A combination of antisemitism, evil, mental illness, total ignorance and being trendy
If you had to sum up what would possess a young protester to be filmed on live TV saying that “Hamas did not kill innocent Israelis, other Israelis did,” there would be no better way to describe that person but as one who is suffering from a combination of antisemitism, evil, mental illness, total ignorance and wanting to be part of a growing trend.
How else can you explain the unwillingness to acknowledge the facts which have been so well-documented through photos, eyewitness accounts and the massive amount of evidence that has been extracted from the mouths of the very terrorists who perpetrated one of the most heinous crimes in all of history, not to mention their own bodycam footage?
All of the lying claims, being made by ignorant protesters, are fueled by antisemites who have been given a platform in order to push their political agendas, as well as their obvious hatred for the Jewish population. Their target is ignorant young people wanting to be part of the trend. Here are a few examples of some of those accounts:
One member of a Wyoming group called “Freedom Gets the Final Say,” stated: “Hamas was fighting back on the apartheid and genocide the Israelis have been causing for the last 75 years.
The Lie: Israel has not perpetrated apartheid nor genocide. If that were so, how is it that Arabs are Knesset members, physicians, professors, judges and others with powerful positions in Israel? According to Palestinian statistics, their people have grown nine-fold in number since 1948.
Total Ignorance: The above statistics belie any claims of genocide.
Mental Illness: Protesters staged a “die-in,” lying dead with bloodied sheets covering them. What normal, sane person would do this?
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Here is, yet, another account, published by Liberation News, the newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, comprised of activists and students with a mission “to link the everyday struggles of oppressed and exploited people.”
The Lie: Complete denial of Oct. 7 massacre…“One by one, Tel Aviv’s stories claims of deliberate atrocities by Palestinian fighters – beheading children, raping women, using hospitals as military basis – have been debunked.”
The Evil: Claiming that Israel is the real perpetrator of atrocities…“The Israeli state’s war propaganda…does not fool most of the people of the world. The settler state’s very own acts of daily bombing Gaza neighborhoods and hospitals and daily arresting children in the West Bank expose it as the real committer of atrocities. Such false stories raise the pitch of worldwide anger at Israeli genocide and fuel the movement for a free Palestine.”
Being Trendy: On TikTok, views of pro-Palestine posts far surpass views of pro-Israel posts – #standwithPalestine: 285 million views. #standwithisrael: 64 million views.” (a disparity of nearly five times greater.)
There are so many more examples, similar to the ones above, but these serve to illustrate the combination of all of the factors expressed in the title of this article. The average protester seems to be plagued by a stunning lack of the need for personal investigation of the facts and the choice to not expose themselves to reliable sources, as well as the Jewish point of view.
Finally, these protesters, who crave attention and the need to feel relevant and virtuous, are willing to stoop to the level of humiliating performance art, whereby they use their own bodies for shock value or deface property to call attention to what they deem to be a social injustice, all displays of narcissism, feelings of inadequacy, unless attached to a cause, and doing whatever it takes to fit in. All these behaviors suggest mental disorders accompanied by anti-social tendencies.
It's hard to know what came first, amidst all of these psychoses, but a glimpse of the biblical account of Esther has many of these same elements within the story. It opens with the refusal of Mordechai, Esther’s uncle, who refuses to honor the king’s directive to bow down to Haman, the highest-ranking official in the government.
From this offense, a true picture of antisemitism is birthed as Haman seeks to not only punish Mordechai but collectively eradicate all Jews. An evil plan is concocted and brought before the king who gives his approval. Here, the king does not make any inquiry into who the Jews are and why they are “different” per Haman’s claim. Had he done the slightest bit of investigation, he would have been educated as to why Jews were forbidden to bow down in worship to anyone other than God. Instead, he went with the information provided to him that advanced a personal agenda.
Haman is so fixated and possessed by hatred for Jews that it manifests itself through a bloodlust. A case can be made for the fact that the narcissistic Haman desperately needed to feel relevant, and Mordechai’s refusal to bow down to him injured his ailing ego, to the point of mental illness as he called for the genocide of all Jews. In this story, everyone followed the trend of bowing down, with the exception of the Jews.
Of course, we know how the story ends: Haman is hung on the very gallows he prepared for Mordechai, and the Jewish people are saved: “The Jews overpowered those who hated them! So, the Jews finished off all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering them right and left.” (Esther 9:1-5 MSG)
It would appear that antisemitism has a progression, starting out with Jew-hatred, causing evil intentions, which then affects the mental well-being of an individual who is ignorant but also has a great need to socially fit in. We can only hope that those protesters, who are exhibiting the same kind of bitterness towards Israel and the Jewish people, will be set free from their own downward progression which, if not abandoned, will greatly harm them.
In the meantime, despite the threat, which stood to annihilate the Jews, the God of Israel had other plans then and other plans today. We can rest assured that despite all that is being thrown at us, these days, including lying news reports, evil plans, trendy social media and the insane acts of young protesters, none of those efforts will prevent a sure victory from happening.
Israel still constitutes the Chosen People, and nothing will prevent them from fulfilling their intended destiny – not Haman, not Hitler and not Hamas!
A former Jerusalem elementary and middle-school principal who made Aliyah in 1993 and became a member of Kibbutz Reim but now lives in the center of the country with her husband. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, based on the principles from the book of Proverbs - available on Amazon.