We Will Dance Again

Supplied

One minute you are lost in the music moving and dancing with a group of like minded people who are smiling and sharing the same experience. You are blissed out and probably a little high on some kind of hallucinogen, feeling free as the morning glow bathes the desert landscape in a warm pinkish light. 

One minute you’re in a rhythmic trance, feeling like you’re vibrating with the pulse of the universe and the song of the rising sun and the next minute you are running for your life as rockets arch overhead, armed men are running, driving, and hang gliding towards you, shooting at you with guns and rocket launchers. One minute you are high on life and the next minute you are thrust into a scene of carnage and terror, not knowing what is fully happening around you or where to run.

You are being targeted and hunted because you are Israeli, because you are Jewish and according to those who want to kill you, you are an infidel and murdering you guarantees their ticket to their heaven. Pure punishing evil.

Imagine being at Coachella or Burning Man and the music suddenly stops and your brain has to quickly adjust to a modern day Holocaust that has been unleashed from hell upon you and your friends. What sounds like firecrackers at first soon erupts into a full on assault. Hiding in a ditch you see a woman being dragged away by a group of armed men who are pulling her clothes off and stabbing her as they rape her. You hear her agonized screams and you prepare to die. 

Maybe you survived the Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas in 2017 when 59 people in the crowd around you were gunned down in cold blood with a rapid fire barrage of bullets. But instead of reaching safety as you scatter and flee, another terrible scene follows the gunfire smoke, trucks and vans and motorcycles screech into the chaos and starts kidnapping people, burning and bombing buildings with RPGs, raping women, and executing anyone they see including the elderly and babies, and small children. Victims were randomly selected at the Las Vegas shooting. It was still pre-meditated and done in cold blood.

On October 7th, 2023 the Supernova music festival was winding down with one last day after Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival that commemorates the 40 years wandering in the desert after fleeing slavery by Egyptian Pharaohs. The site was randomly attacked as thousands of armed militants revived the act of raping and pillaging in a maniacal reenactment of violent Caliph led conquests throughout history, mostly against indigenous people across the Middle East and North Africa. Convert or die. Supernova was not in the original plan, the militants were headed to nearby small communal villages known as kibbutzim. 

Captured terrorists have admitted during interrogation that they happened upon the music festival and then proceeded to take full advantage of the opportunity to slaughter 364 people, and kidnap others back into Gaza. They were gleeful with the added bonus of more victims, in one disgusting scenario, a terrorist calls his parents to boast how many Israelis he has killed. A music festival celebrating peace and love became a crime scene because they don’t pray to Allah.

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya which means Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas is motivated by its desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic State. Full stop. This is not about Palestinian self determination. If it was, then all the UN funded schools in Gaza wouldn’t have rocket launchers and weaponry hidden underneath them. 

Hamas adheres to their fanatical ideology declared in their Charter released in 1988. Article 7 of the Charter states that the Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight and kill the Jews.

Article 8 affirms that death for the sake of Allah is a sacred goal. Allah is the goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur’an is its Constitution, Jihad is the path.

Hamas’ radical demagoguery is similar to Dominionism in fundamentalist Christianity where the goal is a nation governed by religion and laws of the land are based on biblical law and the Bible is interpreted as God’s word and God’s law. Humans are to enforce God’s law over nature. Patriarchy over Mother Nature and matriarchal societies. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington DC has ties to Dominionism. He loves Israel because it’s the birthplace of his Prophet and Savior. If Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem were in Ukraine, maybe he would believe in helping them fight against the Russian invaders. My point is that religious justification for aggression is against nature. Bethlehem is under Palestinian control. 

Justification for ethnic cleansing has happened on American soil. North America is not immune to this kind of dehumanizing evil. Events like the Tulsa Race Massacre on Black Wall Street in 1921 is one of them. The Trail of Tears and forced expulsion and massacre of Native Americans branded as Manifest Destiny by the United States Government is another terrible chapter. The United States was founded upon slavery, men and women were not considered equal even though We the People became the battle cry against the British. 

The United States ruptured in the 1800’s because of slavery. Canada also has a brutal history of colonizing the indigenous population and has begun to admit the truth and institutionalizing reconciliation has been actively supported and engaged. Former slaves traveled the underground railroad to the Canadian border and became Crown loyalists during the Revolutionary War in return for their freedom in places like Nova Scotia. Dwayne the Rock Johnson is the descendent of a Crown loyalist who made it to Canada.

Canada recently voted in favor of the UN resolution o condemn Israel, not Hamas. Let me rephrase that slightly, Canada voted in favor of a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But of course this was officially declared as a good thing from Hamas leadership. Ghazi Hamad, spokesperson for Hamas publicly thanked Canada. He is also the one that on October 24th said in an interview for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation that Israel should be destroyed, and Hamas should repeat the October 7th attacks, calling it the al-Aqsa deluge/flood and that it was just the beginning, that attacks like it will keep happening.

