This issue gets really complicated really fast so let’s see if I can tap dance my way through a political minefield without losing a foot.
Here goes:
1. I believe you can disagree with the government of Israel without being antisemitic.
2. But I don’t believe the government of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians justified a terrorist attack on unarmed women and children and/or civilians and I think the people who have suggested that what Hamas did was OK or Israel brought it on themselves, need to have their heads examined if the medical community can figure out how to pull those people’s heads out of their asses.
(Wow, after that even-handed opening statement I cannot believe the Biden Administration doesn’t see me as Top-Notch Diplomat Material.)
In any case…
Google “does Hamas use human shields” and you might be offered this article by The Guardian that says Palestinians who tried to flee Gaza after Israel warned them to get the hell out were prevented from leaving by Hamas roadblocks and Hamas gunmen were shooting at Palestinians attempting to leave Gaza:
Or this article by The New York Post that says Hamas doesn’t want to build bomb shelters because bomb shelters would limit civilian casualties and Hamas wants Palestinian civilians near their military positions because civilian casualties will turn public opinion against Israel:
Or this 24-page report from NATO that says Hamas has been hiding behind Palestinian human shields in their fight against Israel since 2007:
https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf
Hamas hopes hiding near or underneath schools and hospitals will stop Israel from attacking those locations (which means they’re counting on Israel caring more about Palestinian civilians than they do) but if Israel attacks anyway, Hamas hopes civilian casualties will make Israel look bad and generate sympathy for their cause which is pretty goddamn cynical, but in far too many cases seems to be working.
Our inconsistent concern
According to the Palestine Palestinian Central Bureau there are about 14.3 million Palestinians in the entire world and according to the Associated Press about 2.3 million of those Palestinians live or lived in Gaza and according to the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees there were at least 108.4 million displaced people around the globe.
So do the math and that means there are millions and millions of displaced people that nobody in the United States seems all that interested in, especially the displaced people in places we don’t use for vacations like (name the African country of your choice) and come to think of it we also don’t seem to give a crap about the American Indians we displaced so we could build an endless series of freeways, strip malls and fast food franchises.
If American Indians showed up at a country music festival and started slaughtering people I’m guessing the Americans who currently support Hamas would not be OK with that.
So if we don’t give a crap about American Indians or Africans or Homeless People living under our freeway bridges, why are some people suddenly so concerned about displaced Palestinians?
The cartoon at the very top of this essay offers an answer.
When Barack Obama got elected president, some people started saying we needed to “take our country back” which raised an interesting question; take it back from who?
The president who actually got the most votes in an election?
(My computer says that should actually be take it back from “whom” but my computer is a pedantic, busy-body asshole that makes horrible suggestions like why don’t I store all my valuable information on somebody else’s server or buy the latest version of Word when the one I have works just fine and don’t I want to sign up for experimental AI- generated Google searches. Bottom line: I don’t trust my computer because my computer’s got lousy judgment.)
Anyway…
Their real reason remained unspoken, but it seemed to me the people who wanted to “take our country back” wanted to take it back from the kind of people who listened to Al Green, shot hoops in the White House driveway and could dance without resembling an arthritic bear being electrocuted.
They couldn’t come right out and say “take our country back” from a Black man because then it would be overly-clear they were just run-of-the-mill racists and not patriots.
Generally speaking most of us have learned not to say racist, sexist, homophobic or antisemitic things out loud because we know we’ll get in trouble if we do, but even though they won’t admit it a depressing number of Americans still seem to be racist and sexist and homophobic and antisemitic just underneath the surface and if those people get the slightest excuse they’ll let that hatred out.
And have.
President Biden went to the Middle East to try and calm things down, which inspired me to draw a cartoon about his inability to make peace here at home. Unfortunately for me, the Republicans finally settled on a House Speaker the day after I drew this cartoon, so I’m pretty sure they did it just to piss me off.
Although…I’ve done more than my share of pissing them off, so fair’s fair.
Once in a while someone else will make a good point and I’ll think it’s a point that should also be made in a cartoon and former Daily Show host Jon Stewart gets credit for this one.
As you may or may not know (a condition that only applies if you’re not Jewish because I’m under the impression Jewish people pay close attention to this stuff) there have been numerous recent examples of antisemitic behavior and a while back Stephen Colbert asked Jon Stewart what he thought about the theory that Jews were secretly running the world and Jon said he didn’t know anything about that because he was actually on the Secret Committee to Control Bagel Flavors, but hoped he would live long enough to see a Christian president.
See? Good point.
If Jews secretly control the world, why hasn’t there been a Jewish president?
I’d say I owe Jon Stewart money for the cartoon idea, but I just went to the art store and spent twice as much on art supplies as I get paid for a cartoon so if I ever get Jon’s address I’m sending him a bill…and I’ve also got some opinions on bagel flavors.
Fun fact: only two presidents had no particular religious affiliation – Lincoln and Jefferson – and we’ve had two Dutch Reformed presidents and two Quakers and four Unitarians which are all Christians of some sort even though most presidents don’t behave like one. (LBJ was a Disciple of Christ, although I think it’s fair to say he wasn’t a very good one.)
If you want to read more about which presidents followed what faith, here you go:
I actually drew the above cartoon about our national shortage of Jewish presidents way back in January, but a lot was happening back then so I held the cartoon back because I figured how long would it be before someone said or did something that promoted antisemitism?
If you’re into sports betting I’d suggest taking the over on “Blaming the Jews.”
I figured it was only a matter of time until we suffered another wave of antisemitism which would make this cartoon current again and turns out I was right.
Unfortunately.
According to Doug Emhoff – who is married to Kamala Harris – hate crimes against Jews account for 63% of all religiously-motivated hate crimes in the United States in 2022 even though Jews make up just 2% of the overall population and here’s an article on that:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/
But that’s the old Hate Crime Record and we currently seem intent on setting a new one.
OK, that wasn’t “tap dancing” through a minefield, it was more like “clogging” through a minefield and I’ll let you know if my new nickname should be Hopalong.
OK, so a friend left a comment on Facebook that said Palestinians are just as Semitic as Israeli Jews and here's what the Britannica.com website has to say about that:
"Because Semitic-speaking peoples do not share any traits aside from language, use of the term “Semite” to refer to the broad range of Semitic-speaking peoples has fallen out of favour. For this reason, some critics even encourage the removal of the hyphen in the term anti-Semitism to help dispel any pseudoscientific notions of a "Semitic race." They advocate instead for the use of antisemitism to describe the hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group."
But the Oxford language dictionary is still using “anti-Semitic” and defines it as: “hostile to or prejudiced against Jewish people.”
When I was writing this article I followed the Kansas City Star style and used "antisemitic" which my computer kept telling me was wrong because it wanted me to use “anti-Semitic” instead. As I believe I mentioned in the article, my computer is a pedantic, busy-body asshole with bad judgment and once again it made a lousy recommendation.
In any case, I've gone back and changed “anti-Semitic” to “antisemitic” because I've got enough problems without nitpicking terminology so I hope this makes everybody happy. A condition I've never personally experienced, but here's hoping there’s a first time.
Lee, I'm not Jewish but if you don't like whole wheat bagels you're dead to me. 😜
Also, I agree with everything you wrote.