equipment, stack local election official positions with Nazis, precincts report more votes than registered voters, get rid of mail in ballots, redistricting mid decade red states, use of the military to monitor elections, government confiscation of voting machines, vigilante challenges of registered voters: all and more will be on the table in future elections
So True, it’s always important to remember that this is a human phenomenon, it’s not tribe specific, or ethnicity specific.
Really helpful! I have been horrified by some of the post-election diatribes against Zohran Mamdani, particularly some of those delivered from pulpits, ones which seem deliberately to fan the fears. I will try to calm down and recognize what we are dealing with. Something I hope you will explore further: Beyond recognizing what it is and understanding how this kind of fear comes up with people in many different contexts, how do we deal with this? Even your thoughts on what to do on the level of personal conversations.
I think you mean to say: What he is proposing to do is seen by supporters of Jewish supremacy as enormously dangerous threat to the safety and well-being of Jews in Israel, and indeed, by extension, Jews around the world. Correct me if I'm wrong.