The antisemitism that was festering under the surface for decades, has exploded. And for those of us who stand against it, we are not the popular kids. The so called “cool kids” are wearing a keffiyeh, calling for an intifada and demanding a Palestine between the river and the sea even if they can’t tell you which river or which sea. Keffiyeh Karens. That’s the mainstream now.
Standing up against jihadism is now the counter-culture. Standing up for western democratic values against terror and extremism: that is now the counter-culture. Using facts and reason and knowing history: that is now the counter-culture. People! WE are the counterculture.
And we are doing it. The Jewish people have found our voice because standing up for what we believe in, even when it’s not popular, is part of who we are. Our tiny people haven’t survived for millennia and outlived every empire that tried to destroy us by always being the cool kids. In fact, we almost never are. We know when it’s time to swim against the tide because we know this playbook. We have been here before.
And our message to the world is as follows: the hatred that targets is targeting you too.
I have a question for you, keffiyeh Karen from campus: where would you prefer to be a woman? in Iran? In Afghanistan? or in Israel? We cannot take the freedoms that we enjoy here in the US in Israel and in the west for granted, and right now even saying just that is swimming against the tide – it is being the counterculture.
This is not a war of Israel’s choosing but we cannot avoid it either. They might call us the chosen people: in fact we are the people with no choice.
But the entire western world needs to wake up to the fact that it has no choice either: that what is at stake is the survival, not just of the Jewish people, but of Western civilization, democracy and freedom itself.
And where we do have a choice is in how we do it: and we choose to speak the truth, even when the truth isn’t popular. To speak up, even when we are shouted down and to be proud even when they tell us we better hide.
Thank you so much, am Israel chai