PROGRESS CAN TURN ON A DIME. JEWS LEARNED THAT. WHEN YOU COME TO THEM FOR SUPPORT — AND YOU WILL — CONSIDER THIS: WHEN JEWS NEEDED ALLIES, WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?
Boom! Again, you read the Jewish room perfectly! That “breathtaking, staggering silence” is exactly what I have experienced from my most ”progressive”non-Jewish friends since 10/7. Or when I try to bring up the subject, it’s met with a sort of patronizing, “I’ll just let you get it off your chest but you’re white so you don’t really have a leg to stand on” smirk. While I’ve thought I was searching for the “perfect” essay/article/podcast/video to get these folks to understand us, I think I’ve finally come to the realization that they don’t want to “understand” because it threatens their whole world view. As Joshua Hoffman (another superstar - highly recommended!) said just today in his “Future of Jewish” Substack post “Are You Afraid of Israel?” : “many would rather smear Israel than rethink their own dogmas.” So while I still support the progressive causes I once marched for - LGBTQ rights, labour equality, feminism, antiracism - I am currently making up for lost time by focusing my mental, emotional AND financial energy on the Jewish people’s needs. There are plenty of other people who can support the other causes but we are only 0.2% of the world and clearly no one cares about the Jews… except for you, Pat, and those strange bedfellows - fundamentalist Christians and conservatives! Your genuine allyship and deep understanding are SO important and appreciated. ❤️
This is my very favorite of all your essays on Substack! Just this morning I got another message from Planned Parenthood which I have supported generously since the early 1970s. After October 8, when they joined in the crazy accusations against Israel and asked for money to help Palestinians in Gaza (help them do what? kill more Jews?), I stopped my monthly automatic contribution. I sent several letters to the national and local leadership asking why they had reversed their position on Gaza when for years they had alerted me to the terrible situation of women and girls there who are forced into arranged marriage, sex trafficked as children if they are not Muslims, denied birth control except with their husbands' approval, and denied abortions. No response ever. Well now I have no response to them. The only female member of my family of child bearing age is a lesbian -- so the hell with Planned Parenthood. Same with other groups that not only let us down but turned on us. Every single one of the Indigenous Americans who I knew as friends and all those I helped in my position as a professor, putting in many hours to find them funding and support their work, contacted me immediately after 10/7 to ask how I was, if I needed any help, and to assure me that they stood with Israel. Guess what group will continue to get my support until the day I die and be remembered in my will?
Same with me and Red Cross. They messaged me again the other day. I told them they were effectively a branch of Hamas and that they have betrayed all their decades of good works.
I know it's rhetorical but I want to say something about them anyway. When the IDF freed the Yazidi girl who was kidnapped and sold to a Hamas soldier when she was 11 years old, tons of information came out about the sex trafficking of children by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups in the area. And about child marriage in Gaza and the rapes of little boys. Not a single feminist organization said a word about these outrages, which were reported on for years by Human Rights Watch before 10/7. So I guess rape and sex slavery are a-ok, even when done to little children, so long as the rapists shout about their support for a genocide of Jews while doing it. Unbelievably horrific!
The NEA here is the states just severed ties with the ADL after 40 years, and apparently half of of the teachers at their union meeting voted to eliminate recognition of Jewish Heritage Month, because "it's not worth recognizing" after unanimously agreeing that recognizing Black History and AAPI months were essential. It's not just abandonment and betrayal, it's intentional erasure. And one has to ask, why? It is just that sweet Qatari money?
I agree. I see a lot of this on both sides, the idea that the protestors are being paid to do this, or this or that podcaster is being paid to say this. Some of it is probably true. But I think it dangerously looks away from the fact that most of these people don't need to be paid to march wearing keffiyehs and chant for the extermination of Jews, or to peddle blood libels on a podcast. Most do it for free.
I know you’re right. I don’t even have the words to describe what it is to live in a world where our fellow humans would actually celebrate and seem to be accelerating as quickly as they can, our complete demise —because they actually believe the world would be better without us in it. I think about this every day.
