I’VE ALWAYS SUPPORTED ISRAEL, BUT …

HAVE YOU HEARD THIS PHRASE BEFORE? HERE’S WHAT IT REALLY MEANS …

Have you? Or did you not believe what you said you believed in the first place?

On multiple occasions, I have had people tell me that they have “always supported Israel …” but this or that incident was a turning point for them.

Of course, right now it is the war in Gaza.

What is interesting here, among other things, is the odd rhetorical shield these people so often wield. I would be curious to know if you have encountered this as well? How widespread is it?

In the most recent instance, it was a (now former) friend I have known since high school — so for more than 40 years. In my recollection, he has never once expressed to me or shared on social media or in any other expression demonstrated support for Israel (or opposition to it, for that matter. I do not recall him ever stating an opinion on it).

Only recently, when he took it upon himself to launch a broadside against Israel (and me), did he reveal that he had “always been a supporter of Israel” — until now.

Well, that was news.

A few years back, I was the recipient of a similar tirade from a (again, now former) friend who, again, insisted he had always been a supporter of Israel but, when Israel defended itself against Hamas on that occasion, he could no longer support it.

And again, I had never heard him express a pro-Israel opinion until he feigned a volte-face and declared he could no longer support it.

Why did these people, who seemed to have no firm opinion about Israel before they decided to condemn it, feel compelled to spontaneously invent some preexisting allyship before just as abruptly abandoning it?

In 2016, Canada’s then-foreign minister Stéphane Dion took a typical swipe at Israel’s actions against Hamas, prefacing it with: “We’re steadfast allies and good friends, and good friends can occasionally deliver tough messages.”

Well, yes but no.

Canada has, at times, been a steadfast ally and a good friend to Israel. At the moment Dion was speaking, and at other times in his party’s time in government, that alleged friendship and allyship was far from steadfast. It has been equivocal, namby-pamby and sometimes outright hostile.

Friends can deliver tough messages, sure. But, first, you need to demonstrate that you are friends — and the government of which he was a part hadn’t done the important part. Dion was taking credit for “steadfast allyship” as the basis to deliver “tough messages” but he was only right about the second part.

Politicians are gonna politician. I get that. But what is with these ordinary people who, before dishonestly condemning Israel for a bogus “genocide,” go out of their way to claim they have always been unwavering allies to Israel when there is absolutely no evidence to back that up?

What is this about?

I guess it’s some sort of preemptive defense, an attempt to add credibility to their irrational denunciations of Israel.

Think of it this way: There is no particular advantage, obviously, when someone who has always condemned Israel condemns Israel again.

There is, presumably, more legitimacy when someone who has always supported a particular cause is moved by some epiphany to change their mind.

I’ve always hated Israel and this just proves I was right is probably not as powerful a salvo as I’ve always been an ally to Israel but what they are doing right now is unconscionable.

These (former) friends clearly understood this, if not entirely consciously.

As I have been forced to think about this more in recent days, as this rather unpleasant back-and-forth with my ex-buddy continued and then resulted in the end of our lifelong friendship, I have come to think there may be something more to it.

Say what you will about the Jewish people, their enemies have always included the worst people in human history. Nobody wants to be associated with those people.

My (former) friends may not know much about history, but they know enough to know they don’t want to be associated with some of the people who have quibbled with the Jews in the past. You know, the goose-stepping kind.

So before they condemn the Jewish people today (in the form of their national incarnation, Israel), they issue a disclaimer to isolate themselves from their ideological ancestors.

Their logic seems to be: I hate the Jewish state, but that’s a new thing for me. I’m nothing like the Jew-haters who came before me — and it’s totally justified because, you know, bloodthirsty Zios and genocide and blah blah blah.

And yet. How far are they from that earlier crowd, those others who targeted Jews in the past?

Hamas is the enemy Israel is fighting here. And Hamas has made as clear as it possibly could that the genocide of Jews is their goal. People with similar ideas existed 80 years ago — and almost succeeded in realizing their dream.

How does standing with (or against) Jews today differ from standing with (or against) Jews 80 years ago? Or at any other time in history?

The difference is, for once, the Jews have a state. They can defend themselves. And they are defending themselves.

And that’s the problem.

As Dara Horn so succinctly put it, People Love Dead Jews.

Jews who fight back? Not so much.

So the intellectual and moral gymnastics my former friends (and probably yours) go through is a preemptive defense mechanism for people who know, even if unconsciously, that they are on the wrong side of history, as so many generations before them have been.

They have the right to think and say whatever they want — it’s a free country. But isn’t it funny that they think they have to preface their abandonment of the Jews with falsified cred about what stalwart allies they were until now?

They want to set themselves apart from those people in history who have suddenly found good reasons to turn on the Jewish people.

We are not like those people, they seem to think. Others in history have turned against the Jews unjustly. Us? We are the quintessence of justice. Generations have been wrong about the Jews before, but this time — this time — our onslaughts are honorable.

They can think what they want.

History will know.