There are a number of people that I love to follow. I enjoy reading what they write, listening to their podcasts, and learning from them. I don’t always agree with them, but I do enjoy them making me think. Some of these include Bari Weiss, Douglass Murray, Daniel Gordis, Donniel Hartman, Kareem Abdul Jabber, Gil Troy, and Yossi Klein-Halevi. I listed this group because if you are looking to find people worth reading, these are a number of them.
In a recent blog post in the Times of Israel, Yossi Klein-Halevi wrote about the war against the Jewish story. I didn’t love the piece. I think he is right on with a few things but misses the most important part of both how and why we are losing the war against the Jewish story.
We have been outsmarted. They say Nakba. We say, ‘The war of independence when 7 Arab armies attacked and because of the briliance of David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan and many others, miraculously, we won.’
They say apartheid. We say, ‘Arabs have equal rights in Israel. 20% of college students are Arab. they vote. they are in the Knesset. they are on the supreme court. they have more rights in Israel than anywhere else in the Arab world.’
They say genocide. We say, ‘The IDF is the most ethical army in the world. Have you heard this general from England talk about it? That general from the United States is a big advocate for the IDF and how Israel handles warefar. Here, watch this video.”
They win because they are clear and to the point while we have to have them listen to an essay to explain things. In addition, we assume a few things:
1. People are smart and will actually bother to learn.
We have seen time and time again that while people may be book smart, they are not smart, and they certainly are lazy. They have no attention span and believe what they are fed. This assumption has been proved false and yet we continue to think that they will learn and act the same way.
2. The truth will come out and vindicate us. It does, but that’s on page 25, while the lies are on the front page.
I learned this on my first trip to Israel in 1989. That was 35 years ago, and we still do the same thing, expecting a different result. The lies get the front page of the newspaper, the lead story on the news, and the talking heads pontificating on cable news and the Sunday talk shows. We need to learn to challenge the lies forcefully right away. Call them out. And do so in a brief manner. Better to say “you lie” than to try to explain why it’s a lie to those who won’t spend the time to learn why it’s a lie.
3. People don’t hate Jews.
If there was any doubt about this, it has been resolved since October 7, 2023. It’s clear that plenty of people do hate Jews and will fight for the rights of every other group except Jews. We will be vilified because we are Jews. In Germany, we thought we were Germans first. In the US we think we are either white or Americans first. We aren’t. We are Jews first and always.
We saw this at the Eurovision competition with Eden Golan, who was charged with performing while Jewish. Protesters massed outside her hotel, trapping her in her room. They demanded she be removed from the competition, simply for being from Israel, for being Jewish. In Germany in the 1930s we thought we were German first and were proven wrong. We can’t afford to be fooled like that again.
4. The holocaust matters to this generation.
The Holocaust today is basically like the Civil war to my generation. It is history and not relevant. It is a story. They see a movie. They maybe meet a survivor who is old and hard to hear. More likely it is a 2nd generation survivor now or somebody who was a child at the time.
They also can’t comprehend 6 million people. In the Hamas-Israel war, there are an estimated 22,000 – 33,000 people that have been killed in Gaza. At least 12,000 are combatants. So somewhere between 10,000 and 21,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza and the world is in an outrage. Imagine 100 times those deaths. That would be between 1 million and 2.1 million. There were 6 million Jews and a total of more than 11 million civilians murdered by the Nazis. That’s 300-600 times what is happening in Gaza just for the Jews and 550-1100 times the overall number of civilians murdered.
Many years ago, I worked for the State of Florida. I had a big work ethic and wanted to do a great job. I took on more responsibility because I was able to. As a result, I got dirty looks from my co-workers. I was showing them up. When one of them went on vacation for two weeks, not only did I do my job and the extra responsibilities I had taken on, I did their job and not only did the work for those 2 weeks but because I wanted to do an excellent job, cleared their caseload for an extra 2 weeks. When my co-worker got back, she was furious with me because I made her look bad because I could do my job, take on extra work, and do her job better than she could just her job. This is what we are dealing with in today’s world. People want things to be the way they want them to be and when it isn’t, they throw a fit, scream and yell, and some get violent. This video of a protester at Penn is a perfect example. When he doesn’t get his way, he storms off, screaming like a small child.
Today’s generation wants the world to work in a way that it simply doesn’t. Terrorists who are evil don’t just follow the rules because you tell them to. University leaders don’t typically just do whatever the students want regardless of anything else because the students protest. Their desire to live in a different world is laudable. Our world can get better as a result. It doesn’t happen overnight. And people like terrorists don’t change because you want them to. Different cultures have different values. They don’t change their values because you tell them they should. Today’s generation truly believes that just because they say it, it happens. Just because they believe it to correct, the world changes for them.
We are losing the battle today because we are doing an inferior job of communicating our message. We are simply being outclassed in the battle for the hearts and minds of this generation. We make far too many assumptions about them and are letting these assumptions get in the way of doing what is needed to reach their hearts and mines. Israel is a miraculous story. When you look at what Tel Aviv looked like in the early 1900s when the Jews were forced to leave Jaffa, it is extraordinary to see it today. A thriving democracy, equal rights for all citizens, making the desert bloom, the start-up nation, a technologically brilliant country that created technology that literally pulls clean drinking water from the air. The stories of this country should resonate with today’s generation, but they don’t. That’s on us. We no longer can treat them the way we want them to act, we need to reach out to them in the ways that they engage and connect.
When the under 40 demographic is truly exposed to the amazing story of Israel, they fall in love with it. A country that truly lives Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) where equal access is not just a goal but an active process to ensure is a reality. Medical care for all. Excellent education that doesn’t break the bank. Mandatory national service. So much of what they want in the US is already in place in Israel but we don’t tell our story and let our enemies frame the story against us.
It’s time for this to stop. We need to own our story. We need to tell our story. We need to allow them to see the beauty of Israel and fall in love with it. We need them to see Israel as the hope for them to live with the values they want. It’s our job. It’s our responsibility. Are you up to the challenge?
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