They are soaking in self-righteousness, casting you Jews as the oppressor. Since everything in their world is black and white with no shades of grey, there is no "good" in the bad guy and no "bad" in the good guy. So anxious to always be on the side of the oppressed, they buy into the propaganda from Qatar and demonize you.
The evangelicals currently aligned with you are also masters of self-righteousness, with no room for nuance. They fully expect you to utterly validate their apocalyptic prophesies any minute now. They have been waiting a long time and they are blind to any evidence that contradicts them, but if Jews come up with a Messiah figure that does not meet their expectations they will bay for blood.
Flawless. I don't even know how to approach the non-Jewish friends and family members I have about what kind of angst this fiasco is causing. While I have always been aware of antisemitic hatred, the lack of reaction by people I trusted and the nightmare that has unfolded on our colleges was a sucker punch. I have been losing sleep since 10/7 and the arrival of Mr. Mamdani on the scene has only brought this home that much more painfully. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to crawl under my bed and give up. I'll fight to the extent that I can and, maybe, head for Israel should the fight prove hopeless. It's just incredible to me that other folks who have been in the line of this fire themselves, and very likely will be again if I am any judge of the tea leaves I'm seeing, apparently could not care less.
My Jewish grandmother attended the March on Washington in 1963. During one of the speeches, she turned to her friend and said, "I don't know who that man is, but he sure can speak!" Little did she know at the time that she was witnessing MLK deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech live.
One of my non-Jewish friends, seeing me post 10/7, asked, “Why are you so upset? Your people have seen off every other enemy in the past and you’ll do so again.” Yes, but at what terrible cost? Only someone who has never experienced the threat of annihilation can talk about it so blithely.
Then, almost in the same breath, she said that even if Israel managed to eliminate Hamas, another terrorist group would simply take its place. “Thanks a lot, what a comfort you are”, I thought but didn’t say.
They don’t get it, why should we have to keep “seeing them off?” Why is it the normal state of affairs to them that Jews have to live in a constant state of fighting for the right to simply exist on this Earth?
One reason we see this is simple lack of courage. What I have seen from progressives is that they are afraid of losing friends, invitations to a party, being called an oppressor, that kind of thing. Germany in the 1930s, a highly cultured society where most Jews had assimilated, becomes more understandable. For some reason, most people lack courage.
Because it is hard to give up the comforts of life. Even those of us who have seen some hardship, once we get a taste or comfort, we don't want to go back to hardship again. And we are scared that when we speak up, somone may take our comforts away.
On the other hand all the "progressive" college kids (and others) who tell at the top of their lungs on campuses (and on the streets of our cities), come from comfortable families with comfortable lives. But that's ok, because they are yelling whats in vogue. So they get even more comfortable.
Here’s the thing, at least for me (and I speak only for myself): I have supported so many causes over the years, in action, in words, financially. Since the mid-2010s, I have watched as Jew-hatred has metastasized from the political fringes into a cancer that has consumed the left and the right. And the response among the social justice warriors? 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗. Or, even worse: Glee. Joy. My late mother was a Nazi refugee. She lost her extended family in the Holocaust, and she and often said that history would eventually be repeated. I am happy that she is no longer to see that the hatred she faced as a young child still exists, and is even thriving. She’d be devastated to see that it infected her adopted homeland of Canada. All of this is a regrettably long way for me to say that I am going to think twice (and maybe three or four times) before I support anyone else’s causes ever again. Am I bitter and angry? Damned right I am.
And, all of THAT being said, I am incredibly grateful for your ongoing words of support (and your actions as well), Pat. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I’m not Jewish but have taken a public stand in print in support of Israel and the Jewish people since right after October 7. I’ve been welcomed and offered protection when I’ve been threatened. The Jewish community is wonderful to allies and I am proud to be one.
