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I am writing this piece – Israel: Defending the Indefensible – in the hope of changing hearts and minds, knowing full well that most human beings live their lives in Echo Chambers[ii] and rarely change their minds, as it means admitting they were wrong, facts notwithstanding. Many human beings don’t want to listen to a contrary opinion. I hope they will read my piece anyway. Everything that I have to say in this essay will be sourced; I am not making this stuff up.
But, before I go further, let me be clear about what I will NOT try to argue.
- One, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is as (un)popular in Israel[iii] as President Trump is in America.[iv] I approve of neither of them. PM Netanyahu will probably end up in prison, while Trump will never be held accountable, even by (spineless) Democrats in Congress.
- Two, I have serious reservations about aggressive Israeli actions in the West Bank.
- Three, while I am friendly to AIPAC’s mission – an excellent American Israeli relationship – AIPAC’s brand has nevertheless become quite toxic lately, spending large pools of money supporting pro-Israel candidates for office, regardless of how otherwise awful they may be. Americans need to build a wall of separation between money and politics, and Jewish money should not be an exception. AIPAC should take a five year vacation from throwing loads of money into American politics and devote their money to doing some good (AIPAC should act more Jewish). Nevertheless, I would never give my vote to any Democratic candidate whose foremost campaign issue was the money that AIPAC was spending to defeat him (Abdul El-Sayed).
- Four, U.S. aid to Israel. Since 1946 – 80 years – Israel has received about $174 billion in foreign aid from us (Egypt more than half as much[v]).[vi] But we have spent $195 billion on Ukraine since 2022[vii], and $113 billion on the war in Iran[viii] in less than five months. Historically, our annual budget for foreign aid is 1% of our total budget[ix], and Israel’s piece of that piece is 7%, so 7% of 1%. Do we get value from aid to Israel? Do we get value from supporting Ukraine, or fighting a war in Iran? Do we get value from any of our foreign aid? If you only object to foreign aid to Israel, maybe you’re just a run-of-the-mill antisemite.
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Now to the meat of this piece.
A New Antisemitism in America. Until recently, antisemitism in America was very rare but very visible. Neo-Nazis never had much power, and they were less dangerous than they were the object of ridicule. But the day after Hamas’ declaration of war on Israel – October 7th, 2023 – the number of Israel haters in the USA exploded on “elite college campuses” nationwide (they didn’t wait for Israel to invade Gaza before calling Israel genocidal), and that movement has grown as fast as any in my memory. They claim that Israelis are oppressors and Palestinians are the oppressed; that, therefore, October 7th was not an act of premeditated war but an “act of resistance” (historically, “resistance” rarely takes the form of an act of war). Palestinian “freedom fighters” slaughtered 1195 Israeli Jews and took 251 hostages. Had this “act of resistance” been visited on America, we would have sustained more than 60,000 deaths and lost 12,500 hostages. Imagine how we might have responded! Bit of a no-brainer, eh?
Why, then, this perverse rush to judgment among these elite college freshmen? First, as soon as young people begin to leave their nest, they begin to individuate themselves, typically as distinct from their parents. Second, that individuation nearly always consists of finding an in-group to attach themselves to (ah, the irony!). Third, young minds like simple answers (good guys and bad guys). Fourth, 19 year olds tend to be temperamentally idealistic, they tend to favor an underdog; in today’s world, Israel is no longer the underdog (militarily). Fifth, at no time are human beings so cocksure that they are right (Dunning Kruger Effect) as when they leave the nest, these days at age 19. Sixth, “hey, I’m in MIT/Berkeley/Stanford, I must be some kind of hot dude, smarter than anyone I ever met.” There is nothing quite so ego-intoxicating as realizing that they got into such a good school! They think they’re entitled to their newly won arrogance. Seventh, they are as ignorant as they will ever be (lest you think I am being unnecessarily disparaging of young people, turn it upside-down and you get, “every day I get a little bit smarter” (the Big Bang Theory of human development)). It’s the human condition to be ignorant of all the history that happened before you began to care about the history that is happening in your own lifetime. And last, over the ages, Jews have been an easy target, as their numbers have always been small and they have not been armed for two thousand years, at least until the day (May 14th, 1948) that Israel declared its independence as a nation among the nations of the world, and decided that, “Never Again” will we Jews be victims.
