The Information War

As an American Jew, the evil perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 won’t ever be forgotten.  I wonder whether the rest of the sane world – as diminished as that may seem – understands that victims are not responsible for their murder.

My family is despondent. We are anxious about what we perceive to be an exponential rise in antisemitism throughout the world.  Like 9/11, our assumptions of the world around us have been turned upside down.  On that not so positive note, I don’t believe I am alone in admitting that I have lost whom I assumed to be friends over the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Also, we are not a monolith, and many who are younger than I have reacted to the massacre perpetrated by Hamas, bizarrely.  That is because there is now a generational divide among some Jewish families.  Even mine.

Soon after I graduated from law school, a group of leftward leaning apologists for Western civilization grabbed hold of higher education.  These deranged educators are inspired by a hatred of western norms, an ill-defined concept known as ‘colonizing’ that applies even to indigenous peoples if they’re Jews, and contempt for a certain country in the Middle East.  Unfortunately, they have succeeded in passing their contempt onto other people’s children.  Their steady progress has gone unchecked by those in charge and to those who weren’t noticing, and it all feels so insidious.  Cleverly, antisemitism was substituted for the word, ‘antizionism.’

The consequences of the new curriculum are far reaching.  People who went to university after me may very well falsely believe that Zionism is a kissing cousin of Nazism; when in fact it is a movement for a Jewish homeland after thousands of years of the Jewish people being forcibly uprooted from their homes, murdered in pogroms, and eventually, systematically murdered.  Indeed, Israel is a safety net for the Jewish people, and a bulwark for western values surrounded by nations who wish it destroyed.

Unfortunately, when lies and falsehoods about the other becomes so extreme anything can and may well be justified, which is when bad things happen.  Further, considering what has occurred in our schools in only a relatively short period, it is not uncommon to find even young Jewish adults who distance themselves from the Jewish community.  In the dimension they inhabit, they do not consider it to be a bad thing when they boldly proclaim that there is no moral, historical or legal basis for the existence of the Jewish state.  On the contrary, Israel was legally founded by an international body on behalf of a people who were nearly exterminated, with historic and religious claims to land stretching back thousands of years.

Much of the antisemitism we bear witness too today springs from the Left, yet the Right is beginning to stir.  It is furthered by coconspirators in the media who pretend self-defense by a nation state is as despicable as murdering peaceniks at a music festival; and it is perpetuated by international institutions who have nothing but contempt for Israel, such as the United Nations, which has refused to condemn Hamas even for the October 7 massacre.

The situation the Jews find themselves will not auto correct.  In addition to the run-of-the-mill antisemites, there are multitudes of moral cowards who refuse to call out evil for what it is, and millions of others who remain ignorant and do not know the meaning of genocide.  Also, incredibly, there are untold numbers of people who believe every death of a Palestinian in Gaza is a war crime – never mind the inconvenient fact that Israel does not target civilians while Hamas hides behind them, and that Israel was attacked and has a moral duty to root out Hamas in order to ensure the safety of its people.

Unfortunately, the speed at which we receive disinformation about Israel – through social media and dishonest reporting – is unparalleled.  If we do not correct the record with the same eagerness as our enemies who seek to undermine the truth and spread hate, it will be too late.  There must be a sea change in how the West and Israel approach falsehoods and propaganda.   The information war is every bit as critical as the kinetic, physical struggle with which Israel finds itself.