The Hidden, Hated Jew
This is a warped world we live in
This is a guest post from the brilliant Sally Prag.
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The Hidden, Hated Jew
How strange is it to be hated by so many who don’t know me? Hated by so many who have never heard my name yet know that people like me exist.
Jews.
How strange is it for my own friends to talk about a country and its people as terror-mongers, fuelled by hate and oppression, when they don’t realise it’s also my country?
Israel.
Am I lucky that here in my little corner of England I blend in? English is my mother tongue and Caucasian defines the colour of my skin.
Sometimes my olive complexion is questioned. Sometimes, with that, my brown eyes are noted. But no one I meet in the street, at the grocery store, or the school gate knows that Hebrew has infused my life since childhood, that my family was lighting Hanukkah candles while my peers were singing carols, or that my childhood “Easter” holidays were spent with my aunts, uncles and cousins sharing a Passover seder in a joyful and loud apartment in Bat Yam.
It’s easy for my identity and roots to be hidden here. Yet not so easy to look around and see the hate spewing ignorantly out towards me, even when I remain camouflaged by my quaint British surroundings.
“We don’t hate you,” they say. “We just hate Israel.”
“We don’t want to damage Judaism,” they say. “We just want to erase the Jewish state.”
According to top armchair humanitarian experts, the IDF and anyone associated with them is as bad as the Ku Klux Klan.
When I turned 17, I received a letter from the Israeli government informing me that my national service in the IDF would begin a year later. As a female living outside of Israel, I had the right to defer on the grounds of education, so I did.
A couple of years later, the Israeli government announced that women living outside of Israel were no longer expected to serve in the IDF. I never served.
But…
…both my parents did. All my Israeli aunts, uncles, and cousins did. And their kids.
By default and according to popular opinion, I am still deeply entrenched in an oppressive terror family, as affirmed by said armchair humanitarian experts.
Never mind that members of my family, rather than sitting in armchairs to exercise their humanitarian-ness, have chosen to do it out in the field, in poverty-stricken farmlands of Africa and tsunami-torn coastlines of Indonesia, helping to protect vulnerable citizens. Never mind that my family in Israel, along with the vast majority of the population (also current or ex-IDF soldiers), wants peace with each of their Arab neighbours more than anything else in the world.
Never mind that the Israeli population as a whole loves life and each other with a passion so deep it is almost blinding.
And perhaps that is the root of the problem. Perhaps it is that mere fact — that Jews and Israelis love so fiercely — that confuses and frightens the world, especially their Islamist enemies.
Noa Tishby, former special envoy to the former Israeli government for combatting antisemitism, and Israel advocacy activist, explains the truth of the Jew-hating world.
Having seen the sentiments of the masses play out over decades, no matter how little drama was happening in Israel and with the government, she observed the constant demonisation of Israel nonetheless. Having served the most liberal, broad-leaning, and representational Israeli government that has ever existed, she shared how the anti-Israel rhetoric never changed, no matter how progressive the politics. It has always continued in exactly the same vein.
It’s not about the current government. It’s not about the forces that defend the country. It’s not about land.
It’s certainly not about the basic rights of Palestinian individuals to live a rich, peaceful, and bountiful life.
It’s about Jews.
It wouldn’t matter what Jews did. It wouldn’t matter how much we gave up while retaining our dignity and our basic human rights to live.
We will be berated until we give it all up, every last drop of our humanity.
Not under true-to-word international law, but under the powers that be and the orchestrators of the global message that every so-called liberal and his friend laps up with glee and Israel-directed venom.
And the biggest problem for the world is not only that we refuse adamantly. It’s that we continue to hold our heads up high and know we’re right and just and that we smile and love and reach out to one another in powerful, beautiful ways.
Every time a Jew smiles, another useful idiot retches in fury.
The destruction of Gaza should never have happened. So many lives should never have been lost.
I’m not here to defend Israel, to explain why its mere existence has been vital to the Jewish race, or how international law works. We Jews can keep doing this until we’re blue in the face but no one likes to learn they’ve been wrong, so they won’t listen (even though they know their own version doesn’t quite add up). In any case, it’s about Jews, and so the truth is irrelevant.
Sure, we can all blame the current government for allowing Hamas to grow, and the policies of this war for the desperate state of the place and the people. But we know (and so does the world) that other major forces are at play here besides Israel.
Amid the repetitive rhetoric that Israel lies incessantly, we know (and so does the world) that there is oppression and violence at frightening extremes that exist beside Israel.
But it’s easy to bury one’s head in the propaganda that distracts and downplays these truths, and with that feel righteous and purposeful. But in doing so, the masses exchange their honesty, integrity, and clarity of vision. They sell the goal of peace for a desperately sought lie of acceptance and perceived moral upstanding.
They sell the chances for the Palestinian people to have life and freedom for a supposed cause that has become lost in the murky waters of so-called resistance.
Resistance that is not — and never was — rape.
And to do that, the masses must hate me, even though they may not know who I am nor have ever heard my name.
They just know I exist.
A Jew.
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A total fag? What is this? 1982? And again, another belief? You really need to change your bi line you numpty.
Thanks so much for featuring my work again, Reuben. You are doing a wonderful job here with The Judean People's Front, and I am grateful to be part of the family.