FINALLY, A SYRIAN CRIMINAL IS SENTENCED
[Note by Tom Gross]
A former member of the Syrian secret police (photo above) was sentenced today to four and half years in prison for crimes against humanity in Syria. The trial in Koblenz, Germany, is the first of its kind in the world.
Many (including myself) criticized the relatively short sentence. Others expressed hope that some kind of justice from the Syrian conflict had finally prevailed.
“This is a chance to save all the detainees who we can still save,” said Wafa Mustafa, whose father disappeared 2,795 days ago and hasn’t been heard of since. As I have outlined previously in these dispatches, many thousands of Syrians are still believed to be alive in the network of secret underground prisons operated by the Assad regime.
***
Below, I attach various articles of interest from the last two days.
CONTENTS
1. Women depicted in cartoons must ‘wear hijab’, rules Iran’s leader (Al-Araby)
2. Woke Me When It’s Over (New York Times)
3. Tech Censorship Is Accelerating (Wall Street Journal)
4. Israelis stranded abroad furious as government restricts their ability to fly home [including Knesset candidates] (Haaretz)
5. Politicians in Lebanon jump the vaccine line, touching off a scandal (New York Times)
6. Amos Oz accused of ‘sadistic abuse’ by daughter in new memoir (The Guardian)
7. “Thank You, Michael Che! The comedian revealed something important about today’s left. The sooner we get the joke, the better” (Tablet Magazine)
8. Entire school board resigns after accidental public livestream (BBC)
ARTICLES
WOMEN DEPICTED IN CARTOONS MUST ‘WEAR HIJAB’, RULES IRAN’S AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI
Women depicted in cartoons must ‘wear hijab’, rules Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei
Al-Araby
February 22, 2021
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2021/2/22/women-cartoon-characters-must-wear-hijab-rules-irans-khamenei
Women depicted in cartoons or animated films must wear the hijab, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled in a fatwa on Saturday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Asked whether it was necessary for animated characters to be portrayed with their hair covered, Khamenei responded with his ruling, stating that observing the compulsory Islamic head covering was necessary even for women in cartoons.
“Although wearing hijab in such a hypothetical situation is not required per se, observing hijab in animation is required due to the consequences of not wearing hijab,” Khamenei’s response to the question said, according to Tasnim.
It remains unclear how the fatwa will be put into force.
Tehran has imposed strict censorship laws on the country’s film industry.
Scenes deemed immoral or offensive are often censored, while films considered hostile to Islamic values are banned.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, many ultra-conservative figures have opposed the screening of foreign films and series where women appear without the hijab.
Religious groups say it encourages women to reject the head covering.
Wearing the hijab and modest clothing became mandatory for women in Iran, following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Women have regularly been targeted by the republic’s morality police, known as Gasht-e Ershad, for showing some hair in public or for “improperly” wearing the hijab.
WOKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER
Woke Me When It’s Over
In the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny and the statute of limitations never expires, even when it comes to hamantaschen.
By Bret Stephens
The New York Times
Feb. 22, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cancel-culture.html
In 2015, Bon Appétit ran an article by the food writer Dawn Perry about hamantaschen, the triangular cookies that are a tradition during the Jewish festival of Purim. It was headlined — brace yourself for outrage — “How to Make Actually Good Hamantaschen.”
Six years later, a woman named Abigail Koffler found the article while researching hamantaschen fillings. She was not amused.
Perry, Koffler wrote on Twitter, isn’t Jewish. Perry’s husband, Koffler added, had been forced out of his job at Condé Nast last year based on accusations of racial bias. Above all, Koffler objected, “Traditional foods do not automatically need to be updated, especially by someone who does not come from that tradition.”
Most Jews would probably be grateful for an “actually good” hamantasch. Yet within hours of Koffler’s tweets, Bon Appétit responded with an editor’s note atop the article, now renamed “5 Steps to Really Good Hamantaschen.” It’s a note that defies summary, parody and belief.
“The original version of this article included language that was insensitive toward Jewish food traditions and does not align with our brand’s standards,” the editor wrote. “As part of our Archive Repair Project, we have edited the headline, dek, and content to better convey the history of Purim and the goals of this particular recipe. We apologize for the previous version’s flippant tone and stereotypical characterizations of Jewish culture.”
Behold in this little story, dear reader, the apotheosis of Woke.
No transgression of sensitivities is so trivial that it will not invite a moralizing rebuke on social media.
