CRY-BULLIES AND VICTIM-ENVY

WANT TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL? NO ONE’S STOPPING YOU — DESPITE YOUR SELF-AGGRANDIZING FANTASY OF BEING OPPRESSED.

Paradox.

Anti-Israel activists devote vast time and resources to “proving” they are not antisemitic. (This was the subject of my last post.) The paradox I pointed out is that, if “freeing Palestine” is so important to them, why do they consistently divert so much of their attention and resources and attention from their core objective and reallocate it to defending themselves against what they insist are “false allegations, “smears” and “attempted silencing”?

If the fate of Palestinians were truly so important to them, couldn’t they put aside their little heartbreaks and distresses about being “smeared” and dedicate that energy to, you know, the endangered Palestinians they claim to be advocating for?

It’s because, of course, this isn’t really about Palestinians.

This is, above all, about the activists themselves.

What is particularly notable here are the demographics of the folks who make up the bulk of the so-called “pro-Palestinian” movement

When you look at the rallies ostensibly calling for a “free Palestine,” when you look at the campus campers who are occupying the quads, when you look at the haters and the baiters who are provoking Jews, scraping posters of kidnapped and murdered Israelis from signposts and slapping Palestinian flags on every vertical surface, one thing becomes pretty obvious.

These are overwhelmingly white, probably middle-class, maybe suburban, young people (as I once was). They are also self-evidently privileged. After all, they are not working double shifts at Starbucks to put themselves through school. They are literally lazing about in tents on campus property or organizing, give or take fulltime, to terrorize Jews on the streets and screech “From the river to the sea” on the weekends when, at their age (says gramps!) I was working at an auto parts place and parking cars at the airport.

When I am having a bad day, I try to remind myself that I am among the most privileged people in the world. I have a comfortable home in a safe neighborhood, clean water, medical care when I need it, adequate clothing and heating, civic infrastructure that works and so on.

I know I have no concept whatsoever of the oppression vast swaths of the world experience. Even as a gay man, fate placed me in one of the most accepting, progressive places and social circles on the planet.

I feel some progressive white guilt about this, yeah. Which I think a lot of young activists do, too. But there is something pretty screwed up about how they respond to it all.

Since many of them have never experienced any significant challenges, racism, economic repression, or social ostracizing on par with members of minority communities at home or oppressed groups abroad, they don’t feel happy at their good fortune.

They feel left out.

They have victim envy.

They venerate victimhood. And since they have never experienced it in any meaningful way, they have to invent it.

So, when confronted with the gentlest suggestion that their approach to the Jewish state might relate in some oblique way to inherent biases about Jewish people, this opens for them the opportunity of a lifetime.

Victimhood!

Instead of self-reflection or “doing the work” around antisemitism, they declare themselves victimized (not incidentally by the Powerful Jews, but let’s leave that elephant aside for a sec). They are being “silenced,” “falsely accused,” “smeared.” They are being oppressed as SJWs.

Oh the humanity.

If you have a conversation with one of these activists (or just follow their expressions on social media, at public events and so forth) it’s as much about them as it is about Palestinians.

I mean, Palestinians are suffering and dying, but some rando on Insta just accused me of antisemitism and I’m unalived inside, so emotionally curb-stomped and literally yeeted into the void.

They employ the most incendiary, bloodsoaked, hateful rhetoric against Israel. They accuse Israel (Jews) of attempting to do to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them, a (genuine) smear massively beneath the dignity of any decent person. They invent allegations against Israelis (Jews) of the worst crime known to humankind — genocide. They project onto Israel every sin known to the world, just as their grandparents projected their sins onto a Jew on a cross.

But raise any questions about their motivations, and suddenly Palestinians and their problems get pushed far to the side and the primary issue becomes the oppression experienced by the keffiyeh-wearing, white savior activists. The crisis of their victimization. The calamity of them being silenced, smeared and besieged by the powerful Zionists.

They are cry-bullies.

My favorite example is the watermelon thing I wrote about a while back. Apparently convinced it is so dangerously transgressive to be an overt “pro-Palestinian” activist in the West, they have to invent secret codes (watermelon emojis) to denote their hazardous, courageous, clandestine activism.

If you really want to feel like a victim, try wearing a sweatshirt with the Israeli flag on it or, for that matter, just a Star of David around your neck.

But this raises yet another phenom. Activists accuse Jews of having a persecution complex, of making up oppression where none exists (ie: “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism!”). The activists’ imaginings of victimhood are not only childish, they are a direct and inverted projection of the real situation.

If these were activists who actually cared about Palestinians, here’s what they wouldn’t care about: False allegations of racism. Smears. Imagined silencing that isn’t happening and literally couldn’t happen in a world where anyone with internet access has the power to reach wider audiences than the most powerful person 200 years ago.

Such brave activists these are — until the mildest accusation that they may be influenced by inherent bias or, godforbid, racism.

Then suddenly their courage disappears like knafeh at a celebration of October 7.

When I stand up for my values, people accuse me of racism!

So, in response, you stop standing up for your values (such as they are) and devote yourself entirely to clearing your name? How committed were you to your values in the first place?.

If these activists had the courage of their convictions, alleged lies about their motivations would be irrelevant to the larger cause. They would damn the torpedoes of “false smears of antisemitism” and rededicate themselves to freeing Palestine. But they don’t. They drop all their concern for Gazans and become cry-bullies who are the real victims here.

Which goes to show — again — this isn’t about freeing Palestine at all (or not much, at any rate). It’s about some privileged white kids having FOMO around victimology, cosplaying martyrdom. They are bullying the hell out of Jews and claiming they are the ones being harassed.

I am tempted to say, “Oh, poor babies.” But that is exactly what they want.