When Non-Jews Don't Believe Jews

Also known as... every day

I am searching my Facebook feed to see if the meltdowns that followed the American election are immediately followed up by meltdowns about the pogrom in Amsterdam. And the answer is… no!

Shocked not shocked.

One thing that I have gotten used to in my year and a month as an outspoken non-Jewish “friend” of the Jewish people, those who will have me anyway, is that antisemitism like this is always disappointing but never surprising. Perhaps only to my generation and their children is it more of a surprise than to their parents and grandparents, after a time of relative peace that we realize now was thin, veiled, precarious.

Even if Hamas or other terrorists filmed it and broadcast it, openly taking responsibility, it seems that almost any non-Jew I run across (either in my personal life or in media of various kinds) says some version of, “Well, that must not have really happened…” “It can’t be that bad…” “Are you sure that’s real?” “But the Palestinians!!!!”

Israeli tourists in Amsterdam to watch a soccer (or should we say football?) game were systematically attacked, brutally beaten, and filmed! Where is the outrage of good American liberals who claim to be all about human rights? I’m looking. Please point me to it.

The worst was the refusal of “feminists” to believe that Israeli women were raped on October 7. Jewish women’s bodies just didn’t count.

Those of us who are not Jewish have a duty to speak out, to validate, to remember and to remind. If we don’t, we are just as bad as Europeans who pointed the Nazis to where Jews were hiding. Just as bad. No, worse, because we have so much less to lose.

Once again, I find myself as the weird voice of the voiceless. Many of my friends have said that they would like to say what I write, but they can not for various reasons. Many of them are trapped in positions in professions where they could be ostracized and lose their way of supporting their families for speaking out, even for dissenting in the slightest with the liberal party line. I, having little to lose, once again find myself with a freedom that I take as a duty.

I suspect it’s not just being afraid of professional consequences for speaking out: it could be a generations’ old exhaustion at having to defend one’s entire heritage. It’s like how women can get sick of speaking out against rape and not being believed, over and over and over again. When you carry the issue, alone, for a long time, it can get old. Especially when the world turns against you.

Certain causes are popular now and others are suspect. A simple belief that terrorism is bad, Western-style democracy is good, and my friends in Israel should be able to sleep without fear of getting dragged out of their beds and tortured to death was controversial a year ago and perhaps is more so now.

I respect anyone’s decision to vote however they did. I have told no one how to vote, though I have given some unsolicited and no doubt ignored advice on how the Democrats might seek to win the next election. Many of my friends voted Republican for the first time in their lives, and not just because of Israel. We have these conversations in private. A culture of fear has arisen that you can no longer blame the Right for.

It’s all so far from my days at Yale when we disagreed and then went out for pizza. Those times seem innocent in a way that I never thought of my youth. Some friends from those days are good friends again. I have your back, friends. Whatever I can do, I will.