No cultural tradition is so innocuous that it needn’t be protected from the slightest criticism, at least if the critic has the wrong ethnic pedigree.
No writer is so innocent that she should be spared from having her spouse’s alleged failings trotted out to suggest discrimination-by-association.
And no charge of cultural insensitivity is so far-fetched that it won’t force a magazine into self-abasing self-expurgation. What Bon Appétit blithely calls its “Archive Repair Project” is, according to HuffPost, an effort to scour “55 years’ worth of recipes from a variety of Condé Nast magazines in search of objectionable titles, ingredient lists and stories told through a white American lens.”
George Orwell warned in “1984” of a world in which “the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” At the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith was obliged to rewrite what had been said about sweets — chocolate, not cookies — to hide the fact of ever-dwindling rations.
What Bon Appétit — which saw its editor depart last year after a 16-year-old Halloween photo of him trying to look like a Puerto Rican stereotype resurfaced on the internet — is doing with its recipe archive may seem like a farce. But it’s a telling one. If a major media company like Condé Nast can choose to erase and rewrite its food archives for the sake of current Woke sensibilities, why stop there?
In the summer of 2008, The New Yorker ran cover art of Barack and Michelle Obama giving each other a fist bump in the Oval Office. He was dressed in Middle Eastern garb. She had a machine gun slung over her shoulder and wore her hair in a big Afro. A portrait of Osama bin Laden hung over the mantel, and an American flag was burning in the fire. Even by the comparatively liberal standards of 2008, the cover was considered egregious.
At the time, The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, defended the art by saying that it was satirical. But in the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny, the statute of limitations never expires, Remnick’s intentions are irrelevant and his judgments inherently biased. If Condé Nast is serious about “repairing” its archives for the sake of rectifying past sins, there’s no good reason not to erase that cover, too.
What comes next? In January, Jason Kilborn, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was placed on indefinite administrative leave, barred from campus and kicked off his committee assignments after students protested that he had included “n____” and “b_____” as part of his semester exam on civil procedure.
No, he didn’t use the slurs themselves. He just wrote the first letter followed by a line. It still didn’t spare him.
“The visual of the N-word on Professor Kilborn’s exam was mental terrorism,” claimed a petition from the Black Law Students Association.
Whatever happens to Kilborn, every professor in America has now been put on notice: In the game of Woke, the goal posts can be moved at any moment, the penalties will apply retroactively and claims of fairness will always lose out to the perpetual right to claim offense.
A friend of mine, a lifelong liberal whose patience is running thin with the new ethos of moral bullying, likes to joke, “Woke me when it’s over.” To which I say: Get comfortable.
***
Tom Gross adds: You can watch my recent conversation with NY Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens here: https://youtu.be/SkiWXs9AUWk
AMAZON BANS THE SCHOLARLY 2018 BOOK, “WHEN HARRY BECAME SALLY”
Tech Censorship Is Accelerating
Amazon bans a book as Democrats demand a wider media crackdown.
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
Feb. 23, 2021
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-censorship-is-accelerating-11614036293
Now that voters have turned the authoritarian GOP out of the executive branch and Congress, Americans should expect the open exchange of ideas to flourish again. Right?
Consider two events Monday. First, the conservative scholar Ryan Anderson announced that Amazon had purged his 2018 book, “When Harry Became Sally,” from its web store. The book criticizes recent progressive ideas about gender and especially the wisdom of sex-change procedures in children.
Amazon declined comment on the reasons for the ban, but comment is hardly needed. The tech companies have grown increasingly open about their ideological censorship.
Also on Monday, two Congressional Democrats wrote a stern letter to CEO Jeff Bezos about Amazon’s role in politics. If you took seriously the party’s promises to defend “democratic norms,” you might expect Democratic politicians would express concern about the world’s third-largest company by market capitalization trying to suppress a book on a contested political issue.
But the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship. “Our country’s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies,” write Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney. They quote a claim that right-wing media is “much more susceptible,” and demand to know why Amazon’s Fire TV carries certain conservative programs.
The letter is also addressed to the CEOs of Apple, Google and cable companies. It’s part of a campaign to engineer a more pliant media through coercion of the corporations that distribute information. That point will be pressed in a Wednesday hearing on “Disinformation and Extremism in the Media” in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The House also released a memorandum ahead of the hearing that appears to give orders to mainstream news sources. “Despite criticism, many traditional media outlets continue to allow for the disinformation in an attempt to follow journalistic standards and present multiple viewpoints on a news story,” the Committee avers. Got that, newspaper editors? Please adjust your coverage to the liking of Congressional Democrats.