The only factor that I can pretend to try to fix is young people’s ignorance. For starters, Palestinians do not want peace; if they did they would not provoke war so often.[x] Palestinians don’t want a state (over and over, statehood was offered; it was never enough, and they never countered with what they wanted in exchange for peace). Palestinians chant “Free Palestine, from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.” Palestinians want to replace (majority) Jewish Israel with a (pure) Muslim Palestine. Many of our new antisemites don’t understand this, many do, many don’t care. I am all for a “free Palestine” living in a secure peace with its neighbor, free Israel.
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A brief run through history will make some things clearer.
But when should we begin? At the beginning, of course.
The Hebrew Abraham (3812 – 3637 BCE, even if imaginary) was the patriarch of the Arab “race” (through his first son, Ishmael) and of the Israelite/Jewish “race” (through his second son, Isaac). So, Arabs and Jews are quite literally brothers. But we are not concerned here with Arabs but with Muslims.
Muhammad (570-632 CE) created Islam in 610 CE. In 622 CE, he brokered a military alliance with local (non-military) Jews. But it took less than ten years before Muhammad demanded their allegiance to Allah (the God of Islam) and to Muhammad himself. The most persistent trait of Jews through history is: Jews are a “stiff-necked” people, Jews don’t bend the knee except to their own God, even those Jews who deny His existence.
I searched online for an unbiased and accurate list of deadly conflicts between Jews and Muslims since the beginning, and I only found this[xi] and this.[xii] I consider these sources biased in favor of Jews without condemning them as inaccurate (I don’t know enough to do that). If you can find a source of data that makes the case that Jews have oppressed (murdered, ghettoed, pogromed, expelled) Muslims over the years, please let me know. But why would such a small population of Diaspora Jews ever choose to oppress the majority Muslims in their own countries? And how could such a small number of Jews succeed in oppressing majority Muslims in their own countries? A little absurd, don’t you agree?
In 1948, five Muslim states (with a population of some 30+ million souls)[xiii] fought a war of annihilation on Israel (about 716,700 Jews and 156,000 Arabs)[xiv], and the Jews decided that they would not lose that war. Going forward, the Palestinian side kept attacking Israel, and waging war on Israel, and Israel kept not losing. If Israelis can today be labeled oppressors, it has only been for their own survival, personal and collective. Christians and Muslims are proselytizing (“convert or die”) religions and number 4.3 billion humans, more than half of the world’s total population. Jews are more like a club that would deny Groucho Marx (a Jew) membership; Jews number about 15 million in the world (0.2% of world population, less than 1% of the Muslim population). It is hard to reconcile these two facts: Jews’ tiny numbers and their unbelievable power. But survival is a powerful motivator! One nation’s survival may be another nation’s Nakba (catastrophe). And, perhaps, egged on by their personal and collective will to survive, the Jews of Israel are not behaving the way we think they should.
Here are some factoids that might help to enlighten our new antisemites.
Jews have several especially annoying character traits: 1) They don’t want to join us (by conversion), and they don’t want us to join them (by conversion). 2) The trust that they have among themselves (like brothers who love each other) they don’t render to others. 3) They are very bookish; they value education above all else. 4) Through the ages, every Jewish boy (now includes every girl) child had to learn Hebrew, a “dead” language that is now the official language of an entire nation. 5) Every industry where Jews have excelled was once either forbidden to their Christian or Muslim hosts or was held in low esteem by their hosts. 6) Despite the fact that Muslims want Israeli Jews dead, and despite the fact of worldwide antisemitism, Israel is nevertheless the 8th happiest country in the world (USA is 23rd and Palestine is 108th).[xv]
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What role have Jews played in American/world history (to today)?
