Fighting back
At this terrible time for the Jewish people, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer weight of unreason and hatred and to feel that the entire world is against us. Well, it’s not. There are countless numbers of good people who are appalled by the onslaught within the west against Israel and the Jews. And there are Jews and others who are fighting back for decency and sanity. Here are a few examples.
Just over a week ago, the Phoenix cinema in London screened a film about the massacre at the Supernova music festival during the October 7 Hamas-led pogrom in Israel, when hundreds of young music fans were mown down as they ran from the gunmen. A pro-Hamas mob naturally besieged the cinema in an attempt to stop the screening. But on this occasion, they didn’t have it their own way. The Israel supporters fought back and refused to allow them to control the streets. On Spiked, Brendan O’Neill wrote:
Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: “This will go down in history.” Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a “pro-Palestine” mob is one such event.
Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably — or not, perhaps — the “Palestine solidarity” set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new antisemitism.
Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas. And on the other side a boisterous gathering of Jews and their supporters. Two thousand of them. “I’m still standing” by Elton John blasted from a loudspeaker. Many young Jews were there, some clearly angry, pushed to their limit by the ceaseless demonisation of the Jewish state and the left’s shameful lack of solidarity with the Jewish community as it has come under attack these past seven months. These people really have had enough.
Some of the younger Jews chanted “Terrorists supporters off our streets”. It felt like a brilliant modern twist on the slogan of The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 — “They shall not pass”. Back then, Jews and their working-class allies gathered in east London to see off Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Yesterday, they gathered to see off that mob that obsessively hates Israel and which seems hell-bent on hiding the truth about Hamas’s fascist-like crimes. You shall not pass, the protesters were essentially saying, as they protected a cinema from the McCarthyite rage of the Israelophobes…
To its credit, the Phoenix refused to buckle to the cancel-culture mob… We will never “censor or veto the content of screenings” when our cinema has been privately hired for a festival, it said. This is so unusual these days that it deserves special commendation. Every cultural institution in the land could learn a lesson about freedom from the Phoenix’s defiance of the marauding “progressive” blacklisters.
But it’s the Jewish protesters who deserve the greatest credit. They have done their forebears on Cable Street proud. They have taken a brilliant stand for freedom of expression and Jewish equality. They have defended the right to tell the story of what was done to the Jews of Southern Israel on 7 October. They have struck a blow for truth itself.
You can watch the Israel supporters here outside the Phoenix shouting “Terrorist supporters off our streets” and the police escorting Hamas supporters away here.
After Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused the Israelis of genocide and saying the only historical equivalent was “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews”, watch here the remarkable scene as members of the Brazilian Congress expressed a vigorous show of support for Israel to prove that the president and his disgusting views don’t represent the Brazilian people.
Watch here as US Democratic Senator John Fetterman — one of the few Democrats in the US Congress to stand up unequivocally in public for Israel — removed his Harvard Crimson hood during the “commencement” ceremony at Yeshiva university, New York, in protest at the rampant antisemitism at Harvard; and then watch him here, after he was presented with Yeshiva university’s Presidential Medallion for being a “Hero of Israel”, dancing with students and faculty to “It’s great to be a Jew”.
At Columbia university, New York, which has seen some of the worst outbreaks of hatred and intimidation directed at Israel and Jews on campus, 540 students signed an open letter defending their support for Israel and standing up for Zionism and their Jewish identity. They wrote:
We proudly believe in the Jewish People’s right to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity. Contrary to what many have tried to sell you — no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel. Zionism is, simply put, the manifestation of that belief.
Natan Sharansky, the former Jewish “refusenik” who during the 1970s and 1980s was incarcerated in Soviet Union labour camps as a dissident against the Soviet regime before emigrating to Israel and who is now Chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, has written in Tablet:
The occupation of the campuses, which 20 years ago was but a metaphor, has become a real movement with funding, leadership, and physical presence. Young Jews no longer face ostensible threats against their professional futures; they face daily threats against their physical safety and the core of their identities as Jews and as human beings.
It was into this foul atmosphere that Columbia’s Jewish students wrote their letter. Five hundred of Columbia’s Jewish students declared that they won’t be cowed by the haters, that they reject the attacks against their Jewish identity, and that Zionism is a part of Jewish identity. They called out their haters for the antisemites they are, and the administration of the university for downplaying and mishandling the attacks that target Jews. They flatly rejected attempts to victim-blame the Jews for the hatred that targets them. Most remarkably, they all signed the letter with their full names, proudly and openly, shedding the self-censorship and silence of the double-thinker for the proud stance of the dissident. In the days since then, more and more Jews added their names to this list.
When I was a dissident in the USSR, my friends and I knew well that a revolution can only start when a critical mass of double-thinkers stops being afraid and crosses the line into open dissent. Only when the masses lose their fear and drop the mask of pretence can they lead their society into a different future. It was true in the USSR, and it is true today. The ideological regime of antisemitism that has entrenched itself in America’s universities for decades will only collapse when enough Jews stop being afraid. It will only collapse if they stop unwillingly aiding it by hiding and self-censoring, and instead speak their truths openly and loudly.