Corporate media censorship, such as Amazon’s scrubbing of a heretical book, is accelerating. And government is right alongside, pushing for censorship with increasing force.
ISRAELIS STRANDED ABROAD FURIOUS AS GOVERNMENT RESTRICTS THEIR ABILITY TO FLY HOME
(From Haaretz today. Even Nahman Shai, a candidate for the Labor Party in the election next month, was refused permission to fly back to Israel. --Tom Gross)
Israelis Stranded Abroad Furious as Government Restricts Their Ability to Fly Home
With the airport shut due to COVID, Israelis in the United States are finding it difficult to get back to Tel Aviv – even if they have an election to run in next month
By Danielle Ziri
Haaretz
Feb. 24, 2021
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israelis-stranded-abroad-furious-as-government-restricts-their-ability-to-fly-home-1.9563421
Rebecca (who did not wish to share her last name) flew back to her hometown in Florida last December when a family member became seriously ill. But the Israeli-American citizen and her Israeli boyfriend are now among the thousands of Israelis stranded overseas because of Ben-Gurion Airport’s ongoing closure.
“Israel has basically abandoned us,” she told Haaretz this week.
The Israeli government closed the country’s borders on January 25, giving just 24 hours notice of its decision. While the initiative – meant to halt the import of new coronavirus variants, potentially threatening Israel’s hugely successful vaccination campaign – was supposed to be in effect for less than a week, the closure has since been extended twice. The next potential reopening date is March 6.
While a few rescue flights have been able to land, those on board needed special permission to return, given by a governmental “exceptions committee.” Until this week, all travelers were being forced to quarantine in designated hotels for 10 days. Entry to the country is currently being restricted to 200 travelers a day.
All that Israeli citizens stranded across the world can do is express their frustration – which they are doing, frequently, on social media.
Because the Israeli government has extended the border closures “super-last minute,” Tel Aviv resident Rebecca, 28, said flights have been continually canceled. “We were unable to plan for anything,” she said.
Rebecca is now set to remain in the United States for another month, but her boyfriend needs to get back to Israel as soon as possible. The whole situation has been “frustrating” and “just a mess,” she said. “His flight has been canceled three times, and his [U.S.] tourist visa is about to expire. Also, our apartment lease in Tel Aviv is gonna expire.”
While her boyfriend is scheduled to return this week, Rebecca said she was still “extremely nervous” given the recent cap on daily entries.
“I’m also extremely frustrated that, at the moment, Israel isn’t recognizing foreign COVID-19 vaccinations. So, while I have been vaccinated in the United States, I won’t be exempt from quarantine upon landing – even though it’s the exact same vaccine as what they’re using in Israel,” she said.
‘AN OPPORTUNITY’
After she gave birth to her first child last September, Israeli-American Shayna Muller, 30, decided to fly to the United States and spend her maternity leave with family. Her Israeli husband was able to make the trip as well and worked remotely. They left Israel on November 9 with a 2-month-old baby girl in tow and were supposed to return on January 31.
While they were in the U.S., though, they all ended up contracting the coronavirus. “The upside is that while we were here, we got antibodies. The downside is that now we’re stuck here,” Muller said.
“We were thinking of doing a rescue flight, but were nervous because we didn’t want to get sent to a coronavirus hotel,” she added.
While she’s seeing the extended family time as “an opportunity,” Muller had planned to be back in Israel for February 1 – which would have given her a full month to settle in before returning to work.
“At first it was very frustrating, but my mom got very sick with the coronavirus – she was in the hospital. If I wasn’t here, I would have been even more nervous in Israel,” she said. “Everything happens for a reason and it sucks that I didn’t get a month of transition. But you know what? People are dying.”
Muller said she thinks the airport closure was “a good thing” given the new variants, but took issue with the fact that, initially, Israel’s rescue flights were only through El Al.
“We had tickets on Delta, so basically what you’re doing is forcing people to rebook their tickets for so much money on El Al,” she said. “They were having so few flights and they were so expensive that some people financially can’t do that.”
After the U.S. State Department reportedly threatened to ban Israeli planes from landing on U.S. soil, Israel restored authorization for United and Delta airlines to operate rescue flights as well.
Muller and her family are now scheduled to fly home on March 3. Her only concerns are last-minute changes and the possibility of being sent to a quarantine hotel, despite having recovered from COVID-19.
