There Are No More Safe Places, Nowhere to Call Home

By Phyllis Chesler

Even as billionaires are still flying everywhere, anywhere, in private jets and taking private yachts to the most luxurious vacation spots in the world–more commercial flights are being cancelled or delayed, lines are longer pretty much everywhere, drugstores are closing across the country, the price of restaurant food is much higher, the quality lower–and if you need the food to be delivered, the service charges exponentially increase the cost.

Closer to home: Random people are being sucker-punched by strangers in my once fair city; Gangs of six in beat-downs are setting upon vulnerable elders. This just happened a few blocks away from where I live–and yes, the gang was composed of black teenage boys. (I know that one is not supposed to describe the perpetrators, especially if they are black or Muslim, but let’s get real: It is black American civilians who remain the first victims of black-on-black violence. Hiding that fact helps no one–and, by the way, is such viciousness justified if the victims are white? Is it only payback or a form of reparations for the institution of slavery, which last existed a century and a half before we were all born?

Let’s not forget the rise in anti-Jewish verbal and physical attacks–the predictable result of fifty years of genocidally-oriented Big Lies about the Jews and Israel. But it is bigger than my own city, bigger than my own country, far bigger than a single continent.

To be clear: We are all in the fight of our lives, it is Barbarism versus Civilization, Islamist terrorism versus Western post-Enlightenment values. The gender identity zombies are erasing womankind and all is definitely not well in the world

Putin is still decimating and trying to occupy Ukraine; Iran is still trying to exterminate Jewish Israel; Islamists in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are persecuting and murdering their own women, gays, and dissidents–as well as all the infidels they can get their hands on.  China has deeply infiltrated the West, and Arab oil money has indoctrinated the youth in the West.

No one has ever stopped any of this.

As for myself? I have nowhere to call home.

My college was Bard, I am grateful that I was a scholarship kid there, but in all the years since I’ve graduated, my work has barely been acknowledged. I was a radical feminist before that became chic; then I was a politically incorrect feminist when “queer,” race, and transgender issues trumped sex-based issues. What this means for me personally is that I was never asked, nor could I ever offer to mentor any of their students or ask for interns–my work was–and is now even more seen as anti-“woke,” more conservative than is acceptable. My support for Israel is absolutely verboten.

I obtained my Ph.D. from the New School–but that seems to have become an antisemitic/anti-Zionist hotbed of madness. Their celebrations of 10/7, their anti-Israel pro-Hamas encampments, filled me with shame and I wanted to return my degree but to who? None of the deans or faculty that I once knew are there, most have died.

Then there’s Duke University, where my archives reside. They, too, have become quite “woke,” and I doubt there’s an anti-Islamist Muslim or a pro-Israel Jew on their staff or among their student body that would want to be mentored by me. If I’m wrong–forgive me and contact me at once.

Yesterday, two Israeli feminists visited me. I knew one in the early 1970s and again in the early 1980s. We knew and remembered many great Israeli feminists, most of whom have died, some of whom are still with us. They came to explain how awful Bibi is–and to make sure that I would be voting for Kamala. Many hours later, when they left, I had walked them around the world with a sixty-year aerial view and they were quieter, more thoughtful, as was I.

These staunchly anti-religion, anti-Bibi Israelis are not my enemies. I was filled with love for them–just as I love their opponents. They made good points. They lacked vital information. Above all, they are exhausted, worn down and out by the long war, the many deaths, the incessant barrage of missiles, the fact that, according to them, half of Israelis do not have or cannot get to bomb shelters on time.

Of course, they blamed this on the Israeli government not on genocidal Iran and their terrorist proxies. They actually believed that Biden-Harris were protecting Israel militarily. They gave me a “bring them home” medallion. Softly, gently, I said that it should really read “Release them now,” and should be addressed to their Hamas captors. They had not thought of this.

I am treading dangerous waters now. Love for my people, love for Israel, love for my opponents as well as for my allies will kill me. Love can kill. After they left, I felt torn apart. I will speak a bit more softly to–and about those with whom I most profoundly disagree and try to remember that most people do not have all the information they need. For example, my feminist Israelis did not seem to understand the nature, existence, or pervasiveness of antisemitism. I first discovered that this was so back in 1980 and I see that in the last 40-odd years most have not caught up.

In fact, recently, an academic psychoanalyst invited me to lecture in Israel, but not to discuss trauma, not even rape trauma. Rather, he wanted to understand global antisemitism. I sent podcasts, media interviews, and articles on this very subject. I was surprised by his request. Pleased, actually. But it really is so late in the day.

The Israeli feminists and I stood on common ground when they asked me about the American feminist silence about 10/7. That got through to them: It haunted them, as well it should. I said that I doubt I could ever again work with such silent feminists. No, I do not need to “hate” them–but we no longer share the same reality. They exist in the past.

First published at Phyllis’ Newsletter