A Confession

Children of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, tribe.

So first, my apologies. I fully intended to write a bonus post yesterday. But my day was full of back-to-back meetings, and when I got home at 9, Israel had struck Iran in a rather mysterious capacity and I went down a rabbit hole of trying to learn exactly what happened, while even now, no one — not even any of my most trusted military insiders — seems to know.

I was also riveted, in an awful way, by the chaos happening at Columbia and the tsunami of support it seems to be receiving from every corner.

So here I want to confess something: during the last couple of days, I myself have felt somewhat paralyzed in response to this. For six months I have drawn upon every tip and trick I know for staying grounded, sane and hopefully effective. And yet I need to tell you that I still get overwhelmed sometimes, and yesterday (and if I’m real, even today) is one such time.

I have to say that this level of groupthink on the left is the most frightening thing I have witnessed firsthand in my lifetime. Not even the Trump zombies were this scary, because they seemed far less sophisticated and enfranchised.

It is so important to me to project calm and optimism to all of you — that has been a service I have wanted above all to offer you. But I also want to be authentic, and right now I am struggling because I’m still human and this tidal wave of hate is terrifying.

The scene at Columbia is hell on earth. Masked men shouting at Jewish girls just outside the campus gate that they’re “Nazi bitches” who can expect “an October 7th every day” — “not one more time, not five more times, not ten more times, not a hundred more times, not a thousand more times, but 10,000 more times!”

On the campus itself, a protest leader shouts: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “We don’t want no two states — we want ALL OF IT!”

Crowds of students are yelling “Intifada, intifada — globalize the intifada!”

The scenes are ablaze with torches, deafening with shouts and drums and bullhorns.

And all over X, Columbia professors, parents, alumni and members of the American intelligentsia are castigating the university for arresting students refusing to disband after many, many warnings and statements of what consequences they can expect for pressing on. AOC tweeted a reproach to the college. There’s an orgy of pearl-clutching and hand-wringing over the school finally summoning the police to “oppress” students at a “peaceful sit-in”. They make it sound as if the Gestapo were called in to stomp a bunch of flower children singing Kumbaya.

I graduated from Columbia and I would die if either of my kids were there right now.

In another of my cultural / artistic / social circles, PEN America is imploding for not issuing a statement that unilaterally condemns Israel as the villain in this war. For more details, see this article in LitHub, which announces “The PEN Awards and World Voices Festival are on the Brink of Collapse.”

It opens with this summary of the current situation:

With the PEN America Literary Awards ceremony less than two weeks away, 29 writers and translators (out of 87 nominees) have now withdrawn from consideration for 10 different awards due to what they see as PEN’s inadequate response to the unfolding genocide in Gaza. This includes 9 of the 10 nominees for the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the most lucrative and prestigious of the five major awards. (The esteemed translator Esther Allen, who co-founded the PEN World Voices Festival in 2005, has also declined the 2024 PEN/Ralph Manheim Award for Translation.)

In a blistering open letter (reproduced in full, and followed by PEN America’s response, at the close of this article) sent to the PEN America Board and Trustees earlier this morning, 30 nominated writers and translators informed the organization that they “wholeheartedly reject PEN America and its failure to confront the genocide in Gaza” and demand the resignations of PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan, and the entire PEN America Executive Committee, “whose values and commitments have steered the organization in a disastrous direction for far too long.”

A much smaller group of high-profile writers issued their own statement in support of PEN America. Tellingly, it included Salman Rushdie and Ayad Akhtar, two literary luminaries who know all too well, from an insider’s vantage point, exactly what jihadist extremism is and what empowering it leads to. Of course they were swiftly steamrolled all over Instagram and X. Because jihadists and their western progressive supporters apparently feel entitled to school them on this topic.

This is what I mean when I say that the horseshoe comparison is too benign and our society now looks more like a long-necked vase. The lunatic fringe on the right became the mainstream right years ago. But the lunatic fringe on the left is also becoming the mainstream left.

While I keep learning, over and over, never to promise any specific discussion on any specific date — because the developments in this clusterfuck are coming way too hard and fast to plan even a day in advance — I do intend to unpack this generalization in depth in the very near future.

For now, let me leave you with a few glimmers of light even though I have just acknowledged that the emotional space I’m in has gone darker than I’d like to admit this week.

The first is that — after data scientists pointed out that Hamas’ fatality numbers (around 33,000 at the last count) and percentage of women and children they claim has been killed by Israel (72%) were statistically impossible — Hamas itself has even admitted that they can’t support their own claims for more than 11,000 of their reported dead. This article in the Wall Street Journal goes into more depth on this front, and notes the willingness of seemingly everyone everywhere — even President Biden — to repeat Hamas’ unverified claims as if they reflect reality.

If we believe the IDF, whose numbers have traditionally proven much closer to accurate than Hamas’ in previous conflicts, 13,000 Hamas militants have been killed. With 11,000 fewer fatalities than Hamas’ previous claim to date of 33,000, that’s more than half of the reported dead, which would bring the percentage of women and children killed to lower than 30%.

Will anyone care? I can only say that I care. A lot.

The second shred of good news is that the people of Iran seem to be aligning themselves with Israel within the wider conflict. No doubt because they — like Ayad Akhtar and Salman Rushdie — understand what it means when violent jihadists are in positions of power over a population.

For more on this, see this article in The Atlanic, this grafitti on walls all over Iran, and this Iranian woman's impassioned statement on behalf of her people. Her incredulity at western progressives’ willful ignorance is heartening if not reassuring.

One final shred of good news is that, while no one can say publicly with authority exactly what Israel’s strike on Iran accomplished last night, one of the military analysts I trust above almost any other — Chief Malcolm Nance of Special Intelligence, who hasn’t been wrong about any prediction of his I’ve read to date — believes it was either an underground bunker housing the final components of the first Iranian atomic bomb or the final bomb assembly facility. It’s been widely reported that Iran has signalled it will not relaliate.

As we go into Shabbat, I’ll be doing everything I can to reinforce my emotional stamina for this fight. I’ll be reaching out to Jewish community, spending time outside, and loving my family.

In the meantime, I love you all as well, and I’ll be back with you soon. Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.