Mea culpa – it was me

It was me. I did it – all of it. I was hoping to get away with it, but I might as well come clean so others will not be blamed.

I know that Jew-hatred has persisted throughout the millennia in a broad cross-section of societies and across a swath of demographic and racial constituencies. But I was born in 1948, at the confluence of an unprecedented number of favorable circumstances: the world was feeling guilty about and disgusted by the Holocaust, especially the complicity of governments and people in European countries; the State of Israel had been established in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, with the approval of a large majority in the United Nations; the United States was about to usher in a Golden Age of inclusion and prosperity for its Jews. Even Europe, that desiccated graveyard for Jews, closeted its worst antisemitic predilections.

I thought it was over. I thought that I, together with my innocent brethren and sistren, were going to be the first generation of Jews in Diasporic history to fit in, to be accepted, valued, and loved for our contribution and citizenship.

No such luck. Eventually, inevitably, people jealous or stupid or unhappy with the way life or history turned out for them need to blame someone and the rage bubbles to the surface. “God chose you and designated you a light unto the nations? I hate you.” And then, driven by inferiority or hateful ideology, they feel free to burn a synagogue, or, better, punch a defenseless Orthodox woman, or shoot children, showing the world what kind of real man they are. Who knows? Maybe it helps them feel less like losers. 

I accept the antisemitic environment, even as I perceive it to be driven by the transcendentally stupid. And, as to that, you must grant that the quality of antisemites has diminished at an alarming rate. From the fiery hatred of Savonarola to the mindless idiocy of Candace Owens and Steve Bannon is a pretty steep drop. Tucker Carlson is no Pat Buchanan. You would think that a proud antisemite (or even a proud skunk) would be embarrassed to be associated with Nick Fuentes. No matter: Jews must live – or die – with the antisemites they are dealt.

The hatred for the eternal people appears to be eternal, so here we are.

And here I am. I confess. It was me. All of it.

But before enumerating my sins, first let me explain my motive in coming forward to take responsibility. I am confessing to absolve all the other innocent Jews. They knew nothing about it. They were off doing good Jewish stuff, making and eating fattening food, loving their children, benefiting mankind, winning Nobel Prizes, inventing useful apps like Waze and IM, curing polio, and giving charity, while I was, you know, doing bad Jewish stuff like manipulating unsuspecting governments into forever wars for the sake of Israel.

So here’s my confession, together with a few excuses and explanations. Now please leave everyone else alone.

But first let’s get the oldest indictment out of the way. No, I didn’t kill Jesus. I suspect the Romans. At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is reported by Matthew to have said that he did not want to change a jot or tittle of Moses’ law, having not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He said, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, be good to them that hate you. Imagine a world filled with love, kosher restaurants, Sabbath observers, and kind people. It sounds a little like Teaneck.

Anyway, crucifixion was not an authorized method of Jewish capital punishment; the Jews have a collective alibi for April 15, 0033 (doing their taxes); and the 1965 Nostra Aetate and later Pope Benedict himself absolved the Jews as a people. But I get it – the whole antisemitism thing is based on blaming someone, and the Roman legions are nowhere to be found.

So might as well blame me, if not the other Jews.

Next, another big one. I am squeamish about blood, especially my own. The use of the blood of Christian children for matzo? Again, not me. I wouldn’t know how to find Type O+ (Universal Matzo Donor) Christian blood. And even if I could, any idiot knows that the Torah prohibits the consumption of blood, and the only two permissible ingredients in matzo are flour and water, with production very carefully scrutinized and supervised. So I would not only have had to (shudder) commit the murders, collect the blood, and dispose of the bodies, but I also would have had to sneak the blood past the kashrus supervisors, some of whom take their jobs very seriously.

It doesn’t seem likely, does it, but I guess neither does The Protocols of The Elders of Zion. And we know those are true.

But I digress. Back to my confession.

Communism? Me.

Capitalism? Me.

Open borders? Me.

Labor unions and management? Me and me.

Gay marriage? Me.

Men in girls’ sports, bathrooms, and prisons? Not me, because that is just stupid.

Slavery? Me.

I understand that you might view the last claim with skepticism, since my forebears arrived in America from Poland and Lithuania well after the Civil War was over, but I’m pretty sure that, given the opportunity, I would have been heavily involved in the slave trade, and it seems unwise for a boy who grew up in Newark to blame the African traders who actually provided the slaves. So . . . I did it.

Oh, yes – the ultimate sin. I support and live in the colonial apartheid Jewish state, in which my people have been indigenous for 3,000 years, where Arab women are free to dress any way they please, drive without male supervision, and worship any way they want, the only country in the Middle East in which Arabs enjoy absolute freedom of speech and association, serve in the legislature and courts side by side with Jews, and attend institutions of higher learning in disproportionately large numbers. Yes, you can hate me for living in that apartheid state.

It’s not my fault that we stink at apartheid.

There is one charge with respect to which I reluctantly need to plead innocent, through no fault of my own. It is quite true, as the knuckle-dragging morons who chant “Jews will not replace us,” claim, that I have been endeavoring to replace them. I just haven’t been able to locate enough imbeciles to do the job. I’ll keep trying. 

Can’t avoid it: genocide. Guilty as charged. But only if you define genocide to include the victims of a war legitimately engaged in by a country that was brutally attacked. And only if you include the United States, England, France, and every other country that ever waged war as perpetrators of genocide. If you define genocide as regretfully being compelled to kill (not murder) innocent civilians behind whom terrorists are hiding while you fight a defensive, existential war for survival that an implacable foe trying to annihilate you has imposed upon you . . . guilty, guilty, guilty, and unashamed.

We Jews know what genocide is, and it isn’t this. And if anyone did commit purposeful genocide in this circumstance, it was Hamas that brought death and destruction on its own people, used them as human shields, and tried to starve them . . . for public relations. Feh!

Now that I’ve (sort of) taken responsibility and confessed, could you mindless cowards please stop hurting innocent bystanders, children at holiday celebrations, and elderly people trying to enjoy the last years of their lives? At long last, have you no decency?

And . . . should it penetrate your thick cranium that this 77-year old man and others like me might conceivably NOT be responsible for all those things, couldn’t you reasonably conclude that the folks at Bondi Beach, and the random Jews praying in a synagogue, and children riding a bus are equally innocent?

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Post-script. If you would like to do something about antisemitism other than blame me, which, I think you will agree, is of limited utility, you might consider striking a blow against the degraded mutation of Islam that subjugates women, believes that it has the responsibility to kill infidels or, if they are People of the Book, reduce them to dhimmitude, is on a holy mission to recapture every piece of land that was ever under Muslim rule, and is responsible for most terrorist activity in the world. That would be much more sensible and productive than hating Jews.

But then, we aren’t talking about sensible or productive, right? 

Post-Post-Script: To anyone thinking of sending me angry, nasty, accusatory e-mails, I (and my fellow Jews) really didn’t do any of the things listed above. But you knew that.