When It's OK To Hate

There are moments in history when everything changes, when the ripples created spread across a culture, or a nation, or the world. 9/11/2001 was one such. 10/7/2023 is another.

It'd be stating the obvious that "everything changed" over in the Middle East. That's not, however, the broader inflection point careening across Western culture.

Rather, it is the unmasking of naked antisemitism, or if you want a starker phrasing, Jew-hatred. And it's not born of far-right white supremacists. We've been told for decades that they are the Jew-haters in American society, but surprise, it’s not them this time. No, it's the Left, despite its Coexist bumper stickers and Hate Has No Home Here lawn signs, that is the source of today's antisemitism.

The Left learned it from the last place you should expect: our finest universities. Where Jews have long over-represented, both as students and as professors. 10% of Harvard's student body is Jewish. Yale, 12%. Columbia, 23%. Princeton, 10%. Dartmouth, 8%. And, by one report at least, a quarter of Ivy League professors are Jewish. This, in a nation that is maybe 2% Jewish.

So, what gives? Why so much raw hatred?

Its source is the divergence from the traditional teaching of open inquiry and liberalism, in favor of a "this is correct, everything else is wrong" inculcation, combined with the elevation of victimhood and the dispensing of equality in favor of the garbage that is dubbed 'equity.' The former is the narcissism of the educators, the latter is the narcissism of the students.

The universities teach kids to embrace all that narcissism. They teach them to hate, but they call it justice. They teach them bigotry, but call it wokeness. They teach them to censor, but call it freedom. And they teach them not to question, but instead to repeat, and then inform them that they are the only smart ones in society.

Along the way, they've also taught them that Muslims are an unjustly oppressed minority that deserves an elevated position on the grievance hierarchy. No matter that Muslims outnumber Jews 100 to 1 globally. No matter that Islam is more at odds with progressive values than any other major religion. Somehow, Muslims, despite Islam's views on women, gays, nonbelievers... oh, and Jews… are the beneficiaries of leftist white-knighthood. Crusader reference intended.

So, when the "normal" Israeli existence of perpetual low-level threat from terrorists' rockets, bombs, and other forms of murder got ratcheted up to a 9/11-level event, with unimaginable barbarity, those 'only smart ones in society' looked at their grievance rankings, saw that Jews were ranked lower, and chose to side with the barbarism. That, in turn, appears to have unleashed a whole lot of pent up antisemitism. Jewish Ivy League students, i.e. their classmates and peers, now live in fear.

Make no mistake (to use their idol's favorite phrase), this is all born of the message that it's OK to hate those who you don't favor. Many of those "hate has no home here" signalers have held in contempt anyone who doesn't see the world exactly as they do for as long as they've claimed to be hate-free. That contempt frequently spills over into overt hatred, and now that Israel is in a hot war with a society that wants it wiped off the face of the earth.

I've asked, time and again, whether these folks on the Left believe that Israel has a right to exist. Through their actions and behaviors, they've made their answer clear.

For the record, it’s no.

But, nay, nay, it does not stop there, not by a long shot. Jews everywhere need to stand up and take notice that far too many of their supposed compatriots on the Left (Jews have traditionally embraced liberalism and voted Democrat) have outed themselves as their true enemy.

Not just in ideology. In actual "kill the Jews!" sentiment. Already, swastikas are being graffitied. Already, mobs are chasing Jewish students. Already, open assaults are happening here in the US, over five thousand miles from Gaza.

How long until some on the Left ramp up one of their favorite sports - doxxing - to publish lists of Jews, whether they openly support Israel or not?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. There could be peace tomorrow in the Middle East, and the Palestinians could have a homeland (or two). Israel has already signaled acceptance of a two-state solution, and Israel already has a substantial number of Palestinians living within its borders. It’s the Palestinians who don’t want it. And, anyone who declares “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” doesn’t want either. They all want Israel gone, and along with it her seven million Jews. Along with, in too many instances, the rest of the world’s Jews.

There’s no peace to be had with those who embrace such hate.