Okay, it’s all right for America to invade Iraq on false pretenses and kill up to a million people, but when Israel responds to an attack and there are tens of thousands of collateral deaths they’re a pariah.

Actually, how many people really died?

Well, you can go to the Wikipedia page “Casualties of the Iraq War”: https://t.ly/wM8Os and see the count varies from 151,000 violent deaths to the aforementioned million. As for how many civilians have actually been killed in Gaza? The figure proffered has been done so by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, and the number is 41,802 Palestinians as of October 4th: https://t.ly/lG0mx Is that an accurate count? How many of these people were civilians and how many soldiers? And let’s not forget fighting an enemy based in tunnels is very different from what was going on in Iraq.

But those damn Jews.

This is a great example not to listen to conventional wisdom, not to cower and cave to pressures from the ignorant and those with a different agenda.

Is Netanyahu staving off a jail sentence? Possibly, but that’s got nothing to do with the war in Gaza. It’s just another way of undercutting the Israelis/Jews, who are now conflated into one, just try being a run-of-the-mill Jew on a college campus, good luck.

So what are all those pro-Palestinian protesters going to say now? Are they going to double-down and defend Sinwar? Well, I didn’t hear these same people or their forebears upset with the U.S. for taking out Osama bin Laden.

All we’ve been hearing for a year is the Israelis must pull back, that the war in Gaza is unwinnable, that you can’t eliminate Hamas and there is too much collateral damage. But when wars are waged elsewhere, there’s silence. What’s the difference? These are JEWS!

It’s in the news every day. This antisemitic attack, that one. Here in the U.S! And if Jews are different from Zionists, if there’s a line between them as so many say, what accounts for this uptick, no this tsunami of antisemitism?

This is me. This is you, the rest of the Jews. This has got nothing to do with Democrat or Republican, Harris or Trump. This is living in these United States today. We may not have a different skin color, but we control the media, the weather, we have space lasers… We are the enemy. People hate us. We are the other.

And we’re supposed to kowtow to the pretenses, the beliefs, the instructions, the demands of the mainstream.

That’s what we’ve been hearing for our entire lives, we are LOUD-MOUTHED JEWS! We’ve got to shut up, be quiet. They don’t want to destroy the culture of the Italians or the African-Americans or seemingly any other ethnic group, but Jews are constantly told to conform.

And when we try to, and so many of us do, it doesn’t work anyway.

Antisemitism creeps to the highest levels. Good luck getting into certain country clubs, certain organizations. Oh, they have a token Jew, a token female, a token Black to get the government off their back, but believe me, they hate the Jews, they want nothing to do with them.

So, Israel fights for a year and gets the head guy, the mastermind, that’s how long it took. The same guy who wanted an endless war until Israel disappeared, that’s what the River to the Sea means.

And if just a little bit of Hamas was left, they would consider it a victory. And Israel is just supposed to lay down arms? When Hamas used all this aid to build tunnels as opposed to feed the people? And do you think these fighters are stupid? They intentionally built strongholds beneath hospitals and homes, knowing that the world would freak out if Israel retaliated. Have you read about all the homes in Lebanon where arms are stored? Yup, imagine having some missiles in your living room, that’s not a fantasy in Lebanon.

So despite all the pressure, from the governments, from the media, Israel stayed the course. Because that’s what it takes to win, to achieve victory. Everything worth doing is hard. But, once again, the Jews are hamstrung, they should not be allowed to fight, not even with one hand behind their back.

And all the propaganda put out by Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran is believed without analysis, whereas everything the Israelis do is pored over in detail, delineated and decried.

So what do you say now?

That’s what I want to know, what do all those pro-Palestinian people say now?

But look at how rich Israel is!

Do you think money grows on trees? Are they not entitled to the fruit of their labor?

But look at how much money the U.S. gives Israel!

Sans Iran Hamas and Hezbollah are out of business.

It’s a double standard I tell you.

They want us to retreat to what once was. With our own clubs, our own universities, our own communities. They want us quiet and out of the way. They don’t want to be replaced by us, isn’t that what they said in Charlottesville?

I’m not going to sit here and tell you I approve of everything Israel does. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I approve of everything every Jew does. Unfortunately, we’ve got bad actors amongst our tribe, however much it pains us.

But thank god we’ve also got people who stand up for what is right.

For the past twenty years especially, we’ve been subjected to this pro-Palestinian nonsense. Israel bad, Palestinians good. To the point where even Jews are parroting this b.s., for fear of being ostracized, excluded.

Am I saying there are no good Palestinians?

OF COURSE NOT!

Am I going to sit here and tell you the West Bank is a paradise?

NO!

But it’s not black and white. It’s complicated. And the bottom line is the Palestinians don’t want to leave the Israelis alone. If you think if Israel pulled out of Gaza and the West Bank there would be no problems… You don’t know that Israel already pulled out of Gaza…and look what happened!

Do I have sympathy for the injured, the dead, the collateral damage?

Yes. But this is war. And Hamas attacked first. Broke a ceasefire.

But all we keep hearing is Israel must bend over backwards.

And by writing this I cement my place on the wrong side of the fence. By speaking up I am excoriated. Don’t I know this is not the leftist position? Well, is that how it is, a litmus test? You must be pro-Palestinian to be a Democrat?

And if you think the Republicans care about Israel and the Jews…if they do so at all, it’s only because the land is the birth of Christianity.

No, we’re alone. Condemned by all.

Not the only outside group, but hated for millennia. Hell, we were on the land first and we’re still not entitled to it. They just gave beach property back to Blacks in Southern California, but the Jews aren’t entitled to their homeland.

And my e-mail tells me not to equate Blacks with Jews. But all I can say to this is… What did Ye have to say about the Jews? And he’s not the only one!

Don’t bring up false equivalencies to try and make me blink and shut up. All my life I’ve been the other. I brought salami on rye bread to a construction site and they made fun of me. I could list a litany of misdeeds, mistrust, put-downs…but all I’m told is to STFU!

Yes, I’m happy today. Not only because Sinwar was taken down, but because this war is now closer to ending. This is what it took. Nothing short of this was going to work. And let’s not forget, the Israelis coughed up Sinwar and 1,026 other Palestinians in exchange for just one Jew back in 2011. That’s how the game works. Or maybe you could just say that Israel values life more than Hamas, is not willing to sacrifice it willy-nilly.

Am I going to defend everything Netanyahu and the Israelis have done?

OF COURSE NOT!

But I’m not going to defend everything the U.S. had done either.

And if we Jews don’t stand up for our identities, our truth, it will be run right over and snuffed out, we will become even bigger pariahs. In a world where the truth is elusive. Where even a hurricane is subject to conspiracy theories, what chance do the hated Jews have to be accepted at face value, to be given the benefit of the doubt?

NOT MUCH!

I don’t want more than you’ve got. I just want the same. And I know this will never be. But if you expect me to lay down and take it, to be quiet, to go with the flow…

YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THINK COMING!