Tin Foil Hats—A Commentary on Our Troubled Times
What I don’t want is to be a commentator on the news and offer you a round of Jonathan punditry. There is enough yadda yadda that I don’t have to add to the noise.
And then Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 and, no surprise, Israel responded forcefully.
Now, it seems to me that too many people around the world have lost their minds.
And we have an election in November and the prospect of a military campaign on both Israel’s southern and northern borders and a belligerent Iran attacking Israel with more than 300 drones and missiles—and it is naive to think that this will be over soon. Every bit of anger, fear, insecurity, and distrust—all the dust mites hidden away successfully under the rug have emerged as pathogenic monsters threatening to burrow into our brains and tear us apart. It’s all too much. If I could, I would wrap my head in tin foil to keep the space lasers from bearing down on me.
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Judi said to me, “Jon, what are you going to write about? People want to know what you are thinking!”
I said, “I don’t want to write anything. I am exhausted and depressed and consumed with the state of the world. And besides, people don’t want to hear from me.”
She said, “Yes, they do. And even more, I want to hear from you.”
So blame Judi for this list of observations that haven’t made it to the forefront of NPR, the New York Times or my algorithmically determined social media feeds.
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I get that young people on college campuses like to protest, especially in springtime before exams and the drudgery of packing up the dorm room and heading home to Newton and Westport. And I share their shock at the terrible pictures coming from the war zones. What I do not understand is why their human outcry does not include Jewish people who are suffering too. Wouldn’t the protesters’ protests be more credible if they prayed for every victim of this terrible struggle? I hold the Palestinian casualties in my heart. Why can’t the college kids hold Jewish casualties and consider Jewish suffering? What is it about Jews that makes my suffering so irrelevant?
What will happen to the value of a Columbia, or UPenn, or Yale diploma when Jews will stop giving their eye teeth to get into the Ivy League? Jewish parents, Muslim parents, Christian parents, atheist parents, Republican parents, Democratic parents, many parents might not choose to spend $90,000 a year for their children to bang on drums and dwell in tent cities. Might the whole Ivy League status symbol become less valuable and less exclusive? I think that many in America will boycott, divest and sanction the schools where anarchy in the name of free speech keeps their children from writing their papers and taking their exams. (But in the Ivy League, students don’t have to worry. The average grade is a priori an A-.)
How during wartime does a terrorist organization burrowed underground determine the number of casualties due to warfare, and how do they distinguish these casualties from other people who have died from other causes during this time? Why would we believe the numbers of casualties claimed by the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry?
If you think that Florida is bad because that is where woke goes to die, try living a woke lifestyle in Rafah or Khan Younis and see where woke people can go to be killed.
I know that life is really tough for the Gazan population, and that is terrible. War is not good for civilian populations. The “Gazan brink of mass starvation” was proclaimed by media sources many months ago. I am glad that the region is not yet enduring mass starvation, and I hope that it never will. In the meantime, why not commend those providing food and aid to the population? I do not recollect the United States’ Air Force dropping food packages on the citizens of Kyoto or Hanoi during twentieth century wars. Furthermore, why not demand that Hamas surrender their arms and hostages to end this war? Israel has the IDF. Hamas has the hostages, the tunnels and the thuggery to keep this thing going.
In 1943, 43,000 Germans in the city of Hamburg were killed in four days of Allied bombing. And Hitler was not living in a subterranean city with Jewish hostages. What suggestions would Israel’s critics offer in the conduct of this awful war to effectively end this conflict?
My congressman, Jamie Raskin, was the only Jewish congressman voting against supplying Israel with weapons. I don’t understand why he would think that weakening Israel would be good for Gaza, a future Palestinian state or Israel itself. Isn’t a strong and confident Israel more likely to make the difficult decisions for a common future than a weak and desperate and cornered Israel?
Congressman Raskin, Senator Sanders and their allies in Congress: If Israel does not have precision guided weaponry and advanced air defense systems, wouldn’t it be more likely that Israel would resort to carpet bombing Gaza, turning it into Hamburg or Dresden or Hiroshima? It seems to me that a militarily strong nation at war has more humane options to execute a war than a nation with a weakened military.
Some prominent newspaper pundits posit that some Arab nations will come to police Gaza when the Israelis leave. Really? Who? Why haven't they volunteered yet? And which nation would send its treasure of young people and wealth to rebuild Gaza unless Hamas is no longer a potent element who would do them harm in the same way that they have harmed Israel and the Gazan population over these two decades? If Hamas is left standing, it’s hard for me to figure how Gaza will be rebuilt and who is going to volunteer for the task.
We shouldn’t expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to step down in the middle of a war. No nation can suffer a leadership vacuum when it is sending its precious men and women into battle. But how on earth does Netanyahu think that he can or should aspire to lead his nation when this war is over? Many in his nation hate him and blame him for this horrible time. He is not like President Lincoln who can bind the nation’s wounds. He seems to me to be the opposite of our great president. Bibi extends charity toward none and malice toward all. Why would he want to plan another run for office when his policies have wrought such terrible suffering and disunity to his small country?
Jews can be found among those who protest Israel and are inimical to the interests of their people. This is not new. Read about Jews during the Maccabean revolt; or the pages of Josephus, the chronicler of the Jewish war against Rome; or some rabbis in America or Poland or Hungary before 1948. At our core, we are a united people. At our periphery, not so much. That some Jews will eat matza with those who celebrate Jewish death in the name of liberation and vilify the place on earth where half of their brothers and sisters live, ok—don't bother asking. Nothing new here.
Rape is inexcusable. My parents taught me to treat women with respect, all women. And if I ever deigned to think otherwise, my wife and daughter and granddaughters remind me that women are human beings too, and no woman should have to endure savagery and humiliation. Rape is not resistance, anywhere.
Finally, if any other segment of American society were subject to the same vitriol as Jews, our nation would be up in arms. Why was it kosher for President Kennedy to send the National Guard to Ole Miss in 1962 and the University of Alabama in 1963 to assure that black students were safe from the Ku Klux Klan and rioting white student racists, and Jews are not afforded the same protection from harassment in 2024? I promise you that Jews are like everybody else. If you prick us, we bleed too.
I hope my next newsletter will be on a different topic. In the meantime, don your tin foil hats. Nothing else seems to have helped, so far.