AN ELECTION FIGHT
Among the Israeli citizens currently struggling to get home is former Knesset member Nachman Shai, who’s also running in the March 23 election (he’s eighth on the Labor Party’s slate). He’s been teaching in the United States for the past 18 months: first at Emory University in Georgia, and then Duke University in North Carolina, where he’s a visiting professor of political science. (He was representing the Israel Institute, which aims to ensure that students have access to classes about Israel during their time on campus.)
Shai’s original plan had been to be back in Israel next week. However, after submitting his request to the relevant governmental committee, he was denied permission to enter. “They didn’t give me any explanation,” he said. “I’m probably the only Israeli who’s out of the country at this stage that would like to come and run for the Knesset. It’s an undeniable right, I believe.”
He added: “This is Israel 2021: total balagan,” using the Hebrew term for mess. “No one will give you an answer.”
As a former government official, it would have been easy for Shai – who’s also received the COVID-19 vaccine – to use his connections to get his request approved. But he insists on going through the proper channels.
“Maybe I’m spoiled now. I live in America; there are 300 million people and there’s no [use of connections] because it’s a big country. I don’t know anyone – I don’t even ask myself whether there’s a shortcut,” he said. “Why do I need my contacts to do something that’s reasonable?” he asked. “I have full rights to come to Israel.”
The Labor candidate said he didn’t see “any logic” in what the government is doing. To truly consider people’s requests to fly back home, the committee would have to work “24/7 with hundreds of people, not two or three,” he said.
“I feel the government betrayed its citizens. The fact is, the public doesn’t believe the government any longer,” he charged. “There’s a civil revolt in Israel right now.”
Last week, Israel negotiated the return of an Israeli woman who had crossed into Syria in the Golan Heights and was arrested by the Syrian authorities. The woman landed in Israel last Friday, flown in on a private Israeli jet sent to retrieve her from Moscow. In a tweet that day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would always act to return its citizens.
“Except the thousands of us who are stuck abroad right now because you closed the borders without warning for over a month,” Rebecca tweeted in response. “These are such empty words.”
She told Haaretz: “Israel is currently doing the exact opposite” of what Netanyahu boasted about. “It’s slamming the door in our faces. Honestly, it seems to me like a cynical ploy to keep those of us who are stuck abroad, and rightfully angry about it, from voting – specifically, from voting out the current leadership,” Rebecca said. “They let in foreign judokas to participate in an international judo competition and exempted them from quarantine. Clearly, this isn’t just about the coronavirus.”
If Israeli citizens who live in Israel aren’t allowed to vote because they aren’t allowed to return home, Rebecca added, “that’s not a free and fair election.”
Former lawmaker Shai doesn’t rule out the possibility that the government has political reasons for preventing people from entering the country, either.
“Maybe it’s not just a technical failure, maybe there is something deeper. I would raise questions about this,” he said. “It’s not just people knocking on the door because they want to come home. They want to participate in the election, they want to impact the future of the State of Israel through voting.”
He added: “The major question is: Who’s in charge here? Unbelievable!”
***
Tom Gross adds:
You may also wish to read the main story from The Jerusalem Post earlier today:
(It says one reason Israelis couldn’t get on the plane and had to spend another night on the floor in Frankfurt airport is that German Lufthansa staff couldn't handle all the Israeli bureaucracy.)
Also this: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-quarantine-hotels-gone-wrong/
POLITICIANS IN LEBANON JUMP THE VACCINE LINE, TOUCHING OFF A SCANDAL
Politicians in Lebanon jump the vaccine line, touching off a scandal
By Ben Hubbard
New York Times
Feb. 23, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/world/politicians-in-lebanon-jump-the-vaccine-line-touching-off-a-scandal.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Covid-19 vaccination drive in Lebanon erupted in scandal on Tuesday when 16 lawmakers received shots inside the parliament building, violating regulations aimed at keeping the process fair and transparent.
The vaccination program, financed by $34 million from the World Bank, began earlier this month when the country received its first doses. To try to ensure accountability in a country known for corner-cutting and corruption, the government is requiring citizens to register for vaccination through an online portal. Medical workers and people over 75 are supposed to get the shots first, administered in official vaccination centers.
On Tuesday, Adnan Daher, the parliamentary secretary, confirmed to reporters that 16 lawmakers had received shots. He said the lawmakers were all of the proper age and their turn to be vaccinated had come. But according to lists compiled by local news outlets, about half were younger than 75.