Can Americans imagine its entertainment industry without Jews? Take a legal pad, write down every American artist or entertainer that comes to mind until you get to 100. I would bet you dollars to donuts that at least 30 (50?) of them will be Jews.
Politics/Government. Adam Schiff (senator), Al Franken (senator), Barney Frank (House), Bernie Sanders (senator), Chuck Schumer (senator), Elena Kagan (SCOTUS), JB Pritzker (governor), Jamie Raskin (House), Josh Shapiro (governor), Merrick Garland (Attorney General), Michael Bloomberg (mayor), Paul Wellstone (senator), Rahm Emanuel (Chief of Staff), Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor), Stephen Breyer (SCOTUS), MANY more, less well-known.
The Law. Louis Brandeis, William Kunstler, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alan Dershowitz, Judge Judy. If you don’t know everyone on this list, you are just dirt ignorant.
Medicine. My son (daughter!), the doctor.
Bankers. Never mind!
Nobel Prizes. 32.2% of all American Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish (with 2.4% of today’s American population). 46.7% of Russian/Soviet Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish (with 0.06% of today’s Russian population). 25% of German Nobel Prize winners, fgodsake (with 0.15% of today’s German population).
Chess. Since the beginning – 1886 – a Jew has been the World Chess Champion more than half the time.
Sports? Well, Sandy Koufax![xvi] Usain Bolt? Kidding.
Wikipedia has an entry entitled List of American Muslims[xvii] and an entry entitled Lists of American Jews.[xviii] Take a moment to glance at each page. Note how equivalent they are!
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Imagine the world’s population as 1000 human beings. 277 are Christian, 267 are Muslim, 246 are unaffiliated, 148 are Hindu (that’s 93.8% so far), 36 are Buddhist, 22 are “other,” 2 are Jews and 2 are a rounding error! Both Christians and Muslims are or have been “convert or die” religions, while Jews don’t want you in their exclusive club. Imagine if you can that these 2 Jews, out of 1000 people, are committed to world domination. If that truly makes sense to you, you are probably a Jew hater, an antisemite.
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Now for some impertinent questions. How many Jewish friends have you? How many Muslim friends? Where would you choose to live – Israel or Palestine – if you were gay, if you were a woman, if you were not a Jew or Muslim, if you were either? Which people do you have more in common with?
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There is one interesting argument that might support a “rational” antisemitism. How can it be that throughout history so many nations and empires have made war on its tiny Jewish population? Can 100 nations all be wrong and only one tiny group be right so always? That makes no sense at all. But all those nations, all those empires, are gone and Jews live and thrive. And invariably benefit the nations where they are allowed to live and thrive. Wake up, America! Stop following your (foolish and ignorant) children!
Is antisemitism based on envy? Economist Thomas Sowell thinks so.[xix] I disagree. Antisemitism has been around so damned long and so everywhere that there must be some truths underlying it. Antisemitism has been normalized, and Jews are the world’s most dependable scapegoats. Maybe humans are just lazy and it’s just the little bit of history that we all seem to know about. Maybe humans don’t like to accept personal responsibility for their own failures, so they look for a scapegoat to blame. Maybe humans are stupid by choice.
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Now to (DSA’s) antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Support for Israel has been a bipartisan agreement for decades, in Congress and among Americans. More recently, since at least Hamas declared war on Israel on October 7th, 2023, our own country’s “elite college” freshmen have chosen a different path: to be pro-Hamas and anti-Israel. There are two things that can be said about most young people: they are idealistic, and they are ignorant (goes with their brief spell of time on the planet). So it goes with young DSA Democrats. Their idealism causes them to root for the underdog. And no way can the state of Israel in 2026 still be counted as a (military) underdog (despite two/three thousand years of being the world’s favorite scapegoat). As to their youthful ignorance, I would ask them two questions. “Do you think that you will be smarter and wiser in ten and twenty years than you are now?” For those who say YES, I would follow up with, “Then explain why in today’s America, the older you are, the more likely that you are pro-Israel.”[xx] Older people may or may not be smarter than younger people, but they have lived through more history than their younger kin; they have more history to base their biases on. All that young people see is death in Gaza. And devastation in Gaza. They ignore the fact that Hamas started this war. And they have no context for judgment as they are ignorant of the history of the Israeli Palestinian conflict going back to 1948, or 1920, or 1890, or … any time in the past.