Hamas must have not gotten the ceasefire memo because just yesterday, they launched over 60 rockets towards Israel.

In a world of soundbites and memes becoming news, calling for a ceasefire translates to being against Israel. It’s the code word that doesn’t necessarily mean peace, it means anti-Israel. There are many Israelis, including family members of hostages who are calling for an end to violence. Before October 7th, many Israelis were protesting against Prime Minister Netanyahu. For now the military mission is to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip. According to released hostages, Hamas has infiltrated every sector of society and civilians are involved in transporting and holding hostages as well. I would love the bloodshed to stop. Killing in the name of revenge is and old old biblical old testament belief. Welcome to the Middle East.

Let’s be clear about one simple fact. Politicians trying to save face with the extremists among us instead of standing up and saying that Palestine must be free from Hamas, and Israel has the right to peacefully co-exist without fear of their population being randomly attacked, are cowards. You can demand a ceasefire, a return of all the hostages, and a peaceful surrender and still keep your leftist cred with your constituents. You are a coward if you can’t condemn raping women as an act of resistance. I have said it before and I will keep saying it. The Patriarchy is not going quietly into the night and one look at the recent flogging of Roya Heshmati in Tehran for ‘violating public morals’ by not covering her head. Iran is calling the shots in this war and its current regime reminds me of the FLDS crazies in Arizona. Women are vessels for making more babies and need to cover up and keep their mouths shut.

Cities across America big and small are seeing their elected leaders release official resolutions demanding a permanent ceasefire WITHOUT condemning Hamas or demanding hostages must be freed. The hypocrisy and irony is so twisted that it’s almost funny in an extremely sardonic way. The comedian in me pictures Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat leading a group of country music fans in a rendition of ‘Throw the Jew Down the Well.’ 

Israel is a tiny Middle Eastern country that used to be a tiny kingdom and has faced its potential demise over millennia. Israel exists because Jew hatred is so pervasive, that it’s considered the norm in many corners of the world. Especially in the Arab world and now we see the decades of organized brainwashing bearing fruit on western college campuses.

The group think and mob rule mentality that has taken over American college campuses is beyond frightening. Colleges are supposed to be where free thought and spirited discourse happen, not where indoctrination into old anti-semitic tropes are vocalized and condoned as freedom of expression and first amendment rights. 

Ancient Israel, Judea and Samaria, was conquered and colonized by Arab Muslim invaders over 1400 years ago. During the Arab conquests in 635 AD there were 100,000 Jews. Israel is mentioned in the Bible, Palestine is not. Both the Bible and the Qu’uran consider Jerusalem a holy place. For Jews it’s the holiest place and always longed for every year in observed holiday liturgies throughout the Diaspora. 

It’s required for all observant Muslims to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia but a conquering Caliph back in the year of 740 AD or so decided that King Herod’s second temple built hundreds of years before to be a perfect site to build a mosque. Jerusalem is where the ancient Jewish temple was built, and destroyed, and built again, and destroyed, but the Wailing Wall remains, with the Al Asqa Mosque built upon the ruins of a sacred Jewish site. But if you listen to modern western activists with a Messiah complex chant about Colonizers, you hear a distorted and revisionist history where Israel doesn’t show up until 1948 after a bunch of Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe swam over and built a country they got given to them from Britain. Jews have always been there, WW1 saw the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and random lines were drawn including Jordan occupying the West Bank. 

Ancient Israel was colonized by Assyrians, Romans, Persians, and Arab Caliphates following their fundamentalist doctrine. Jesus didn’t march across continents enslaving indigenous people but his followers did throughout history, all with the blessings of various Popes. 

Pope Francis finally hasn’t formally rescinded the 530 year old Doctrine of Discovery which was used to justify genocide and colonization of the Americas. He has repudiated it somewhat. Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei in Iran stands in his religious robes while proclaiming that “Israel will be eliminated.” The extremists among us hate Jews and want a religious empire.

When Hitler met with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini on November 28th 1941, al-Husseini let Hitler know that they share the same enemies: the British, the Communists, and the Jews. The hatred is old and steeped in history. For the region that all the world has an opinion on is an ancient story originally about two Semitic brothers from another mother, Ishmael and Isaac, who have been warring for millennia. 

