MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS OCTOBER 25 2023
When Hamas soldiers broke through a fence and slaughtered thousands of innocent Israelis on that fateful day on October 7, many liberal Jews in America were shaken out of their reverie regarding the Jewish state. For years, the left-wing position on Israel was stuck in the 1990s: land for peace and pursuit of a two-state solution. Reality on the ground was irrelevant to these individuals and groups, and they kept pushing for something that has failed time and time again.
The greatest misnomer that the Jewish groups who vitriolically attack the Jewish state receive is that they are self-hating Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Jews in these groups are in love with themselves and their Jewish identities. The only thing they hate is Judaism. Judaism is not a religion. It is a nation, with a common language, set of laws, and homeland. They despise that.
To be a self-hating Jew, you would have to eschew your Jewish identity. This occurred many times throughout Jewish history, a prime example occurring in the 13th century. Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, a Jew who converted to Christianity, wanted to prove beyond a doubt to the King of Spain that he was no longer a Jew, so he volunteered to debate the eminent Jewish scholar of the day, Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides). The Disputation of Barcelona, as it was called, lasted for five days. That’s a self-hating Jew. Someone who denies that he ever was Jewish, who hates Judaism and the Jewish people with such fervent passion that he lives a double life where he pretends that he has no connection to the nation he was born into.
This is not what the Judaism-hating Jews desire. Their entire identity is wrapped in a cloak of Judaism. They pervert Jewish rituals like prayers for the dead and use them for terrorists. They mock the Sabbath by holding rallies in support of Jew-killers as those who are religious are beginning the Day of Rest. They cloak themselves, literally, in prayer shawls as they claim to speak for American Jewry. They need their Judaism because it makes them special.
In the modern Left, your value is determined by your placement on the intersectional hierarchy. American Jews are racially Caucasian, which is the lowest rung on the hierarchy. To be Jewish is to climb the ladder. Without their bagel-loving Jewish identity, these are just a bunch of angry white Leftists. Their ethnically Jewish identity gives them street cred.
Leftists, however, share common cause with Hamas because they reflexively side with those whom they perceive to be oppressed, regardless of the inhumanity and brutality of their actions. The same people who call anyone who voted for Trump a “Nazi” completely ignore the worst acts committed since the actual Nazis against their co-religionists. Judaism-hating Jews have forgone Judaism for the religion of Leftism.
In an outrageous display of disdain for Jewish practices, protesters affiliated with Jewish Voice For Peace and IfNotNow stormed the Canon Office Building in the US Capitol, wearing Jewish garments like a kippah (skullcap) and/or talis (prayer shawl). Mostly women were wearing these, because in addition to using them for the express purpose of giving aid and comfort to Jew-killers, they are bucking religion, which says that only men are required to wear these garments.
They wore t-shirts saying, “not in our name” and “Jews say cease fire now,” further engaging in the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that America is only backing Israel because Jews are demanding it, as opposed to it being the moral thing to support our ally as they face an enemy that seeks their annihilation. These are the useful idiots to the Hamas cause.
Jewish Voice For Peace and IfNotNow are exactly what Hamas needs to stay in power in Gaza, which not only allows them to rearm for their next attack against civilians in Israel but allows them to keep the people of Gaza subjugated under their rule. They – like the Hamas Caucus in Congress led by Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, and others – have demanded de-escalation, ceasefire, and no retaliation to the horrific events of less than two weeks ago.
This is not new behavior for these groups. They were founded on the principles of supporting terrorists over Israel because they are fundamentally Leftists in Jewish clothing. IfNotNow got their start in 2014, saying a mourner’s prayer (Kaddish) for terrorists killed by the IDF. They have spent the subsequent decade targeting non-religious Jewish youth to indoctrinate them into hating Israel, placing their operatives in summer camps and on free Birthright tours. They have pushed nearly every Democratic candidate in 2020 to condemn Israel for being an “apartheid” state, an accusation that has long since been debunked.
Jewish Voice for Peace has been targeting college campuses since 1996, where they have repeatedly partnered with Students for Justice In Palestine. JVP and SJP have no care for the plight of the Palestinian people; their only goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. Their events like “Israel Apartheid Week” showcase hatred for Jews, and JVP is one of the most vocal proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks to economically destroy Israel.
On Wednesday, Jewish Voice for Peace got a shout-out from Rashida Tlaib, who is all too happy to use them to pretend that she wouldn’t love to see every Jew in Israel exiled or killed. “Thank you to our Jewish allies from across the country who joined in solidarity to call for a #CeasefireNOW,” Tlaib posted on X. Chanting “Not in Our Name.” JVP were all too excited to secure their place as her lapdogs.
This came after she gave a speech accusing Israel of bombing a hospital, when literally all evidence shows that the incident she’s referring to was a hospital parking lot hit by a rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. She bases her claim on what Hamas is saying, not what video, audio, and geotagging evidence shows. JVP echoes this claim, showing that they find Hamas more credible than the IDF.
Jewish Voice For Peace believes that “The only way to peace and safety – for everyone – is through ensuring justice and equality for everyone,” as they posted on X during their attempted insurrection. “That means standing in solidarity with Palestinians. It means building a world beyond Zionism.” They are aware, as anyone with eyes and a brain are, that zero Jews live in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA is Judenrein, free of Jews. So, they are advocating for the mass genocide of the Jewish people, “from the river to the sea,” while at the same time are claiming to be a group of peace.
The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear. Judaism-hating Jews do not speak for the Jewish people, who stand with Israel as they retaliate against the terror that struck their country. After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival Benny Gantz put aside their differences to create a unity government during this time of war. The strength of the Jewish nation is our ability to unify in times of crisis, which have occurred all too frequently throughout our history. Yet there have always been Judaism-hating Jews, from the Hellenists to the Yevetskaya to the Kapos, and there are again today. No one should think they speak for anyone but themselves.