1. yer onna roll Pat, this is tee-riffic (an' sadly troo)
2. THIS...yes... a torn page in mah own "belief system"...
"I cannot count the number of my Jewish friends — my age and older — who have told me that they dismissed their parents’ and grandparents’ warnings that the idyll of North American (and European) life since 1945 could yet prove temporary."
my "bubbie" the original prepper (her "fruit cellar" wuz stocked with ancient cans of tuna & cling peaches!) said.... it would "happen again".... at least we "should eat" while we "hid"--both her brothers an' her husband served in WWII.... last time it wuz an attic, this time it would be cellars (she believed).... sadly neither served as much protection :-(
THANKFULLY.... Sam above wuz not the only one onta sumthin' here--a guy wrote a book 'bout just this kinda mixed up "Kool Aid" (a drink that's neither "kool" nor "helpful!" of course)
I DO believe mebbe there's sumthin' to this cuz the "Left I Left!" seemed plagued with an "outbreak" of misdirected T.O. (still iz!) an' it's the Left that needs healin'! (ain't too cozy on da "Right" an' their ain't no "center")
Me? I learned the concept of TO wuz to help those you KNEW via DSD (do sumthin' dummy!) meanin' don't just stand there... so yes, that means join the march or protest or help out if sum'buddy you know/love is part of the group needin' help but it don't mean (fergawdsakes) headin' ta farflung places all over the whirled ta help "causes" with which ya have zero connection... it's a "good" concept that got "perverted!"
You measure friends by actions not words, especially when things are tough. I will never vote for a progressive or support a progressive cause ever again, because they’ve made antisemitism the brand of the Democratic Party, especially since October 7th. They’re falling over themselves to help Hamas survive after its massacre of Jews, the largest one since the Nazis. They’ve made apologia for the Free Palestine cult’s professional discrimination campaign against Jews, the antisemitic faculty and student campaign against Jewish students and professors, the domestic terrorism against Jewish Americans. That is abhorrent and inexcusable and I am done with them, who I was once part of. That’s besides how every progressive cause has been Palestined (as Ariel Beery described it perfectly).
The only people who have stood for Jews in Israel and the diaspora have been moderate Democrats and the majority of the GOP. Shame on the goddamn progressive hypocrites and antisemites.
Hello fellow Bee 🐝… the Labour Party, roughly the U.K. equivalent of your Democrats, has had a problem with antisemitism for, well, as long as I remember, and I’m 70. The once leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is trying to create a ‘new left’ party. One of the many Palestine groups - Free Palestine, I think - has been proscribed by the current Labour prime minister/government, after doing millions of pounds of damage on an RAF base, and now the weekly London marches are having people arrested for supporting them(given the actions of many of the marchers up to now, this should have been happening anyway, but…) What will happen now, well, probably a slap on the wrist and a wagging of a finger, though the penalties are up to 14 years in prison or a large fine.
They dont know what they’re marching for. When asked about it they show a stunning level of ignorance…but it’s terrifying as it’s the majority. Way back at the start, one man was told by the police(he was attempting to cross the road to get home) to go a different way, because he “looked too Jewish”. Wtf? One thing(of many) I can’t get my head round is the volume of “Queers for Palestine”( and variations); don’t they realise what would happen to them? Being part of the LGBTQcommunity myself, I don’t understand the ‘automatic’ assumption of that support.
Anyway, just wanted to look in to mention how it is here in the U.K., and also to thank you for this:
“That’s besides how every progressive cause has been Palestined (as Ariel Beery described it perfectly).”