The story of Exodus and the rituals of Passover tell the story of the Egyptian/Israelite history steeped in slavery, subjugation, and mass migration. But a modern day College Student on an American campus is being indoctrinated into believing that intersectionality means that basically there should be no solidarity between Blacks, any People of Color and Jews. We are supposed to believe if I have their propaganda right, that Islamic radicals hellbent on a modern caliphate are more akin to any struggle of Black and Brown people fighting against oppression, fighting for equal protection under the law, for self determination and autonomy. The fatal flaw in this conflated and hollow argument is thinking that all Jews are White and European. During Hitler’s time, White privilege didn’t save the German Jews. Ethnic cleansing happened in Germany 80 years ago. 

The fatal flaw of false equivalency will never lead to a permanent ceasefire. 

Radical Islamic jihadists who believe in martyrdom will not suddenly wake up tomorrow and renounce their faith. Iranian regime backed militias and small armies throughout the region will not change their beliefs. It’s now 100 days into the Israel-Hamas war where 136 hostages remain in underground tunnels, babies, children, women, men, the elderly, the wounded, the very sick, and some of the strongest among us are being used as human shields and bargaining chips for maniacs who hide underground and who truly think that god is on their side. Israel knows now what Hamas has been preparing for during the past 17 years. Israel pulled out of Gaza and forcibly took Israeli settlers with them. Gazans promptly ‘elected’ Hamas and there have been no elections since. Somehow Abbas is still in power in the West Bank even though his term expired in 2009. Of course Netanyahu is back, but unlike Trump, Bibi won’t get the Supreme Court he wanted. A thriving Middle Eastern democracy is still alive and well.

Protestors wearing t-shirts saying Ceasefire Now disrupted the California Assembly official proceedings at the State Capitol building recently. They chanted phrases like ‘Not in My Name’, ‘Free Palestine’, and ‘From the River to the Sea.’ We are told that these are aspirational phrases but they are repeating rhetoric that seeks to erase Jews and Israel and history and facts from the region, To these folks there is no greater urgent crisis, not the drug overdose crisis, not the climate crisis, not the huge disparity between workers and millionaires, not current Nigerian massacres, not Ukraine being pounded by Russia, no other issue takes full center stage than this issue with the Jewish State. Interstate 5 was shut down in Seattle by anti-Israel protesters. There are protestors in Israel as well, demanding the current government absolves Parliament and a ceasefire be reached. Killing more babies will not bring back babies murdered or kidnapped on October 7th. 

We can believe in the humanist mantra that no one is free unless all of us are free and proclaim that Palestinians must be purged of radical fundamentalists just like we are hoping that MAGA fanatics don’t end up running the US Government after the 2024 election. 

The supreme tragedy is if Israel lays down her arms, peace will not come. Young people danced and were murdered for being alive. 

Every two State solution has been rejected by Palestinian leaders. Martyrs and their families are paid heftily when they die while killing Jews.

The Hamas run Health Ministry claims that there have been over 30,000 civilian deaths. This is the same entity that claimed Israel had bombed a hospital when it was found that what actually happened was that a rocket misfired from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad destined for Israel but instead fell near the Al Shifa Hospital. Hamas exploited this even by claiming it was an Israeli rocket and that  hundreds of people had been killed. Major news outlets throughout the world issued apologies and corrections after it was proven to be false. 

There is no denying that Gaza is in a horrific state. Innocents have died from incessant bombing and there are many casualties of war. Haunting images of screaming babies are seared into my brain. Hamas could end this today by fully surrendering and releasing the hostages. Israel has built up hospitals and schools and will do so again instead of building tunnels and acquiring weapons to brutalize Israeli and Palestinian populations. 

There has never been a Palestinian State, leaders have rejected any proposal and any two State solution because they will not recognize Israel as legitimate want the entire country and entire people eliminated.

The Health Ministry in Gaza is not independent from Hamas. The ministry counts all deaths, including former militant terrorists who are counted as ‘civilians.’ Why can’t the UN or the International Red Cross confirm the numbers? Why can’t they check on the hostages? Because both agencies are run by Hamas in Gaza. I have visited a UNRWA run ‘camp’ in the West Bank and it was a joke. Well dressed Palestinians drive by in Audis and BMWs while kids beg for a few shekels trying to sell sticks of gum near the entrance to the cement enclave. You could run a small country on the amount of money that was used to build the monument to Yasser Arafat.

Fundamentalists are members of a death cult. 

Hundreds of miles of tunnels have been found underneath Gaza with entrances found under Mosques, apartment buildings, houses, schools, hospitals, and other official buildings. Many of the hostages recount that once they were transported into Gaza from Israel that crowds of people gathered around them, shouting at them, hitting them, pulling their hair, throwing things at them, spitting on them. The hatred is taught in every aspect of society.

Jewish owned restaurants in New York City have had screaming intruders proudly march into their establishments, destroying property, scaring patrons, shaking down Jews on subways or outside Synagogues. Is this just a demonstration of Not In My Name too or rather an age old activity of attack the Jew because it’s always his fault. Hitler ran with it and organized one terrible night called Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938 that saw the tipping point towards the Holocaust begin. 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps after that night as Jewish owned businesses had their windows shattered and a nation united in Christian justified hatred and Othering.

