I am sure that many will be surprised at the headline of this editorial. I really must explain, though my reason is quite simple. I want every person who hates Israel to go out to the streets and scream this at the top of their lungs. I want them to carry signs expressing exactly how they feel. Even better, I want them to form organizations and write up member lists. I want them to make as many TikTok and Instagram videos as possible. I love that Keffiyehs have become hipster swastikas. I want them to have pins so they can be identified on the streets. I liked the ‘bloody hands’ pins the Hollywood folks wore at the Oscars. They were clueless but they made their intentions clear. They wanted to lynch and murder Jews.
You see, after the Holocaust, even the most vile Nazis, the ones who carried out the Final Solution, were able to claim that they were only following orders. And this absurd claim was accepted.
But this is impossible in the age of the internet. Any person who takes to the streets and screams death to the Jews, or Intifada, or from the river to the sea, their actions and words are in the public domain forever. They can’t hide, redact their statement, or recant.
Once they make a public statement, they will have to own their Jew hatred forever. I want the battle lines to be clear, their intentions to be unequivocal.
This is similar to what happened in Egypt before the Exodus. When the Torah says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, many people believe this is unfair. This seems to be God taking away Pharaoh’s free will. It seems unfair and unjust to blame Pharaoh for his actions after God hardened his heart.
Nachmanides explains that the opposite is true. By hardening Pharaoh’s heart, God allowed him to resist the hardships imposed by the plagues. A normal person with an unhardened heart would have let the Jews go because of the plagues, not because they feared God.
Thanks to prophecy, we know what will happen at the end of days. God keeps his promises, even the ones that seem the most unlikely. One hundred years ago, no one could have imagined what we see on the streets of Jerusalem today. But God promised the children would once again play in the streets of Jerusalem, and the old people would sit in comfort and ease. And here it is.
We know that in the end, despite what we see in the world as an overwhelming wave of Jew hatred, God will keep his promise. There is no question of what is going to happen. The only question is, where do you stand in God’s plan? When God brings the Final Redemption, everyone will say they always supported Israel and loved God. But when this happens, God will just look at their Twitter feed, Facebook history, and social media. Today, like never before, it is impossible to hide your intentions. It is impossible to deceive and claim you were on the side of God and Israel when all of your social media is full of Jew hatred. Remarkably, there are no fence sitters. Society is polarized like never before. There is no neutral territory. People make the most shocking claims and support total evil because they can. Because God has hardened their hearts.
On Oct. 7, Yuval Raphael hid under the bodies of her friends while Hamas massacred the young people at the Nova Festival. She was received at the Eurovision with protests and hatred. Palestinian Flags were flown during her performance. What was the message of those who opposed her and protested her performance? Were they protesting that she had survived?
To be honest, I don’t care, but I want to thank them for standing up and making it clear who they are. I no longer have to wait until they join the Nazi party, buy a uniform, and actively murder Jewish babies. They have already made it clear that they are death eaters, modern day Nazis.
But the Eurovision showed me something else that warmed my cynical heart. The judges from participating countries awarded Raphael a mere 60 points, putting Raphael in 14th place. However, this was offset by an unprecedented and record-setting 297 votes from public voting. Unsurprisingly, the European establishment ignored her performance and chose prejudicial politics to penalize her stellar performance. But the majority of the public expressed their love for Israel. They saw a young woman full of hope and the love of life, giving the world the gift of music. When the people of the nations feel the darkness closing in and they look for light, they will always turn to Israel.
When I was 17, I was in Israel for eight months. One weekend, I joined a group of friends to sleep on the beach in Eilat. The hotels emptied in the middle of the night as people streamed onto the beach, singing and playing instruments. Israel had just won the Eurovision with ‘Halleluyah la’olam’ (Hallelujah to the world). I still tear up when I think of what my people gave to the world with that song.
Yuval won second place, but more than that, she showed us that most people love Israel. So even though the idiots who wear keffiyehs and chant anti-Israel slogans make a lot of noise, there really aren’t so many of them.
