Eric Wiesen

I was hoping to avoid writing something like this today, alas… There are no words that sufficiently capture the depravity of this statement. The moral inversion. The brazen dishonesty. The obscenity of invoking Oct 7, the day Jews were hunted down, tortured, raped, kidnapped, and murdered by genocidal terrorists, in order to push another round of self-serving propaganda. Yet it’s entirely on brand for Mr. Mayor and his ilk. Mamdani is not unique. He is no different than so many who came before him who traffic in conspiracy and grievance against Jews in order to accumulate political and social power. That is the thing to understand about antisemitism. It isn’t plain old bigotry. It is a construct of lies which casts Jews as uniquely malevolent, powerful, and somehow threatening to what a society most values. Throughout history, ambitious people have figured out that this construct is incredibly handy if what you want is power. The last 3 years have offered a particularly ugly manifestation of this, as we have witnessed a highly coordinated campaign to paint the world’s sole Jewish state, and anyone unwilling to traffic in lies and denounce it, as uniquely evil. The “genocide” accusation has been the most lurid and consequential part of that campaign. The goal, of course, is to recast Jews from victims (of the most grizzly genocide in history) to perpetrators…which then enables a permission structure in which hatred becomes righteous, hostility justified, and ultimately lays the ground for the erasure of Jews from polite society. At the risk of giving pleasure to those who enjoy watching people like me turn out our pockets, it’s worth repeating: To, at this point especially, describe Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” one must be either, a) a Grade A ignoramous who is illiterate, innumerate, and wholly impervious to facts and reason, or b) a cynical liar who understands exactly what they are doing and is perfectly happy to smear the one Jewish state and Jews writ large. This is what makes the statement below so ugly, yet so revealing. To reduce Hamas’s actions to “war crimes” when on the morning of 10/7...*checks notes*…there was no war in Gaza, is to simply launder terrorist atrocity. That morning, Hamas fighters invaded Israeli communities to murder civilians, kidnap families, and terrorize a nation. Not only that, but they filmed their ecstasy-filled rampage and shared it for the whole world to see, proud of their handiwork. The brutality and savagery wasn’t some byproduct of a military operation or noble "resistance," but it was the entire point! Israel responded, as any other nation would, by going to war to destroy the organization that carried out the massacre and promised to do it again and again. In a saner time, Israel's war will be studied as a masterclass of urban combat. Israel operated in an environment where the enemy statedly sought to maximize death of its own people, and yet still the civilian to combat ratio was <2:1. Sure, one can scrutinize Israeli decisions. You can criticize strikes. Hell, even call these actions “war crimes.” But to call it “genocide” and intentionally invert the distinction between a terrorist org gleefully massacring civilians with a state waging a war is is not moral sophistication, it is complete and utter moral confusion…and worse it is monstrous propaganda. And yet we now have politicians, activists, academics, braindead celebrities, and armies of credulous fools parroting the same grotesque narrative so often that the repetition itself has become fact. For some this is pure ignorance; the byproduct of an algo-mediated information diet. For others it is ideological. And still for others it's pure cynical opportunism. Antisemitism is the world’s most durable conspiracy because it offers great rewards for those who deftly wield it, whether that be political power or clicks and likes. Enough. If you have spent the last several years trafficking in these lies you have revealed yourself to be an idiot or an asshole. These lies need to be called out, the moral inversion should be laid bare, and the politicians who exploit both should be judged accordingly.