When we were fighting the USSR from within, we estimated that once approximately a fifth of the population will transform from double-thinkers into dissidents, the authorities will no longer be able to contain the spread of free thought. Heartwarmingly, more than a fifth of the Jews of Columbia University have already signed the letter that marks them as dissidents to the reigning ideological regime. I hope that our estimations decades ago about the tipping point from oppression to revolution will prove right in the case of this revolution as well…
However, if the Jewish students of Cornell, Stanford, Harvard and the other campuses will join Columbia’s Jews in their public statement, they stand a chance to do more than stand up for their own truths — they stand a real chance to revolutionise the campuses, defeat the antisemitic forces that have occupied them, and win the battle for American Jewry’s future.
Dear Jewish students of America, today you are on the front line. The future of American Jewry, and maybe even America itself, is in your hands. Be brave.
Gateway Pundit reports what happened after Russian Israeli author Dina Rubina was scheduled for an event to discuss her books at Pushkin House in London in collaboration with the University of London.
Before she was “allowed” to speak, however, event moderator Natalia Rulyova demanded she clarify “her position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” saying other invited participants needed to “understand your position on this issue before responding”.
This is what Dina Rubina wrote in reply:
Dear Natalia!
You’ve written beautifully about my novels, and I’m so sorry for the time you’ve wasted, because apparently we have to cancel our meeting.
The universities of Warsaw and Torun have just canceled lectures by the wonderful Russian-speaking Israeli writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Galicia’s Jews in the 17th and 19th centuries “to avoid making the situation worse”. I suspected that this would affect me too, since academia is now the main breeding ground for the most disgusting and virulent antisemitism, disguised as so-called “criticism of Israel”. I was expecting something like this, and I even decided to write you an email about it… but I put it aside. It’s time for me to publish it.
This is what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious report on my position regarding my beloved country, which currently lives (and always has) surrounded by ferocious enemies who seek to destroy it. My country which is waging a just war today against a rabid, ruthless, deceptive and cunning enemy. The last time I apologised was in elementary school, in the principal’s office; I was 9 years old. Since then, I have been doing what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing exclusively my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.
Natalia, thank you for your efforts, and I personally ask you to send my answer to all those who are wondering.
On October 7, Saturday, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, well-prepared and well-equipped Hamas terrorist regime of Iran, Hamas, which rules in the Gaza enclave (which Israel left around twenty years ago), attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim and bombarded my country with tens of thousands of rockets. Hamas has committed atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities that rival the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah. Atrocities filmed by the way, by GoPro cameras, the murderers having taken the horror to the point of sending the images to their families or on social networks in real time.
For hours, thousands of happy, blood-drunk beasts raped women, children and men, shooting their victims in the crotch and heads, cutting off the women’s breasts and playing football with them, cutting off the babies from the wombs of pregnant women and immediately decapitating them, tying up and burning the small children. There were so many charred bodies that, for many weeks, forensic pathologists could not cope with the enormous workload of identifying individuals.
A friend of mine, who worked in the emergency room of a New York hospital for 20 years, then in Israel for 15 years, was one of the first to arrive in the kibbutzim as part of a team of rescuers and of doctors. She still hasn’t been able to sleep since.
While she is an emergency specialist, accustomed to dissected bodies and corpses, she fainted when she saw the macabre sight and vomited all the way back in the car. Among the Hamas militants, Palestinian civilians rushed in, participating in pogroms of unprecedented scale, pillaging, killing, dragging everything they could get their hands on. Among these “Palestinian civilians” were 450 members of this highly regarded organisation UNRWA (United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).
Judging by the utter joy of the population (also captured by thousands of mobile cameras), Hamas is supported by almost the entire population of Gaza. But the essential is there for us. More than two hundred Israelis, including women, children, the elderly and foreign workers, were dragged into the beast’s den. A hundred of them are still rotting and dying in Hamas dungeons.
It goes without saying that these victims, who continue to be mocked, are of little concern to the “academic community”. But that’s not what I’m talking about right now. I am not writing this so that anyone will sympathise with the tragedy of my people.
During all these years, while the international community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) — UNRWA’s annual budget alone is equivalent to a billion dollars! — during all these years, Hamas used this money to build an empire with a complex system of underground tunnels, stockpile weapons, teach schoolchildren from primary school to disassemble and assemble Kalashnikov assault rifles, print textbooks in which hatred of Israel is indescribable, in which even math problems look like this calling for the murder of Jews with every word:
“There were ten Jews, the shahid killed four, how many are left?”
And now, when finally shocked by the monstrous crime of these bastards, Israel is waging a war of annihilation against the Hamas terrorists who so carefully prepared this war, who placed thousands of shells in all the hospitals, the schools, kindergartens…
The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, nor the massacre in Somalia, nor the mistreatment inflicted on the Uighurs, nor the millions of Kurds persecuted by the Turkish regime for decades, this very worried community which wears “arafatkas” [keffiyehs], the trademark of murderers, around their necks at rallies under the slogan “Liberate Palestine from the river to the sea”, which means the total destruction of Israel (and Israelis). “Academics”, as polls show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where certain borders are located.
And it is this same public which asks me “to express a position clear on the issue”. Are you really serious!
As you know, I have been a professional writer for over 50 years. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto, and many more.
Now, with great pleasure, without choosing my expressions too much, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send to all the brainless “intellectuals” who are interested in my position to go f**k themselves.
Way to go, Dina Rubina.
Finally, watch the Israeli comedy and parody show Yehudim Bayim (“The Jews are coming”) start its new season with a non-satirical 3 minute sketch here. Poignant, devastating and so very true — but watch to the end to see why the Jews are the eternal people, and why Israel will eventually defeat the monstrous forces arrayed against it.
Enjoy.
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