I haven’t been able to devote much attention to this platform lately, for reasons you can well imagine. To save the mental health of my family—and perhaps my own—I’ve come to be with them in the United States, possibly for the duration of Israel’s war with Hamas.
Unfortunately, as I’m sure you know as well, the atmosphere in the US is horrific at the moment, with every fiend and monster who has spent the last 20 years feeding on itself in a fetid hole emerging to the inhuman acclaim of millions of overcredentialed and undergifted academics and their brainwashed students.
I am not surprised that an antisemitic, pro-terrorist, pro-genocide, pro-infanticide, and unremittingly racist social movement has now emerged in the U.S. It has been threatening to do so for two decades, but everyone who might have been able to stop it chose to either deny its existence or do nothing about it. Nonetheless, not being surprised does nothing to restore whatever was left of my faith in humanity.
At the same time, I have been overwhelmed in my work as an editor. If you thought Jews were prone to having opinions before, you have absolutely no idea what’s going on now.
Nonetheless, as difficult as all this may be, it is a thousand times more difficult for the Israeli people and especially their soldiers on the battlefield, so I digress. I offer it only as an explanation for my relative silence.
Accordingly, I thought it might be worth offering a few brief observations on the current moment, some relevant and some not, which I hope may be at least edifying to loyal readers
My latest column is up at JNS, and I think—if I may be immodest—that it’s an important one, at least to me. It calls for the immediate creation of a new armed Jewish self-defense organization, something that is both long overdue and absolutely essential if American Jews are to meet the demands and dangers of the current moment.
I won’t reiterate the arguments here, but suffice it to say that, given the current frenzy, an act of truly horrendous violence is all but inevitable—at least in the short term—and the American Jewish community is woefully ill-equipped to deal with it. The police cannot be everywhere and visible Jews and young Jews in particular are terribly vulnerable at the moment, especially on college campuses, which are now essentially wholly run by an Axis of Antisemitism composed of a kind of Neo-Nazi Left in collaboration with radical Muslims.
If Jews can unite around a viable self-defense organization, the danger might be headed off or at least mitigated. Unfortunately, I myself have no idea how to organize such a thing, but there are people out there who do, and I hope they’re listening. If you’re one of them, do contact me.
It occurs to me that in terms of the overall problem of campus antisemitism, some very positive steps are being taken. So many Jewish donors, alumni and students are taking punitive action that some of America’s most prestigious—and therefore most heinous—universities stand to lose literally billions of dollars.
This will mean nothing to the campus Axis, of course, who could not care less about money. They are interested in murder and death—and, in the case of the left, suicide—and will not be bought off at any price. Their coin is violence and they can only be stopped if they are made to pay a price in that coin.
Nonetheless, the cowardly and the wretched in the administrations, who make much of their alleged opposition to racism and violence but do nothing to stop actual racism and violence when it is staring them in the face, do care about money. In fact, they care very much about money, as well as other avaricious things like social status and feeling good about themselves. They can shriek and whine about social justice all they want, but will never cede their six-figure salaries, and such salaries need donors and endowments to pay for them.
Such largesse is likely to rapidly disappear as the full extent to which the Axis has infiltrated and indeed rules over academia becomes clear. The administrators and others powers-that-be will howl and whine about the gauleiters’ academic freedom, but will show no more backbone now then they did against the Axis in the first place. They will fold if the pressure is kept up.
Obviously, the best solution to all of this is to simply burn down the entire higher education system and start anew. Indeed, most of the foundational scholarship of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was undertaken by private scholars working either entirely on their own or in small, self-selected groups. That they did a far better job of preserving and improving Western civilization than their institutionalized heirs goes without saying. To return to such a situation would likely be a boon to all involved, but given the extent to which the higher education establishment is intertwined with the perpetuation of a large part of the American aristocracy—it is in fact how it perpetuates—this will never happen.
Given this, the best option is to break up the Axis from within the institutions it now controls. The aforementioned tactics of moral and financial pressure are a good start, but the best strategy is to simply force the academy to enforce its own codes of conduct and conform to federal civil rights law. Around 99% of what the Axis does on campus either violates those codes or is outright illegal. Because the Axis enjoys cultural immunity, however, it has for the most part gotten away with it. It’s time for this impunity to end. The Jewish community surely has enough lawyers and law students to accomplish this. Get them on the case. Now.
On a personal note, for some reason I’ve found the music of Van Morrison a particular comfort to me over the last few weeks. In particular, I’ve been replaying the album Astral Weeks and the song “TB Sheets” quite a bit. There’s something in the Irish combination of lyricism and fortitude in his music that appeals to me at the moment, perhaps out of simple genetic connection (one of my grandmothers was Irish). Nonetheless, there’s a combination of sensitivity and steadfastness in Morrison’s music that seems to express my general feeling about recent events—and I’m sure I’m not alone.
I leave you with my current favorite: “Sweet Thing” from Astral Weeks.
Damn good job, Benyamin. It doesn't matter if you get everything right. What is important is your declaration of a need for action to protect American Jews, and your helpful suggestions on how that may be achieved. You are clearing the fog, and that is the most important thing right now.
I loved Van Morrison, until this bummer of a tune: “They Own the Media.” I know, I know, Wagner and all that. But I now hear hate through his soft melodies. I know a few Jews who promote self defense, will connect you.