Not in My Name is a phrase that some North American Jews cling to. As if you are a more evolved spiritual being compared to an Israeli who has survived months in captivity. You can be anti-war, you can be anti- Likud party, but you can still have compassion for children who witnessed their parents being murdered in front of them. If your answer to that statement is- ‘but what about all the Palestinian babies’ then let me push you again…you can be Pro Palestinian and still condemn the raping, burning, torture, and murder of Gal Abdush, a mother of two who went to the Supernova music festival with her husband to have a kid free weekend of music, dancing, and celebration.

Hamas is a terrorist group, October 7th was a terrorist attack. There has been no loud condemnation of what happened on October 7th from leftist marchers and chanters, there is no demand for the release of the hostages. One can only assume that they believe in the dehumanizing dogma to their core and that they are on par with rape apologists and raging anti-semites. If not, then they are deeply misguided and reimagining history does not make it true. Using different words to succinctly say you hate Israel, that October 7th was justified and that you don’t believe Israeli women were mass raped are actions being watched and lauded by billions of people who grow up hating and mistrusting Jews.

Recently, I had a Facebook ‘friend’ post something about me supporting an ‘Ethno State’ if I support Israel. I realized a long time ago just how deep the brainwashing from entities like Decolonize Palestine, BDS, and SJP have resonated so I am not surprised. Much like Putin and Trump are a master at, flipping the script is a propaganda tool of zealots. Hamas’ leaders hiding in Gaza and issuing edicts from the comfort of outside Gaza are delighted with the protests and propaganda. It’s an easy needle for them to thread where they co-opt other struggles and slogans and try to equate marching for Black Lives Matter is just like marching to delegitimize Israel and its over 8M inhabitants, where only 31% is Ashkenazi Jews are located. Isreal is the epitome of Intersectionality. 

Most non-Israelis have no clue how diverse and multi-cultural Israel is. Jews make up only 0.2% of the world’s population. Try telling a Middle Eastern Jew with Middle Eastern ancestry that they have no claim to Israel and no right to defend themselves. Try sitting in the Knesset in Jerusalem next to an Arab Palestinian elected member and call Israel a fascist State. They might agree with you because of their politics but there they sit, a full fledged Israeli citizen elected by citizens to represent them. When you chant from the River to the Sea, you have no grasp of facts and are denying reality and distorting history. Or you are just a bigot who hates Jews and tries to cloak it with anti-Zionist definitions. This is funny to me because Zionism is about self determination and at its core is an Indigenous rights movement. Israel has not sought to conquer neighboring countries, only to live and thrive in peace in a tiny strip of land where their ancestors first lived. The Arab world has rejected this continually until Egypt and Jordan signed a peace treaty and then the UAE started diplomatic relations with Israel. Iran is the enemy of Saudi Arabia and wants to have the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Palestinian Jihad continue to attack Israel from all sides.

Over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab Muslim. When you post revisionist history, fake news, and distorted facts, you perpetuate and incite hatred, violence, and aggression towards Jews throughout the world. 

If you proudly proclaim you are Anti-Zionist and truly believe by doing so that you are being anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist and anti-White Supremacist then your brainwashing and indoctrination have been successful. Queers for Palestine reminds me Jews for Jesus. Good intentions but paved on a hellish road.

Taking cookie cutter narratives and super imposing them arbitrarily while aligning yourself with radical religious militants doesn’t make you down with people, it makes you a white washer, a history denier, peddling fake news, Jew hating tropes, and justifying acts of horror with multiple crime scenes throughout southern Israel. If you think October 7th was justified then I don’t want to know you, share the same air with you or be aligned with you. I have said it before and will say it again, mass rape is not an act of resistance. I am Queer and I support Palestinian self determination and autonomy but I do NOT support Queers for Palestine. They seek to erase Israel and Jews who are pro Israel and delegitimize anyone who speaks out against fundamentalist fuelled terror.

Gaza society is a brutally repressive, unabashedly racist, patriarchal fundamentalist society, virulently anti gay, full of violence and instead of advocating for children’s rights, they teach an archaic version of Islam that requires a few things: Hate and Kill Jews, Never Accept Israel, and Women kept under Sharia Law.

If you entered Gaza wearing a t-shirt that said Ceasefire Now, you would be taken into the tunnels as well, probably raped now matter what your gender, and maybe murdered once it was found out that may you have Jewish ancestry.

Intersectionality has no meaning to ethno-fundamentalists who require absolute allegiance and submission to blood libels and ancient genocidal war cries. 

Jackie Bruckman

January 2024