Reluctantly, and in a Still, Small Voice

Israel's enemies have encircled us with filthy lies, and those lies will now determine Israel's fate, both militarily and as a nation among nations, as well as the fate of Jews around the world.

All during the 1970s, I tried to get signatures against the UN resolution which equated Zionism with Racism. I got some, but many "progressives," including feminists, turned me down. I took journalists on trips to Israel. Some changed their minds about Israel's being the most evil country on earth--but some did not.

In 1980, at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen, I experienced mobs of women swarming the NGO hallways, shouting out: "Death to Israel." Many came from Iran and from the various "Palestinian" and Arab factions, but many were left-wing European and American women.

I immediately flew to Israel and, as they say, "took meetings."

That same year, the Israeli journalist, filmmaker, and poet, Rachel Chalfi, interviewed me on the front pages of Yediot Aharonot about antisemitism. The various big shots to whom she introduced me told me not to worry, that the bloody beast would never return, that this (The hijackings? The hatred?) was just another kind of normalized dispute between nation states.

In 1980, I also tried to interest a literary agent in a book on the subject. He said: Antisemitism doesn't exist and even if it did, no one cares about it. I'd have no readers.

In 2003, I published The New Antisemitism. I lectured everywhere. I continued to write articles, some of which I collected in 2015 in Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews. Before I became walking disabled, I lectured and appeared in person at many conferences.

Over the last sixty years, wealthy Jew haters, as well as the Soviets and the Arabs, were patiently, carefully funding a series of Big Lies against Israel. They managed to brainwash at least five or six generations of Americans and Europeans.

Now, their seeds of poison have fully flowered. Mobs of young people swarm conferences, concerts, athletic events, lectures, crying out against the alleged "genocide in Gaza."

Earlier today, a colleague of mine, at a conference of European leaders in Helsinki, Finland, sent me photos and videos of a pro-"Palestine" and anti-Israel demonstration.

Zelenskyy spoke at this conference from afar. No one demonstrated against Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine. They rarely do. Nor do we see demonstrations against the murder of Christians or of Muslim dissidents in the Muslim world.

Earlier today, in New York City, the imam who spoke at the mosque-based funeral for the slain New York City police officer, Didarul Islam, talked about "Islamophobia," and about the "genocide in Gaza," about how NYC was burying one Muslim hero while thousands of Muslims were being buried in Gaza.

And now, in a still, small voice, I dare to write: Why didn't all the very wealthy Jews, to whom I turned, at least fifteen years ago, maybe twenty years ago, and whom I begged to fund an Iron Dome against just such dangerous propaganda, ever put down a prutah? Or fund an Al-Jazeera for Israel, a channel that would report the news in a truly fair and balanced way? I suggested this. I begged. And I failed.

Why, when I turned to millionaires and billionaires to fund my work--and other work like mine, better than mine--so that we might all at least begin to hold our own in the cognitive war against us, go on the offensive, not always remain on the defensive, remain increasingly marginalized, able to weigh in only when it was already too late?

Yes, yes, Israel got better in terms of hasbara. Yes, yes, younger, newer voices have come forward and their work is also magnificent. Still ghettoized, still not able to make enough of a difference.

We have all come to the battle at least sixty years late. We have a lot of catching up to do.

By now, the voices of all our magnificent cognitive warriors have been ghettoized, kept far away from the non-stop more mainstream media that runs Big Lies around the clock, the same lies (keeping it simple), as well as lying photos, lying footage, lying videos against Israel. They will not stop until, God forbid, Israel no longer exists.

And now, really, it is too late to change the narrative meme that seems to rule the world.

Nevertheless, can someone please take on this task now? And in a major way?

God--I turn to you.