Criticism vs hate |
I began my week with hate mail telling me all of us Jewish Israelis are religious fanatics, maniacs guilty of horrible massacres, and we should all die – hopefully in an imminent Iranian attack. My liberal tendencies kick in. I want to answer: But haven’t you read in my blog that I oppose the killing and suffering of innocent Gazan civilians? My sarcasm kicks in as well. I think of snarky answers like: Thank you so much for your astute and nuanced analysis of the situation. Still, I believe you may have missed one or two critical issues…
Ultimately, I realized there is no point in engaging this person or validating their viewpoint in any way. For the record, I have, in the past, insisted on my personal right to exist and on the legitimacy of my county, as well as insisting on the rights of Palestinians to independent self-rule.
I believe you may have missed one or two critical issues…
I believe you may have missed one or two critical issues…
It’s not the first such piece of abhorrent mail or hateful comment on posts I’ve received, nor is it even the most virulent. I don’t feel personally threatened by someone in the US somewhere venting their ire. It’s part and parcel of modern, anonymous communication in which we’ve forgotten the human being at the receiving end. I should just forget about it. And yet, I must admit I am disturbed by this sort of blanket antisemitism.
I am disturbed, in part, because the image of Israeli Jews in the international media has an ugly grain of truth, even when it is one-sided and twisted. I’m disturbed because I know my hater is not a one-off mentally ill individual.
They – I’ll use the vague pronoun to denote those “antisemites” out there who control a popular narrative – have cast Bibi as a kind of Rasputin, a crazed fanatic whispering in Trump’s ear, egging him on to attack Iran. While Bibi clearly badly wants this war, and wants it to escalate, they have no idea that by insinuating........