Which makes Israel’s reaction to said declaration of war on October 7th into an act of (defensive) war, not a genocide. If you still insist it is a genocide, explain why it is the only genocide in human history where 3% of a population has been killed in nearly three years. Then explain why nearly 2 million Muslims live in Israel proper and identify more with Israeli Jews than with Gaza’s Muslims.
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And the only solution that I see to America’s new antisemitism is education. Education about the Israeli Palestinian conflict (not an unsourced 20-minute version), education about Zionism (the right of the state of Israel to exist), education about “free Palestine” and the Palestinian “Right of Return,” education about Jewish and Muslim contributions to American and world history and, finally, in which civilization would you be more welcome and which would you choose to call home?
On the day that the new state of Israel declared its independence, the Muslim nations that attacked Israel told the Arabs living there to leave and to return after they had won the war. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion implored the Arab population to stay and become citizens of Israel. “WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”[xxi] 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left or fled (the Nakba), 150,000 Palestinian Arabs stayed in Israel. Yeah, there were issues; the Arabs stayed, nevertheless. Those who left became refugees; what is remarkable is that their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are still officially recognized as refugees, the only time in history that refugee status has been inherited. While Israeli Arabs may face real discrimination, 1) so do Israeli Jewish sects as Israel is as guilty as most nations with respect to social inequality, and 2) Israeli Arabs lead better lives than typical Arabs living in majority Muslim nations in the region (they have the right to vote, they are members of the Knesset, and of Israel’s Supreme Court, and women and gays do not fear from being women and gays).
In the years following 1947-48, the population of Jews living in Arab Muslim countries collapsed by 99% from 850,000 to 4,000.[xxii] If this collapse happened to any other people, it would be called “ethnic cleansing.”
The number of Muslims living in Israel proper (NOT Gaza or the West Bank) increased from 150,000 to 2 million, a steady annual increase of 3.5%; of Jews from 630,000 to 7.76 million,[xxiii] an annual increase of 3.4%.
Why all these facts, why all these stories, why all these numbers? Because if you have paid attention, maybe you will see that Israel, its Jews, or Jews anywhere in the world, are not the bad guys. Think about what you have read for a moment or two before you judge.
Notes:
[i] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/15/politics/military-aid-israel-democrats-split-vote
[ii] https://benpaine76.blogspot.com/2017/01/echo-chamber.html
[iii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-only-33-of-israelis-say-netanyahu-is-best-candidate-for-pm-59-prefer-someone-else/
[iv] https://www.newsweek.com/map-donald-trump-approval-rating-3-months-midterms-12271180
[v] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL33003
[vi] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL33222
[vii] https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
[viii] https://iran-cost-ticker.com/
[ix] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/21/us-foreign-aid-is-plunging-in-second-trump-administration/
[x] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#History
[xi] https://sephardicu.com/sephardic-history/history-of-muslim-jewish-conflicts/
[xii] https://medium.com/@sigmaxavi/the-list-of-crimes-committed-by-muslims-against-jews-since-the-7th-century-0ff1a8eb0ad0
[xiii] https://www.google.com/search?q=on+may+14%2C+1948+what+was+the+total+population+of+the+states+that+attacked+Israel
[xiv] https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
[xv] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
[xvi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbD3fEZdaRM&t=225s
[xvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Muslims
[xviii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_American_Jews
[xix] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQQ5fTyXiyI
[xx] https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=8739
[xxi] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp
[xxii] https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-populations-in-the-arab-world
[xxiii] https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
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