My unanswered questions in the midst of war

Do Israel’s protesters feel a pang of regret? Does anyone believe Biden will stand by Israel? Will Jewish organizations finally fight antisemitism?

 by Phyllis Chesler

I have so many unanswered questions.

I am free to ask them because I am not an Israeli being held hostage in Gaza. I am not one of the half-million Israeli refugees in internal exile in their own country. I’m not in a stalled-at-the-border IDF fighting unit (I only wish I were).

And so I wonder: Have Israeli leftists finally been “mugged by (a terrible) reality?” Does anyone realize that their/our problems may be far greater than the mere presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Are any of the chanting, drumming, “in your face” Israeli protesters even a little pensive about how … distracting, perhaps even dangerous their civil disobedience spree really was? How toxic their utopianism turned out to be?

Nah. Many still only blame Netanyahu and his “corrupt cronies” for everything. Some are glad that their archenemy has suffered an extraordinary and shameful military failure on his watch. Good, I can hear them thinking, he’s gone. His legacy will never recover. And they are right.

But the protesters’ storming, surging form of mob activism resembles that of the Arab, Islamist street, not only on the borders of Israel but around the world.

I wonder, I am really asking, was there no better way of registering disagreement with their government other than adopting an Islamist style of mob terror?

Are all those leftists and feminists who tormented me and others with their strong and righteous disapproval of every pro-Israel line we wrote in the last half year even a wee bit uncomfortable with how they may have contributed to Israel’s perceived vulnerability?

Nah. They still blame Bibi, not Hamas; Bibi, not Iran; Bibi, not Hezbollah; Bibi, not Islamist Jew-hatred. But some diehards are shifting ever so slightly. I know. They are writing to me again.

At this moment, I certainly do not want to blame Israeli leftists who are in grave danger. They did not force Hamas to butcher Israeli civilians and take 200 hostages. But maybe, possibly, perhaps, they did manage to convince Israel’s enemies that Israel was weak, fraught with dissension, not paying a Spartan-like attention to its borders. I am only asking. Not blaming.

Then there’s this:

Do American Jews honestly believe that Biden has Israel’s back? That Blinken and Biden support Israel’s moral right—nay, obligation—to wipe out Hamas once and for all? And to deal with Iran once and for all?

Yes. They. Do. At least, progressives/Democrats do. They are cheered by Blinken and Biden just talking to Bibi—actually visiting him. It’s such a good photo-op.

I, however, stand with the great Caroline Glick, who has explained that the Bidens and Blinkens intend to force Israel to continue to endure Hamas’s barbaric attacks and Hamas’s rockets, even Iran’s promised nuclear destruction; that Biden will not resupply Israel as promised until or unless Israel actually facilitates Hamas in terms of resupplying it in order to continue its jihad against Israel.

Crazy, yes? But part of former President Barack Obama’s and then-Vice President Joe Biden’s long-term plan.

Finally, I must ask: How can I remain quiet?

Do the Jewish and Israeli organizations that refused to take seriously the cognitive war against the Jews, the war that Islamists and Western leftists oh-so-carefully seeded for the last 50 years—do they currently regret not having done so? Especially as they see the hundreds, no, the many thousands of global celebrations of Hamas’s barbarism; the braying for Jewish blood; the lockstep thinking and the indoctrinated repetitions of the Big Lies at all the anti-Israel/pro-Hamas demonstrations; the walk-outs, petitions, classroom “performances,” renewed boycotts? And the increased attacks on individual Jews and on Jewish establishments?

Of course, this is not the time to blame these organizations, especially since they are now raising considerable sums of money for the overwhelming humanitarian needs in Israel and for the IDF itself.

Yet, going forward, will they fund the creation of an Iron Dome equivalent against lethal antisemitic/anti-Zionist lies? Are they prepared to spend 50 years and a huge sum to drain this particular swamp?

Blood libels against the Jews have always justified pogroms and a major genocide. This has never changed. We must try to find a way to stop the hatred of Jews, which is the bottom-line prerequisite to ending the murder of Jews.

First published in JNS.