Elie Ferzli, a lawmaker in his early 70s who got the shot on Tuesday, denied in a telephone interview that he had jumped the line, and said he was “shocked” by the public outrage over the shots.
“I have meetings every day in the parliament, so how am I supposed to keep doing my job normally and helping people?” he said.
Officials overseeing the vaccination program, though, cried foul.
Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri, the head of Lebanon’s vaccine committee, threatened to resign over what he condemned as “a violation we cannot stay silent about,” but he decided to stay on.
Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank’s director for the region that includes Lebanon, wrote on Twitter before the reports were confirmed that letting lawmakers jump the line was “not in line with the national plan,” and added, “Everyone has to register and wait for their turn!”
He said that if the rules were broken, the World Bank could suspend its support for the vaccination program and Lebanon’s Covid-19 response generally.
A World Bank spokeswoman did not respond to a query on Tuesday about how the bank would handle the incident.
AMOS OZ ACCUSED OF ‘SADISTIC ABUSE’ BY DAUGHTER IN NEW MEMOIR
Amos Oz accused of ‘sadistic abuse’ by daughter in new memoir
Galia Oz claims late author – hailed as Israel’s greatest – beat and humiliated her in childhood, but siblings say they remember him differently
By Alison Flood
The Guardian
Feb 23, 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/23/amos-oz-accused-of-sadistic-abuse-by-daughter-galia-oz-israel
The daughter of the late Israeli author Amos Oz has alleged that her father subjected her to “a routine of sadistic abuse” in a new memoir, claims that have been challenged by his family.
Galia Oz, a children’s author, published her autobiography, Something Disguised as Love, in Hebrew on Sunday. “In my childhood, my father beat me, swore and humiliated me,” she writes, in a translation published by the newspaper Haaretz. “The violence was creative: He dragged me from inside the house and threw me outside. He called me trash. Not a passing loss of control and not a slap in the face here or there, but a routine of sadistic abuse. My crime was me myself, so the punishment had no end. He had a need to make sure I would break.”
Amos Oz, who died in 2018 at the age of 79, was one of Israel’s most acclaimed authors, frequently tipped as a contender for the Nobel prize for literature. A writer of fiction and non-fiction, his best-known works included Black Box, In the Land of Israel and A Tale of Love and Darkness. When Oz died, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin called him “our greatest writer” and “a giant of the spirit”.
Fania Oz-Salzberger, Galia’s sister and Amos’s daughter, and an author herself, said in a statement that she, her mother Nili and brother Daniel “remember differently” to Galia.
“We have known all our lives a very different Amos, a warm and affectionate man who loved his family deeply and gently,” she wrote. “He devoted heart and soul to us. The vast majority of Galia’s accusations against Amos squarely contradict our three lifetimes of loving memories of him.”
“To his deathbed, Amos tried and hoped to talk with Galia again, to listen, to understand, to grasp even the claims that contradicted reality as he and we saw it,” Oz-Salzberger wrote. “Galia’s pain is palpable and heartbreaking. But we remember differently. Astoundingly differently.”
In a lengthy post on Facebook, translated by Haaretz, Daniel Oz wrote that his father “wasn’t an angel, just a human being. But he was the best man I ever had the privilege of knowing. In contrast to us, my middle sister Galia remembers that she experienced tough parenting and abuse from our father. I’m certain – that is, I know – there’s a kernel of truth in her statements. Don’t erase her. But don’t erase us, either,” he wrote.
“My father is dead, and he can’t stand in the dock and plead his innocence, nor can he defend those he loved. We are only witnesses – regarding the things that our mother remembers differently than Galia, the things that Fania remembers differently from Galia, the things that I remember differently from Galia. Therefore, these are our memories, from our personal point of view, which is limited (as is everyone’s). And I’ll keep my explanation of the contradiction between our stories to myself.”
The Times of Israel reported that the writer Yehuda Atlas, a friend of Galia Oz, told Israeli radio station Army Radio that he knew about these stories.
“It’s difficult for us leftists, Amos Oz was our golden prince, but it seems even the moon has a dark side,” Atlas said.
“THE COMEDIAN REVEALED SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT TODAY’S LEFT. THE SOONER WE GET THE JOKE, THE BETTER.”
Thank You, Michael Che!
The comedian revealed something important about today’s left. The sooner we get the joke, the better.
