READ THE ROOM

  I came across the phrase of the title recently and find it extremely apropos for the situation today. We, all of us, need to read the room. We need to see the truth. We need to hear the truth. We need to pull our heads out of the sand. Look around. and see reality. Accept the truth, whether we like it or not, for it is here: with us, among us, around us.

Unfortunately, many of us have been expending our energies in the wrong areas, searching in cold, unfertile areas for answers, for clues to answers, anything that would help us understand what the hell has happened. And what is to happen. Many of the best analysts of the situation have gotten bogged down in a sea of minutia, parsing pence for farthings, or splitting hair where it makes not a difference. We shout out, point out, righteously, the injustices directed at the Jewish people, be they in Israel, or be they in any other country of the world. We plead, we cry, we beg, and are just beginning to push back in the same manner of the foe. Yes, the foe. Understand that. Feel the truth of that. We vainly try to counter the lies spread, the incendiary demeaning tones and words used to describe any Israeli or Jewish input of information. 

Wise and in the know analysts have fallen into the error of parsing minutiae, forgetting to 'read the room' - the world being that room. These are the words of Deborah Lipstadt, a well-known distinguished warrior against antisemitism.

"I’m often asked as a historian, is this 1938? I say no, that’s a bit of an extreme position,” Lipstadt says ... I think it’s more like the early 1930s, maybe the late 1920s,” she added, referencing the destabilization of society that was taking place then and likening it to what is happening in many countries after October 7."

Now, really, is there any significant difference between the two opinions? The point is that the virulent talk for, of hatred, which led to the enabling of the Holocaust and its bloody consequences is our 'present' now as it was then. Is the ugly impetus of hate, the driving force to build upon the foundation of a never dying hatred, actually alive and well, thriving, and empowering ever louder resounding echoes leading only to tears and horror? 

It is in fact 1938. with an amendment making it even more toxic. It is 1938 on crack, Spreading through the airwaves and social media sites. Faster and faster. Adopted, internalized by the morally defective, by lost souls, deluded souls who swallow the poison willingly as they cede their individuality into the personae of the 'mob'. Those people, those mobs. are overpopulating our room. We are being forced in our world into ever tighter corners, the space, the air we can breathe, in shorter supply. We've been denied, dehumanized, delegitimized, isolated more and more from so many arenas of the 'room' of our existence. A growing frightening chorus of hoarse crazed voices raised in calls for the elimination of the State of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants, but also of world Jewry as well. No, 1938 it is. 

A supposed benefit wherein nations of the world support us and join lustily in the fight against Anti Semitism, is quite leaky, spongy, with no backbone. Instead, the same once supposedly allied nations now denounce Israel, recognize our enemies, and invoke the same deadly chants into their repertoire: 'from the river to the sea ...' ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Spoken by Spain as it dipped back into the pool of hate of the Inquisition and expulsions of the 13th and 14th centuries. Still quite healthy and viable. How convenient for the purveyors of hate. 

In this week's New York magazine, there is an article most nauseating, condemning Israel by its words and intonations, its rampant use of snide not so subtle, sharp cuttings. into the soul of Israel. Nary a wisp of positivity to be found. It is a violent on purpose in your face hatred and support of it. 1938? Maybe not. Maybe more like 1941 and the slaughter will begin shortly. Stay tuned.

Here's an example of the use of words twisted so as to convey the exact tone and bent of the author, pejorative to Israel without a doubt. It is an ugly twisting of facts and word use in order to convey the hate contained within the blackened soul of that author. It is an egregious, crude, hijacking of truth.

"Israel declared itself a state in 1948 and immediately went to war."

So true yet so not.

 Israel was declared a state by a vote of the United Nations. It could not, did not declare itself. It was willing to accept any borders, any ridiculous configuration that the United Nations decided upon and offered peace, to live in peace with its neighbors. 

Then and four times more over the decades and again, after the massacre of Oct7, Arabs continue to deny Israel, to wage war against it, to uphold terrorism, and exercise wild violence against it.  No, Israel did not 'go' to war - it was dragged into war, time and time again, forced into war, and when it was beating back the attackers, the nations of the world ran to save the instigators, thus allowing, contributing to the ongoing horror of Oct7 and all that followed and continues to follow.  In 1948 six Arab armies attacked Israel and nothing has changed since then. 

On Oct7, the animals of Hamas attacked the civilians of Israel, slaughtering, raping, buoyed by the craven cowardice of the world, by the weak, by the disinformed, misinformed and uninformed. The old bloodthirst for Jewish blood, was awakened with a roar. And the leaders of the world dived into that lake of bloodthirst with vigor and desire. The ugliness of campus hate was invigorated by an influx of money from Arab nations, from Muslim organizations dedicated to the ending of Israel.

Once again, Jews are attacked in the street, forbidden entry or entrance to their universities, to their theaters, to their concert halls, to events of sport or political discussion. Any contributions of Jews were to be denied. 

 The rest of that article and others similar in tone are ugly and demoralizing. Moreover, if we try to turn to the nations of the world to do the right thing, to suspend their wholehearted purchase of perfidy, where exactly are we to look? Where are help and support to be found? Are we to find any help? The Democratic Party is finally coming to the realization that well, they went after the Michigan vote, but the Jewish vote is seeping at an ever-faster rate away from them. Too many Jewish voters are being forced unhappily into Republican corners, not because they like Trump or are blind to the peril he poses to democracy, nor to the corruption he spearheads, but because it is now an existential question: the loss of democracy, possibly avoidable, or the destruction of Israel yet again-and forced expulsion from within its ancestral homeland and nations of the world. 

Survival of Israel. Survival of democracy. Survival of Jewry round the globe.  Global extinction. Democracy lost, corruption enabled, Justice vanished. You tell me which side weighs more. You tell me how to know what side, what issue to rank of more importance. Why must they be in opposition?  Ugly consequences lurk nearby. I myself have twisted again and again. This, no that, back to this and on and on again.  I am sure though there are thousands just like me, in the same quandary.  

-------------------------------------------------------------- Yitzy, your Tata is so tired, so demoralized. So not understanding of why all this is happening. Why must we have this ugly repetition throughout the millennia of the world? I, we, all need you. Come down. Give us a hint that you are there watching us Give us a hug that we will feel with the touch as light as a feather wafting through the air. Reinvigorate us.  We desperately need it. 

Even as we love you.

Always and forever. Always and forever.