WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO STAND WITH THE JEWS?

THINK YOU “DON’T KNOW ENOUGH” TO OPPOSE THE ANTISEMITIC MOBS? YOU’RE LETTING IGNORANCE TRIUMPH.

And you’re afraid YOU don’t know enough to engage intelligently?

I don’t know enough.

These are four words you will never hear from the lips of a “pro-Palestinian” activist.

On the other hand, I have heard this excuse from too many friends and colleagues to count when pressed on why they are not standing up to antisemitism.

I don’t know enough.

This is a valid explanation for not getting involved in an issue of complex international conflict. But when synagogues are being firebombed and Jewish schools shot at in Canada, this is a statement of complicity.

“I don’t know enough” is something “pro-Palestinian” activists should be uttering a great deal more. As I wrote in a post this week, these activists are often intensely ignorant on the subjects of which they have made the centre point of their existence.

On the other hand, people who might be expected to stand with Jewish people and Israel refrain from doing so, apparently, because they cannot quote the definitive histories of Israel and Palestine and the millennia-long narratives of antisemitism backward and forward from memory. Surely there is some middle ground.

I have heard this explanation, such as it is, from people in senior positions in political parties, churches, unions and on campuses, who have chosen not to stand with Israel and Jews. It is an excuse for not getting involved in a nasty, brutish and long conflict over the conflict. It’s understandable. Sort of.

However, when that conflict is ripping apart your trade union, your political party, your church, your friend group or your college campus, you kind of have an obligation to know what’s going on.

For one thing, the answer to “not knowing enough” is pretty simple.

Learn something, FFS.

Especially you people on campus. Isn’t that why you’re there? (Or maybe it’s not. You tell me.)

On the Palestinian side, ignorance is not only an accelerant, but a point of pride. Rather than being dissuaded from getting involved despite being know-nothings, they get involved precisely because of their ignorance.

I have attended not one but two public “pro-Palestinian” panel discussions in which invited guest speakers acknowledged off the top that they had no idea about the topics they were addressing but that “morality” demanded that they speak up. Ignorant as they were, they had been pressed into service — not to sit in the audience, mind you, but to take a seat on the stage that should be reserved for people who, however wrong-headed, at least know WTF they’re talking about.

No. Morality demands that you know what the hell you’re talking about. Then, possibly, morality demands that you speak up.

Again, these were not incidental people dragged off the street, or members of the audience who got up to ask a question. These were people who were (A) asked to speak on a panel despite not knowing anything about the topic and (B) accepted the invitation, despite not knowing anything about the topic.

In both instances, they were persuaded to join based on the idea that silence is complicity.

Silence may indeed be complicity. But this was complicity + stupidity = a whole different kind of morality.

As we have seen, humiliatingly in the past year or so, shove a video camera in the face of the most vociferous “pro-Palestinian” activists and you will often find they literally cannot find the place on a map. They have made “Palestine” the focus of their identities, but they have no idea what they are talking about.

It is hardly a constructive strategy to wish that there were more ignorant people on your own side of an argument. But as the “pro-Palestinian” movement has proven beyond a doubt, evidenced by the marching millions around the world, ignorance is a hell of a boon. Swept along in a mob of hysterical ignorance, vast numbers of people with no moral compass or intellectual foundation jump on board the political equivalent of the Tide Pod Challenge.

There are a few reasons why rampant ignorance puts the Palestinian movement way ahead of the pro-Israel movement in the global battlefield for ideas.

For one thing, Jews and their allies are devoted to facts. (This is a stereotype, but stereotypes can be real timesavers, let’s not kid ourselves). Jews notoriously debate details and facts to find truth. There is a word in Hebrew — pilpul — that doesn’t really translate other than maybe nitpicking in the most didactic, arcane way to dissect every potential angle of an argument.

Quite the contrary, the “pro-Palestinian” movement is premised on the idea that, if you have come to the conclusion that you are right, facts don’t matter where fanatical passion will suffice. Unjustified confidence trumps intellectual evidence.

I am not saying that there are not well informed “pro-Palestinian activists.” There are. I would venture, however, that they are a minuscule minority.

But also, even those who are informed on the subject usually come from a deeply perverted perspective, rather than one of historical veracity.

Consider the “intellectual” the icons of Palestinian scholarship: Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé, Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi, Nathan Thrall — each of these are intelligent men (why are they all men?) but their theses are almost invariably founded on false premises, bad history, junk political science, intolerance and the intransigent, exclusionary position in which Palestinians have a right to national self-determination but Jews do not.

For people who slap COEXIST bumper stickers on their cars, wave peace flags and pretend to be tolerant, these “scholars” make up a very strange pantheon.

The point here is that the millions of people marching for Palestine today, especially when compared with the motley bunch of people I gather with on Sunday afternoons to hold vigil for the Israeli hostages, should in no way be seen as evidence that they are right and we are wrong.

As I keep harping on about, when have mobs ever been on the wrong side of history — especially when it comes to Jews?

As my regular readers know, I am capable of vomiting up hundreds of thousands of words in record time. And, if there is one single message that I want people to take away, it is that it is simply not possible to be “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel.” Likewise, you cannot be “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian.” This conflict is the opposite of a zero-sum scenario. For peace and Palestinian self-determination to happen, we need to be both “pro-Palestinian” and “pro-Israel.” Both sides need to win some and both sides need to lose some.

To advance a scenario where one side wins and one side loses is to condemn both sides to more generations of war and death.

Yet this has always been the overwhelming consensus of the Palestinian movement. As I also repeatedly assert, to overseas activists, dead Palestinians are not a sad byproduct of the conflict but its end-goal.

Zionists — and, since 1948, Israelis — have overwhelmingly been prepared to live in peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. What choice do they have, FFS?

The position of Palestinian leaders — and the almost unanimous position of their overseas “allies” — is an existential fight to the death for the obliteration of the Zionist entity and the total victory of Palestinianism, as they chant routinely “From the river to the sea.”

These are not the words or the positions of people who advocate peace. These are the approaches of people who want permanent war and genocide.

Is it any wonder, then, that their side is founded on ignorance and misrepresentations and ours on truth, coexistence and peace?

It’s hard to make an intellectual case for antisemitism, the genocide of Jews and the eradication of the Zionist state. So they invent a fake scenario, founded on lies and emotion, not facts, in which Israel is embodiment of all the world’s evil and then they seek its crucifixion.

When challenged, they retrench into lies like “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism,” and the latest slanderous blockbuster “genocide.” No facts necessary. Just screamy allegations based on bugger all.

Try to get decent, fair-minded people to stand with Israel and the Jewish people, on the other hand, and expect handwringing demurrals. Oh, I just don’t know enough.

It’s one thing to “not know enough” to engage on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But how much data do you need to declare that the shooting up of Jewish schools and the firebombing of synagogues are not acceptable? How much do you need to know when Jewish babies are beheaded, Jewish families immolated alive, Jewish toddlers kidnapped and held for 15 months and counting? How much do you need to know when, in the face of all these atrocities, people in your own neighborhood march in the streets chanting “Long Live October 7”?

What will it take until you know enough?

A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)