By Liel Leibovitz
Tablet Magazine
February 22, 2021
“Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half of their population,” comedian Michael Che quipped on this week’s Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live. “I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”
Cue the outrage: In email chains and on WhatsApp groups, on Twitter and in frantic text messages, the Jews reacted—expressing anger (“can you believe they would air such an offensive joke on TV? Jews shouldn’t be conflated with Israel!”), sharing irrelevant facts (“actually, 43% of Israel’s Arabs have already been vaccinated, too!”), and, my favorite, Sternly Demanding Apologies™: “Your ‘joke’ is ignorant—the fact is that the success of our vaccination drive is exactly because every citizen of Israel—Jewish, Muslim, Christian—is entitled to it. Apologize!”
Friends, we’ve got to stop this. Che’s joke wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t something someone accidentally let air on a decades-long television show with a cast and crew in the hundreds. It wasn’t even new for him. Was the line anti-Semitic? Yep. Was it also absolutely intended? You betcha.
If you’re one of the good folk upset by this joke, I’m going to guess that at least some of the following statements are also true about you: You’re furious about the anti-Israel bent in The New York Times and wonder what can be done to make the paper of record “correct its bias”; you can’t believe how mired in political correctness our culture has gotten; you think we should spend a lot of time and resources fighting BDS on college campuses; you don’t fully understand why and how what you may call “the woke” or “the radical left” got so loud and so influential, but you think it’s very important and very possible for reasonable people to get together and beat back the tide.
Me? I prefer my wolves in wolves’ clothing. If anti-Semitism is essential to the ideology of today’s left—and it is—then it is essential that we see it clearly. Keeping ourselves under illusions is... Well, let’s just say, that has never been a winning strategy for Jews.
So, while I’m sorry to be the bearer of grim news, let’s recap a few things: There’s no “Democratic Party” that may have a few radical kooks like Ilhan Omar but is really a solid bastion for good liberals. There’s no “Republican Party” that may have been hijacked by bad man Trump but is really a fortress of principled conservatism. We no longer have institutions—like television networks or newspapers or universities or political parties—that respond to anything approximating reasonable persuasion. There’s no point in trying to argue with, apply pressure on, or rebuke the likes of Michael Che, because the likes of Michael Che actually do hate you, and they’ve been telling you they hate you for quite some time now.
Sadly, too many of us hear “I hate you” and translate it into “let’s talk about this.” which is why so many smart Jews who ought to know better still spend so much time parsing the non-existent differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, say, or rushing to qualify their support for Israel with some sharp words about Bibi Netanyahu. It’s why the ADL sidles up to Al Sharpton, America’s most prominent pogromist, and why the JCRC in New York cheered on the comically inept mayor Bill de Blasio when he basically blamed the Jews for spreading COVID-19. Again and again and again, we see those calling themselves our communal or intellectual or moral leaders engage in this kind of insufferable sophistry, trying to find shades of gray even in the most pronounced streaks of black and white.
Again and again and again, reality stands up and slaps them in the face.
If, by contrast, you’re a normal human being with even an ounce of self-esteem and don’t have any fetishes involving pain and humiliation, you can join me and step right out: Out of pretending like the Michael Ches of the world are anything but rank bigots, out of engaging with the drivel they create and call culture, out of the institutions they’ve hijacked and then crashed into the towers of our civilization.
What should we do instead? Build new things, I’d say—whatever can produce an alternate saner, more sustaining reality in which we don’t spend our time fretting about hateful people doing hateful things to us, over and over, in perfectly predictable ways.
But no one can build anything with blinders on. The first step is to, as a wise woman said in these pages, stop being shocked. And stop letting others be shocked too. Next time (and there will be a next time, very soon), be the person in your WhatsApp group to puncture everyone else’s surprise. Be the one to catapult others out of the paralysis of constant outrage and into forward-oriented action. Rome, after that visit from the Visigoths, was never the same again, but the values that made it great in the first place lived on elsewhere—nurtured by men and women who had few illusions about the horde’s true intentions. Our Rome has been sacked; it’s a pity. Time to move on: The future is too bright to miss.
ENTIRE SCHOOL BOARD RESIGNS AFTER ACCIDENTAL PUBLIC LIVESTREAM
Entire school board resigns after accidental public livestream
BBC News
February 22, 2021
An entire California school board has resigned after making disparaging remarks about families in an online meeting which they did not realise was being publicly live-streamed.
“They want to pick on us because they want their babysitters back,” one member said about parents.
Another implied that parents wanted their children out of the house so they could take drugs during the day.
Rest of the piece here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56156795
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