It is your age group that still understands. I worry for the next generation of Jews or pro israel supporters. Where are the younger generation writing, emailing. Talking. They are few and far between
Boom! Again, you read the Jewish room perfectly! That “breathtaking, staggering silence” is exactly what I have experienced from my most ”progressive”non-Jewish friends since 10/7. Or when I try to bring up the subject, it’s met with a sort of patronizing, “I’ll just let you get it off your chest but you’re white so you don’t really have a leg to stand on” smirk. While I’ve thought I was searching for the “perfect” essay/article/podcast/video to get these folks to understand us, I think I’ve finally come to the realization that they don’t want to “understand” because it threatens their whole world view. As Joshua Hoffman (another superstar - highly recommended!) said just today in his “Future of Jewish” Substack post “Are You Afraid of Israel?” : “many would rather smear Israel than rethink their own dogmas.” So while I still support the progressive causes I once marched for - LGBTQ rights, labour equality, feminism, antiracism - I am currently making up for lost time by focusing my mental, emotional AND financial energy on the Jewish people’s needs. There are plenty of other people who can support the other causes but we are only 0.2% of the world and clearly no one cares about the Jews… except for you, Pat, and those strange bedfellows - fundamentalist Christians and conservatives! Your genuine allyship and deep understanding are SO important and appreciated. ❤️
Thanks Suzy. I appreciate your words. And you!
This is my very favorite of all your essays on Substack! Just this morning I got another message from Planned Parenthood which I have supported generously since the early 1970s. After October 8, when they joined in the crazy accusations against Israel and asked for money to help Palestinians in Gaza (help them do what? kill more Jews?), I stopped my monthly automatic contribution. I sent several letters to the national and local leadership asking why they had reversed their position on Gaza when for years they had alerted me to the terrible situation of women and girls there who are forced into arranged marriage, sex trafficked as children if they are not Muslims, denied birth control except with their husbands' approval, and denied abortions. No response ever. Well now I have no response to them. The only female member of my family of child bearing age is a lesbian -- so the hell with Planned Parenthood. Same with other groups that not only let us down but turned on us. Every single one of the Indigenous Americans who I knew as friends and all those I helped in my position as a professor, putting in many hours to find them funding and support their work, contacted me immediately after 10/7 to ask how I was, if I needed any help, and to assure me that they stood with Israel. Guess what group will continue to get my support until the day I die and be remembered in my will?
Same with me and Red Cross. They messaged me again the other day. I told them they were effectively a branch of Hamas and that they have betrayed all their decades of good works.
I am curious, did Planned Parenthood ever speak out about the sexual assaults and violence against women that Hamas perpetrated on Oct 7th?
Rhetorical question, I know.
I know it's rhetorical but I want to say something about them anyway. When the IDF freed the Yazidi girl who was kidnapped and sold to a Hamas soldier when she was 11 years old, tons of information came out about the sex trafficking of children by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups in the area. And about child marriage in Gaza and the rapes of little boys. Not a single feminist organization said a word about these outrages, which were reported on for years by Human Rights Watch before 10/7. So I guess rape and sex slavery are a-ok, even when done to little children, so long as the rapists shout about their support for a genocide of Jews while doing it. Unbelievably horrific!
Soft bigotry of low expectations.
The NEA here is the states just severed ties with the ADL after 40 years, and apparently half of of the teachers at their union meeting voted to eliminate recognition of Jewish Heritage Month, because "it's not worth recognizing" after unanimously agreeing that recognizing Black History and AAPI months were essential. It's not just abandonment and betrayal, it's intentional erasure. And one has to ask, why? It is just that sweet Qatari money?
Sadly, I don't think it's as simple as being bought off. It's regretably something more sinister.
I agree. I see a lot of this on both sides, the idea that the protestors are being paid to do this, or this or that podcaster is being paid to say this. Some of it is probably true. But I think it dangerously looks away from the fact that most of these people don't need to be paid to march wearing keffiyehs and chant for the extermination of Jews, or to peddle blood libels on a podcast. Most do it for free.
I know you’re right. I don’t even have the words to describe what it is to live in a world where our fellow humans would actually celebrate and seem to be accelerating as quickly as they can, our complete demise —because they actually believe the world would be better without us in it. I think about this every day.
They are soaking in self-righteousness, casting you Jews as the oppressor. Since everything in their world is black and white with no shades of grey, there is no "good" in the bad guy and no "bad" in the good guy. So anxious to always be on the side of the oppressed, they buy into the propaganda from Qatar and demonize you.
