I wasn’t a big supporter of Israel before October 7th. Honestly, I didn’t know what to think. I had begun questioning my views, along with my leftist and post-colonial methods I learned in graduate school decades ago. I was seeing things differently. There’s no other way to say it:

—I had a heightened sense of the magnitude and pervasiveness of antisemitism.

I saw it everywhere. I could see it in the walls. My algorithm certainly didn’t help. It was maximized with years of Jacobin and Al Jazeera repeats–and it kept reminding me of the modern apartheid state, both colonial and genocidal in behavior–none other than the cosmically sinister entity known as Israel.

What I was seeing wasn’t the white nationalist quoting the Turner Diaries, or the Nation of Islam, or any other well-known antisemitic group. This was different. The chanting and repetition came from people of every race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality–well, almost every nationality. Jarring to behold, not only had liberals found a way past the bigotry of their Palestinian organizers, but they seemed to miss (or ignore) the clearly anti-Jewish nature of the rhetoric and positioning.

Let’s put it this way: when someone says “Zionist,” nobody thinks of an Italian.

Imagine a timid new recruit approaching the protest leader, face-wrapped in a keffiyeh, mumbling, “sir, I know we’re not antisemitic, so why are we always outside of synagogues?”

The same people who condemn micro-aggressions didn’t mind macro-ones towards Jews. Unfortunately, this occurred with the feminist response–or lack thereof–to the horrific sexual violence committed against Israeli women on October 7th. It seemed to me the world was inverted.

It was all becoming a bit much.

Like many others, October 7th changed me. I wasn’t hit the way my Jewish friends were, and shamefully, I wasn’t there yet–but eventually the dissonance forced my hand. Luckily, I had some help in the matter. You know when a person reveals themselves by being too obvious? They try and trick you, but you catch it, and suddenly the spell breaks.

You see the thief has a burning hat.

To better understand what had changed in the world, I began by studying the propaganda of Hamas, Iran, and the Soviet Union. My first post was on Palestinian textbooks and how Palestinian children........

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