The War Against Western Values

My days of being a religious Jew were brief and I have identified as agnostic ever since I was 18. Over the years, I’ve had struggles with my identity, often refusing to even identify as Jewish. Truth be told, I never saw myself writing an article like this. 

I’ve tried so hard to disconnect from being labeled as anything other than American. But what non-Jews don’t understand is that being Jewish is a lot of things.  For better or worse, it is something you cannot escape. 

It is a culture, ethnicity, and a religion.  It's a shared trauma and something that when you forget, you are reminded of as you walk down the streets of NYC during pro-Palestine protests as they carry signs that say “the ovens are where the Jews belong”. It is something you are reminded of when you hear motorcades of Hamas sympathizers chanting that Jewish women should be raped and killed, untouched by governments like those in Canada who a year prior, froze the bank accounts of truckers protesting vaccine mandates. 

It is something you are reminded of as you fear sending your child to school because it’s next to a synagogue or it is a Jewish school that must increase security as it may be targeted by people who’ve shown no hesitation to kill and rape. 

You are reminded as you see your acquaintances, friends, or colleagues take the word of a terrorist organization that would remove a baby from its mother’s womb and then behead them both over the only bastion of Western Civilization in the Middle East. It is something I am reminded of when I think about my family having to fear wearing a Jewish necklace.

Israel's history is complicated. Jews have been persecuted and dehumanized throughout human history Pogroms and mass killings were conducted against Jews across Europe in the 1900’s. Jews have a long history in the area, verified by ancient artifacts, including the holiest temple at the Western Wall, described many times in the Jewish Bible, on which Muslims later built their mosque on top of. 

The Romans defeated the Jews, destroyed the temple, and renamed the territory Palestina, named after the Philistines. Jews are anything but colonizers in the land of Israel, existing before any single Muslim or Christian walked the earth. 

Prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler to discuss the Jews, a common enemy. In 1947-1948,  a partition plan was created for the Jews fleeing the holocaust to live safely. The leaders of the Arab Muslim world rejected and instead attacked a nation of holocaust survivors and lost. At the time, the Kingdom of Jordan annexed the West Bank while Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. 

After Israel was attacked for the third time by surrounding Arab nations, the Israelis captured the Gaza Strip. In an effort for peace, the land was given back to the Palestinian Liberation in 1993. Peace has clearly not happened.

There is a campaign incubated on college campuses but spread by the likes of the Squad and other radicals against Jews.  Jews are being labeled as occupiers and ethnic cleansers.  Letters have been circulated by various student bodies that support this mass terror against the Arabs and Israelis living harmoniously in Israel. 

Accusations of genocide are most interesting, as only one side explicitly calls for genocide and the population of Gaza has increased at a rate higher than Israel’s.  So if Israel is trying to commit genocide, they are really bad at it. If zionists control the media, they are really bad at it for a slew of “respected” media outlets to believe a terrorist organization about a hospital bombing that never happened. If Israel did want to commit genocide or ethnic cleansing, they could easily. 

I have talked about the history of Judaism and my own relation to it, but at its core, to me, it is not about any of that. Agnostics, Atheists, and everyday Americans can recognize these truths. Music festival goers were brutally murdered and whole families were executed. 

Those who committed this massacre adhere to a culture that opposes Western values, yet their cause is championed by intersectional progressives. Israelis may be largely Jewish, but they are the only democracy in the Middle East. I need not remind readers that the values of Western civilization are based on Judeo-Christian values. 

The Jihadists crave global dominance and wish to oppress people who love freedom, let people dress and love who they want, and speak as they want without fear. The chant to ‘Free Palestine from the River to The Sea' refers to the elimination of the state of Israel.

The Israeli/Jewish version of saying “cheers” before having a drink is Le’Chaim, meaning "to life". What we, Americans and Israelis and most of the Western world, believe is in the dignity of human life. We don’t all agree on where life begins but we agree that life matters. 

Black lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter. Indian lives matter. Muslim lives matter. Jewish lives matter. However, these radical Islamic terrorists, do not believe life should be celebrated. They celebrate death, the deaths of their children, the deaths of their wives, sisters, and brothers. Death by engaging in the “resistance” is an automatic key to heaven. They are true believers. 

And we must be true believers in our own values. I hope that we are up to the task. 

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.