Shoot Me First.

An article brings me back to how I felt on October 8.

A good friend who also reads “Behind the Narrative,” one of my favorite Substacks, forwarded this to me with some insightful comments. I suggest you both read the piece and subscribe to Behind the Narrative.

The piece talks about Jews who denounce Israel, make art about how pro-Palestine they are, and all but completely disown their Jewish identity. The author cites the example of Natalie Portman. I had no idea that Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem or was Jewish. I just thought of her as Padme, and since I have spend years contemplating how I turned into Anakin, I think she’s beautiful but wrong, naive and misguided… like today’s Democrats.

In the comments to the piece, a reader writes about “Shoot me last” Jews, those who try to assimilate and conform and denounce their Jewish identity and support those who kill Jews, all with the hopes that they will be accepted. There is a long, long history of this.

This phenomenon is not confined to Jews by any stretch of the imagination. Many people of all religions and ethnic groups go along enthusiastically with regimes in hopes that by flying under the radar, parroting the slogans, and behaving in public the way they think they are supposed to, they may be spared.

They hope that when the day of reckoning comes, when nothing but the identity that they can not erase is seen by those who would kill them, somehow their politics, their anti-Israel pronouncements or pro-Pali films, will save them. Even their conversions to Christianity haven’t historically saved them. I wonder if their conversions to Islam will. I doubt it.

When I read, “Shoot me last,” I had a visceral reaction. It brought me back to October 7 and those days right after, when my mind was racing with anger and fear and I had nightmares every night.

It was not abstract. The violence against Jews was personal. It was about my friends, the people who have been closest to me in hard times and good times. It was about my high school best friend, who survived some crazy things with me and knows that I throw up all the time when I’m nervous or happy so it’s no big deal. It was about my college roommate, whom I never guessed would become a mother of three beautiful Jewish young ladies, in New York. It was about Ezra far away but having nightmares too and trying to explain what was going on to his child who never should have had to hear this. JD up in Boston who could have chosen not to be Jewish but converted and lives faithfully, along with his amazing wife who was one of my best college friends. So many of the people closest to me throughout my whole life have been Jewish… I had to do something.

I had no idea I would meet all of you. Ari in Jerusalem wasn’t even in my imagination. I had no way of knowing what would come. But I had the same feeling that I had when I first read about Nazi Germany.

If you’re going to come for my Jewish friends, you will have to get through me first.

Like a lot of people who make great generals and terrible presidents, I was born a fighter. I know I’m not a diplomat. I make the quick decision in the heat of battle. I lead people through passion and on my off time enjoy flirting with the boys who live by reason. I love reason, but it doesn’t move most people. Wars are won because people will put their lives on the line for what they love: family, community, country, God. They follow those who can make crystal clear what they are fighting for and what is at stake. What we all have to lose.

Later on I figured out that I was defending Western civilization, everything we love about our Constitution, our freedom, including the freedom of the pro-Pali gay and trans yoga teachers to hate Israel. That’s part of the freedom we fight for.

But at the beginning it was just about my friends. I knew that many of them had way more to lose than I did. Suddenly my position of a freelancer barely making it economically gave me something that my high status, well off friends didn’t have: freedom to write.

I couldn’t very well say, “Fire me first!” when there was no employer to fire me!

Over the years, I have wondered if I have as much courage as I want to have. I am afraid for my economic security. I worry about my mom and my cat. Like all of you, I have to put a roof over my head. Like many of you, I have to put food in the cat’s bowl.

I used to worry that the more violent anti-Israel factions in my neighborhood would figure out who I am but I fly under their radar and they don’t bother me. If you are a white person who has lived much of their life in poor black neighborhoods, you know how to detect when someone will become violent and how to be sufficiently meek and respectful in public that no one bothers you - usually.

Quickly things moved beyond my circle of friends. I became way more pro-Israel than most of my Jewish American friends. I criticized the Democrats early on for their failure to back Israel completely. Some of my friends don’t talk to me anymore. That makes me sad, but I stuck with my real friends.

Then there are the things that once you have seen, you can’t unsee.

Americans who stand up for everything that is good about our country: freedom to pursue our chosen vocation, to worship as we choose, to not just parrot words we don’t believe. Fighting back in ways that matter against the woke orthodoxy that deprived so many of their ways to make a living and ruined their lives. People who believe that we are individuals, to be judged on our character and our actions, not fixed with a label based on our skin color.

Supporting Israel is about more than supporting the Jewish people, though that I will continue to do as long as God sees fit to keep me on this earth. Supporting Israel is standing up for our way of life. Rights for women, rights to love and marry whom we choose, rights to dress as we choose (even for those whose fashion choices are horrifying!) It is not Christians who want to take away freedom. It’s the Socialist-Jihadist Left.

I know what I fight for. I know who I am. I’m not afraid of those who try to make us say things we don’t believe. As much as Scott Weiner helped create the mob that now attacks him, I’m glad he would not say the things they tried to make him say.

I get so much hope, faith and courage from my friends. It is worth everything to stand with you. Every time I feel like I’m losing hope or just don’t have it in me to keep fighting, one of you shows up to light the way. I’m with you, m'ayyeyaan.