The evangelicals currently aligned with you are also masters of self-righteousness, with no room for nuance. They fully expect you to utterly validate their apocalyptic prophesies any minute now. They have been waiting a long time and they are blind to any evidence that contradicts them, but if Jews come up with a Messiah figure that does not meet their expectations they will bay for blood.
Flawless. I don't even know how to approach the non-Jewish friends and family members I have about what kind of angst this fiasco is causing. While I have always been aware of antisemitic hatred, the lack of reaction by people I trusted and the nightmare that has unfolded on our colleges was a sucker punch. I have been losing sleep since 10/7 and the arrival of Mr. Mamdani on the scene has only brought this home that much more painfully. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to crawl under my bed and give up. I'll fight to the extent that I can and, maybe, head for Israel should the fight prove hopeless. It's just incredible to me that other folks who have been in the line of this fire themselves, and very likely will be again if I am any judge of the tea leaves I'm seeing, apparently could not care less.
Yep. I'm mad.
I love you Pat Johnson!
Shucks! xo
He really is the best!
Me too!!!!
Ditto!
My Jewish grandmother attended the March on Washington in 1963. During one of the speeches, she turned to her friend and said, "I don't know who that man is, but he sure can speak!" Little did she know at the time that she was witnessing MLK deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech live.
One of my non-Jewish friends, seeing me post 10/7, asked, “Why are you so upset? Your people have seen off every other enemy in the past and you’ll do so again.” Yes, but at what terrible cost? Only someone who has never experienced the threat of annihilation can talk about it so blithely.
Then, almost in the same breath, she said that even if Israel managed to eliminate Hamas, another terrorist group would simply take its place. “Thanks a lot, what a comfort you are”, I thought but didn’t say.
Aren't people wonderful?
They don’t get it, why should we have to keep “seeing them off?” Why is it the normal state of affairs to them that Jews have to live in a constant state of fighting for the right to simply exist on this Earth?
One reason we see this is simple lack of courage. What I have seen from progressives is that they are afraid of losing friends, invitations to a party, being called an oppressor, that kind of thing. Germany in the 1930s, a highly cultured society where most Jews had assimilated, becomes more understandable. For some reason, most people lack courage.
Because it is hard to give up the comforts of life. Even those of us who have seen some hardship, once we get a taste or comfort, we don't want to go back to hardship again. And we are scared that when we speak up, somone may take our comforts away.
On the other hand all the "progressive" college kids (and others) who tell at the top of their lungs on campuses (and on the streets of our cities), come from comfortable families with comfortable lives. But that's ok, because they are yelling whats in vogue. So they get even more comfortable.
Here’s the thing, at least for me (and I speak only for myself): I have supported so many causes over the years, in action, in words, financially. Since the mid-2010s, I have watched as Jew-hatred has metastasized from the political fringes into a cancer that has consumed the left and the right. And the response among the social justice warriors? 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗. Or, even worse: Glee. Joy. My late mother was a Nazi refugee. She lost her extended family in the Holocaust, and she and often said that history would eventually be repeated. I am happy that she is no longer to see that the hatred she faced as a young child still exists, and is even thriving. She’d be devastated to see that it infected her adopted homeland of Canada. All of this is a regrettably long way for me to say that I am going to think twice (and maybe three or four times) before I support anyone else’s causes ever again. Am I bitter and angry? Damned right I am.
And, all of THAT being said, I am incredibly grateful for your ongoing words of support (and your actions as well), Pat. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Exactly.
I’m not Jewish but have taken a public stand in print in support of Israel and the Jewish people since right after October 7. I’ve been welcomed and offered protection when I’ve been threatened. The Jewish community is wonderful to allies and I am proud to be one.
