There are a lot of people who are better and more high profile writers than I am who have commented on the October 7th Pogrom and its aftermath. Therefore in this piece I’d like to highlight these and comment on a couple of them where necessary and appropriate.
First up is Jordan Peterson’s contribution.
Professor Peterson has based his article on the damage done to society and in particular to Jews by the postmodern, identitarian concept of there being oppressed and oppressor classes with the classification being based on immutable characteristics such as race,and sex. In his article Professor Peterson lambasts the leftist idea that Jews are oppressors because they are seen by the Left as ‘hyper white’ and therefore oppressors and how these Leftists leave out the thousands of years of real oppression that Jews suffered at the hands of Christian and Islamic societies and cultures. The social success of Jews in the West, often in the face of genuine discrimination against them, has made them a target of the identitarian Left. The Left cannot accept that the success of Jews has been down to hard work but a Left that believes that all success is down to ‘racism’ or there being oppressed and oppressor classes will not and cannot see that it’s not racism that has propelled Jews into the higher echelons of various professions but hard work. I can see why the identitarians who despise success would go out of their way to denigrate Jews and see Jew hatred not as something to be disgusted by but instead a form of ‘resistance’.
Professor Peterson also takes aim at the people, groups and causes that once Jews in places like the USA thought were allies but who have turned out to be anything but.
Professor Peterson said:
I have encountered no shortage of Right-wing troll antisemites. They are as close to demonic as anything I have ever encountered. They sicken me. But they are (for now) a mere disparate and pathetic rabble in contrast to the monolith of the oppression-purveyors on the left. You believed, my Jewish friends, that the leftists hypothetically fulminating against the exploiters of the poor were your allies, forgetting that your disproportionate (and well-earned) success could so easily make you target number one. Just as it has an indefinite number of times in the past. And just exactly as you see it happening now.
The whole bloody story of victim/victimiser must first be seen for what it is — the moralising machination of the envious and resentful — and then eschewed and abandoned, most particularly by the Jewish liberals, who have by far the most to lose by its embrace. All the diversity, equity and inclusivity that is the modern equivalent of praying in public. All the faux compassion, which is the disguise of the modern wolves in sheep’s clothing. All the idiot left-over Marxism, which has metastasised into the cancer of modern intersectionality and resentful, destructive postmodernism. All the insistence that success is exploitation; virtue is mere sympathy for the marginalized; bitter demands for reparations; and self-pity and accusation. This will take a lot of incision, much of it personal and painful, but if any of the evil seed remains, the evil fruit will reappear. That is why, by the way, you eat unleavened bread, during the passover.
Wake up, my liberal Jewish friends. You simply cannot have your cake and eat it, too. Those you thought were your allies are the very vultures waiting hungrily for your carcasses to appear dead in the street — and we are perilously close to that, as I am sure you have become aware. If your community insists upon allying itself with the ideology that tears down success itself — that casts that success as exploitation, oppression and victimization — you will definitely be the first heads on the chopping block. As you have been forever in the past, and are once again becoming now.
Brett Stephens writing in the New York Times laments how things have gone in the United States and how it has been transformed from a society where, despite early discrimination against them, American Jews were during the 1990’s seen as little different from other Americans. Back then Judaism was to all intents and purposes mainstream. However the growth of left and Islamic origin Jew hatred has changed things beyond all recognition. The Jews in America, a country where most people looked at the horrors that emerged in Europe in the 20th century, shuddered and thought ‘that can’t happen here’, are starting to realise that yes, it can happen here.
Mr Stephens said:
In the 1990s, Jewish America seemed indistinguishable from America itself. Yes, we had overcome discrimination in the past, particularly from the snobbish corners of the American establishment. But now we had arrived. We were Jerry Seinfeld and Cher Horowitz from “Clueless” and Adam Sandler crooning his “Hanukkah Song” on “Saturday Night Live.” We were Alan Greenspan, the celebrated maestro of central banking, and Rick Levin, the first Jewish president of Yale, and Nora Ephron, the country’s most beloved screenwriter, and Steven Spielberg, the most acclaimed director.
Today there’s a palpable sense of things going backward. Backward in the Ivy League, where Jewish enrollment has plummeted and Jewish students feel unwelcome and at times threatened. Backward in cities like Oakland, Calif., where Jewish families pulled their kids out of public schools in protest of an antisemitic curriculum. Backward in literary circles, where being identified as a Zionist — even if it’s of the most progressive kind or has little to do with an author’s work — can lead to ostracism and cancellation. Backward in human rights organizations that could barely register sorrow over the butchery of Oct. 7 before finding fresh ways to indict Israel. Backward in social justice organizations, many of no apparent relevance to the Middle East, that nonetheless feel called to demand the end of the Jewish state. Backward, most certainly, in politics.
Mr Stephens said that the last year has seen some sort of awakening among American Jews and a realisation that those groups and causes that Jews had aligned themselves with and assisted had decided that they would throw Jews under the proverbial bus. Mr Stephens added:
At some point, an awakening of sorts occurred. Perhaps not for every American Jew, but for many. I’ve called them the Oct. 8 Jews — those who woke up a day after our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust to see how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited. It was an awakening that often came with a deeper set of realizations.
One realization: American Jews should not expect reciprocity.
Few minorities have been more conspicuously attached to progressive causes than American Jews: Samuel Gompers and labor unionism; Betty Friedan and feminism; Harvey Milk and gay rights; Abraham Joshua Heschel and civil rights; Robert Bernstein and human rights. A proud history, but whatever we poured of ourselves into the pain and struggle of others was not returned in our days of grief. Nor should we expect much understanding: In an era that stresses sensitivity to every microaggression against nearly any minority, macroaggressions against Jews who happen to believe that Israel has a right to exist are not only permitted but demanded.
Mr Stephens is bang on correct here. The Left and the various social justice causes have begged for the help of Jews in their endeavours but when Jews asked for help from those whom they have supported, no help has been forthcoming.
Both of the writers featured are primarily talking about what is happening in the USA and Canada and it’s a bad omen for the future that such things are happening. That countries such as the USA and Canada could succumb to left wing and Islam linked Jew hatred is a real sign that all is really not well with these countries.
I’ll end this piece with my plea to the Jews of the West which is based on what both Professor Peterson and Mr Stephens have said and it is this: Western Jews have, despite damned good reasons not to do so because of the sort of discrimination that Jews have suffered, chosen the path of ‘keeping the peace of the city in which you live’ and worked to ensure that everybody is treated equally and with respect. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the people and causes that Jews have assisted have turned against Jews. Jews were allies to those who needed it but now Jews need that ally-ship it’s nowhere to be found. That should not ever be forgotten. There should also be a response by Jews and their real allies to that abandonment. Jews should no longer give funding to or support ‘social justice’ causes espoused by the Left, no longer vote Democrat in the USA or similar Left wing parties elsewhere, no longer give donations to or send our children to higher education institutions that have turned into Nuremberg Rally tribute acts and no longer get involved with interfaith initiatives with people who want us dead. We now know where we stand and personally I’m never ever going to stand with the Left on anything else ever again.
