The Writing On The Wall

The truly pro-terrorist, antisemitic things that people say openly in my neighborhood.

I’ve started to wonder if I should change my blog’s name to: “We don’t have to like it, but it’s true.”

I’ve written at length about the disturbing things that happen in my neighborhood, mirroring the frightening rise in antisemitic crimes around the world. Quite a few people seem to doubt me when I mention an antisemitic incident of violence, like early August when a visibly Jewish father was beaten in front of his children in Montreal. So I will stick to things I see with my own eyes, and can capture with my own camera.

I collect pictures of hate graffiti, but I hesitate to post them because they are upsetting, and I’m guessing my worldwide sisters and brothers are upset enough. I want to share these so you see what’s really happening in a neighborhood that calls itself progressive, where the people pride themselves on being “inclusive” and hating “fascism,” and where Black Lives Matter used to be the main topic of graffiti, but now antisemitic and anti-Israel graffiti have pulled ahead.

Let’s start with this one. I took this picture in the bathroom of a Mexican place a couple of blocks from my apartment. It’s been up since very shortly after October 7, 2023. The owners of the restaurant (which makes a fabulous burrito, I have to say) clearly have no problem with it as it could have been erased at any time.

“Abolish Israel.” How do you read that? Is there someone out there who can convince us that this means, “I want everyone to live in peace,” “I pray for an end to the war in the Middle East and to all suffering everywhere,” or some such?

What would be the reaction if the graffiti said, “Abolish Africa?” What if some pro-Ukraine people drew a giant sunflower and wrote “Abolish Russia?”

No one, regardless of their position on the Russia-Ukraine was, says that “Russia should be abolished.” No, that is reserved for the world’s only Jewish-majority tiny little state the size of New Jersey.

Reasonable people, good people, people I like, people with all the best of intentions, can and do disagree about the Israel-Hamas war, among other things. Many people do not like Netanyahu. I’ve never met the man, I can assure you. I’ve got enough problems in my own square block. But “Abolish Israel?” Like actually get rid of a country?

Okay, how about this one?

First, “Don’t eat aminals?” Do they mean “animals?” Like, advocating for vegetarianism? Just asking.

I found this one on the bathroom door of a coffee shop near the local park where there’s a great farmers’ market on Saturdays. I wanted a coffee and to use the restroom while I waited for the tomato stand to open.

In case anyone has forgotten, Hamas is the terrorist organization that, along with hundreds of so-called Gazan civilians, went into Israel, murdered parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, raped women, men and children, cut off a woman’s breast with box cutters and threw it around, shot people in shelters so that one who survived to later write the song “October Rain” renamed “Hurricane” and won fifth place at Eurovision, Eden Golan, had to spend hours playing dead underneath the dead bodies of her friends, dragged the bodies of women with bloodstains on their pants proudly through the streets and took hostages, including babies and toddlers.

Apparently someone in West Philly who possessed a white writing implement supports this terrorist group. With a heart.

Does this concern anyone else?

This is not reasonable people disagreeing.

Hamas steals food aid that Israel sends in instead of feeding it to the people they are elected to govern. They build entrances to their tunnels inside children’s bedrooms and kept hostages in homes of people who call themselves journalists. They had from June of 2007 to do one positive thing for the Palestinian people, whom so many Americans, including American Jews, claim to love and support. The war would have been over in less than a day if Hamas had released all the hostages and surrendered. They could have done that at any time, yet they reject ceasefire deal after deal, and put the released hostages through terrifying spectacles of psychological torture.

There is no moral excuse for supporting Hamas. With or without a little heart.

Quite a few of my friends say that Hamas is not the Palestinian people, that elections can not be trusted, etc. Okay. Love the Palestinian people all you want, but surely no one I actually know will claim to support Hamas?

I was not born a Jew, but I grew up reading the history of the lead up to the Holocaust. I heard from my college friends about how their grandparents escaped Russia, or Eastern Europe, to come to this country. I heard from my older Jewish friends how they were routinely beaten up on their way to school in Brooklyn and called mean names for Jews, the equivalents of which for other groups of people one can be banned from polite society for saying. I heard from an older Jewish friend of mine how his father was not admitted to medical school because he was a Jew, so he had to choose another profession.

I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. Feeding the theory that I actually have Jewish blood in me because I seem to have a historical, almost genetic memory of the Jewish experience, I saw this time coming long before October 7, 2023. When I found out about October 7, I, like many of you, had a terrible since of what was coming.

But now we can all see the writing on the wall.

I wish it weren’t real, but it is.

We don’t have to like it, but it’s true.

You can disagree with the conduct of the war and still oppose Hamas and respect a country’s right to exist. You can dislike Netanyahu and you don’t even get to claim to be original for that. You can say you don’t think that Gadi Taub is hot, and I respect that, though I think you’re wrong, I also recognize that it means less competition for me in the unlikely event that he ever gets divorced.

But if you are a Jew and you are not concerned, not just by the fact that this graffiti exists but that it is allowed by restaurant owners to stay up for long periods of time, then I wonder why you can’t see the writing on the wall.

If you are not a Jew, but you have ever put up a sign that says “Black Lives Matter,” “No person is illegal,” or objected to any racist, sexist or homophobic speech, and you do not speak out when those who butcher Jews and others living in Israel are celebrated, I wonder what you see as different. Is it some version of “The Jews had it coming to them?”

This never ends well.

Just read the writing on the wall.