Mannn this is good
1. yer onna roll Pat, this is tee-riffic (an' sadly troo)
2. THIS...yes... a torn page in mah own "belief system"...
"I cannot count the number of my Jewish friends — my age and older — who have told me that they dismissed their parents’ and grandparents’ warnings that the idyll of North American (and European) life since 1945 could yet prove temporary."
my "bubbie" the original prepper (her "fruit cellar" wuz stocked with ancient cans of tuna & cling peaches!) said.... it would "happen again".... at least we "should eat" while we "hid"--both her brothers an' her husband served in WWII.... last time it wuz an attic, this time it would be cellars (she believed).... sadly neither served as much protection :-(
3. "fixin' the whirled"
https://samhilt.substack.com/p/dont-drink-the-kool-aid-the-dark
THANKFULLY.... Sam above wuz not the only one onta sumthin' here--a guy wrote a book 'bout just this kinda mixed up "Kool Aid" (a drink that's neither "kool" nor "helpful!" of course)
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/to-heal-the-world-how-the-jewish-left-corrupts-judaism-and-endangers-israel
https://www.amazon.com/Heal-World-Corrupts-Judaism-Endangers/dp/1250160871
I DO believe mebbe there's sumthin' to this cuz the "Left I Left!" seemed plagued with an "outbreak" of misdirected T.O. (still iz!) an' it's the Left that needs healin'! (ain't too cozy on da "Right" an' their ain't no "center")
Me? I learned the concept of TO wuz to help those you KNEW via DSD (do sumthin' dummy!) meanin' don't just stand there... so yes, that means join the march or protest or help out if sum'buddy you know/love is part of the group needin' help but it don't mean (fergawdsakes) headin' ta farflung places all over the whirled ta help "causes" with which ya have zero connection... it's a "good" concept that got "perverted!"
Thank you for your tireless commitment, Pat.
Pat..you have put into such eloquent words the heart pain of friendship abandonment…a regular occurrence for us now. I vote for you… seriously!
You measure friends by actions not words, especially when things are tough. I will never vote for a progressive or support a progressive cause ever again, because they’ve made antisemitism the brand of the Democratic Party, especially since October 7th. They’re falling over themselves to help Hamas survive after its massacre of Jews, the largest one since the Nazis. They’ve made apologia for the Free Palestine cult’s professional discrimination campaign against Jews, the antisemitic faculty and student campaign against Jewish students and professors, the domestic terrorism against Jewish Americans. That is abhorrent and inexcusable and I am done with them, who I was once part of. That’s besides how every progressive cause has been Palestined (as Ariel Beery described it perfectly).
The only people who have stood for Jews in Israel and the diaspora have been moderate Democrats and the majority of the GOP. Shame on the goddamn progressive hypocrites and antisemites.
Hello fellow Bee 🐝… the Labour Party, roughly the U.K. equivalent of your Democrats, has had a problem with antisemitism for, well, as long as I remember, and I’m 70. The once leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is trying to create a ‘new left’ party. One of the many Palestine groups - Free Palestine, I think - has been proscribed by the current Labour prime minister/government, after doing millions of pounds of damage on an RAF base, and now the weekly London marches are having people arrested for supporting them(given the actions of many of the marchers up to now, this should have been happening anyway, but…) What will happen now, well, probably a slap on the wrist and a wagging of a finger, though the penalties are up to 14 years in prison or a large fine.
They dont know what they’re marching for. When asked about it they show a stunning level of ignorance…but it’s terrifying as it’s the majority. Way back at the start, one man was told by the police(he was attempting to cross the road to get home) to go a different way, because he “looked too Jewish”. Wtf? One thing(of many) I can’t get my head round is the volume of “Queers for Palestine”( and variations); don’t they realise what would happen to them? Being part of the LGBTQcommunity myself, I don’t understand the ‘automatic’ assumption of that support.
Anyway, just wanted to look in to mention how it is here in the U.K., and also to thank you for this:
“That’s besides how every progressive cause has been Palestined (as Ariel Beery described it perfectly).”
It is your age group that still understands. I worry for the next generation of Jews or pro israel supporters. Where are the younger generation writing, emailing. Talking. They are few and far between