Summer doldrums have a way of deadening the senses. That might explain why a monumental week of bad news for Jews slipped by without a collective gasp. It should have shaken up even the most languid among the tribe—if anyone truly cared.
But alas, there was Donald Trump’s and Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship to interrogate, the untimely death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner to process, and a new round of tariffs to calculate—so one can be forgiven for slighting other, less newsworthy headlines.
Where to begin. Well, spearheaded by its president, Emmanuel Macron, France has decided to recognize a Palestinian state—by far the most influential country to have done so, joining Spain, Norway, Ireland and Sweden. France boasts the largest population of Jews (440,000) and Muslims (5.7 million, roughly 10 percent of the entire population) in all of Europe.
France already had a long history of antisemitism. But since the new millennium, physical attacks against Jews have swelled from a rapidly expanding demographic of unassimilated Muslims. The entire nation has faced well over 300 acts of terror committed by Islamists. Nearly 300 have been killed with 2,000 injured, mostly in Paris but also Nice, Toulouse, Marseille and Lyon.
Recognizing a Palestinian state as a reward for slaughtering, beheading, torching and gangraping 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 is Macron’s cynical ploy to capture the votes of a mother lode of Muslims. It matters little to him that mother’s milk is the cause of this Jew-hating madness. And he has done nothing to mitigate the problem of 2,500 French mosques that eschew secular values and radicalize too many congregants already predisposed to terror. Placating them at the expense of France’s overachieving but dwindling Jewish population is smart politics. French Jewry is slowly leaving the country for Israel, anyway.
Good luck without your Jews, France. Throughout history, nations that killed or expelled Jews desperately felt their absence. Enjoy the “no-go zones” and daily calls to prayer. It will do wonders to clog traffic along the Champs-Elysées.
Good luck without your Jews, France. Throughout history, nations that killed or expelled Jews desperately felt their absence. Enjoy the “no-go zones” and daily calls to prayer. It will do wonders to clog traffic along the Champs-Elysées.
In response, Israel’s Knesset passed a resolution extending sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank. Nice move, Macron. Hand that man a Nobel Prize for Peace, Norway.
More headlines of lowlights took place on the other side of the Pyrenees. Forty-four French Jewish children, summer campers on a trip, were removed from a Spanish airline, with their counselor forcibly restrained. The flight’s captain alleged, without any evidence, that the children were “disruptive” and “mishandled emergency equipment. ” Passengers, however, contradicted that report. Some kids quietly spoke or sang in Hebrew. That’s all it took to get tossed.
Although none were Israelis, Spain’s transportation minister called them “Israeli brats.” And get this: the pilot who gave the order to eject the kids from the aircraft was the same man who trained the two 9/11 terrorist hijackers who collapsed the World Trade Center.
American students who happen to be Jewish, or anyone who believes that schools should prioritize a faithful reciting of history rather than a propagandized one, were not spared this week. The largest teachers’ union in the United States published a handbook advising its members how to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day without … wait for it … mentioning Jews!
Apparently, the Holocaust will now be taught as the victimization of people of “different faiths . . . races . . . and genders”—12 million in total. “Six Million” now only refers to the “Man” of that many dollars on the hit 1970s TV show. The extermination of the Jewish people—the endgame of the Final Solution—is not so much being denied as being shared with all sorts of people who were never singled out for death.
The Holocaust also demands an understanding of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) committed against the Palestinians by the Jewish people of Israel. Oh, and you can now say anything you wish about Israel, or what you would like to do to Israelis, without it constituting antisemitism.
But not at Columbia University, which agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism. This means that calling Israel a racist enterprise, comparing Israelis to Nazis, holding Israel to a double standard and denying Jews the right to self-determination will be recognized by Columbia as antisemitic activity.
This was only part of Columbia’s larger settlement with the Trump administration that will restore its entitlement to federal funds. But without firing vast numbers of pro-Hamas faculty, and undoing the progressive protocols that has strangled intellectual life in the Ivy League, how will Columbia manage to comply with its new obligations?
Ceasefire talks in Gaza came to an end. Hamas has no interest in any surrender that requires them to actually surrender. That didn’t stop England and 28 other nations from demanding a ceasefire anyway—without any concessions from Hamas or return of hostages.
For this reason, Israel must do what must be done. Keep fighting until Hamas is no more and the surviving hostages are rescued. The moral universe also requires that any “civilian” who took part in the massacre on October 7, or personally detained hostages, meet a similar fate to the terrorists they freely elected as their representatives.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state was once again blamed for nonexistent starvation in Gaza. Global media and its United Nations henchmen continue to believe anything Hamas tells them. No independent verification is ever necessary. But if Gazans are, indeed, suffering, it’s because no one is crazy enough to drive and distribute the thousand trucks filled with humanitarian aid stalled at the border. Hamas is prone to kill the aid workers along with the food’s intended beneficiaries.
The United States established the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (“GHF”) for the purpose of feeding Gazans. Hamas is not thrilled that it must now compete with an entity that serves a humanitarian purpose. The world’s hatred of Israel is so twisted, global media is doing Hamas’ bidding by undermining GHF’s efforts.
The world’s hatred of Israel is so twisted, global media is doing Hamas’ bidding by undermining GHF’s efforts.
Hamas is now murdering these aid workers, but news outlets are reporting the story as if the IDF is doing the firing—targeting both the GHF and random civilians. The Washington Post falsely reported that the IDF shot into a crowd that had lined up for food, killing over 30. Two days later it printed a retraction.
Finally, less significant but arguably most horrifying of all, featured guests on the MyronGainesX podcast concluded that Jews must have deserved what the Nazis did to them.
A busy week for the Jew-hating jet-set. I’m a fiction writer, too, so if you’re wondering whether I made this all up: I’m not that good. Fiction requires plausibility. What we have here is antisemitism as surrealism. Paint the crooked contours and you have a Salvador Dalí. He, apparently, had no fondness for Jews, either.
