While we must always be mindful of that fact that the most difficult and dangerous war is being waged on the ground by our heroes of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Public Relations war is more critical today than ever before. We are not in a position to take this lightly, and statements such as, you are preaching to the choir or, they won’t listen anyway, are defeatist and prevent some from contributing in a crucially beneficial manner.
On some levels we must fight fire with fire. The reason why so many misinformed lost souls out there believe Israel to be an Apartheid state and colonizer, is because those who hate us ram the lies down their throats. We must not only tell the truth, we must do it often and relentlessly. If you tell someone a lie 3 times they often start to see it as the truth. The truth can be our ally, but not if we keep it to ourselves.
On November 15th I spoke to a group of teens at a High School near Albany, NY. The student organizer asked me the most important question I heard all day. What do we do to make sure the Holocaust is never forgotten. My answer not only applies to the events in Europe during Nazi-occupation, they apply to today as well. Constantly tell people the truth. Don’t be afraid to be redundant or annoying. You can never say it too often or too loudly. The goal should be to drown out the voices of those who wish to kill us, and unless we are relentless, that will not happen. Tell your friends, to tell their friends. Don’t assume people know, be they allies or foes. Flood your world and beyond with the truth, for the truth is indeed our ally.
As someone who is contact with many of my fellow Jews, I believe that many share the following overall sentiment when I say, I am sorry, but….
As a Jew, I am sorry you do not realize that their is no moral equivalency between a terrorist organization and a sovereign, democratic country.
I am sorry that you can not distinguish between an organization calling for the extermination of 16 million people and a country wiping out that organization for the sake of their very existence.
I am sorry you are so ignorant that you protest without knowing any facts, or that you are so stupid that when you read them you are so clueless that all remains is your ability to follow a mob.
I am sorry that you feel that just because you got into a school with a reputation for having a high intellectual standard, that somehow makes you smarter than everyone else, and that instead all your actions do is highlight your lack of understanding of history and morality and lower the overall standard of your institution.
I am sorry that you do not know the true history of what has taken place in the Middle East in any version of recorded history. You clearly are ignorant to the fact that the Jewish people are the true indigenous people of the region and that what we call Palestinians today is phony construct, a people made up of displaced Jordanians and the closest thing to Arab gypsies.
I am sorry that you do not know that the plight of those people you refer to as Palestinians is a plight caused by decades of corruption, abuse, manipulation, oppression, and exploitation of their leadership. A leadership that has used them as tool in the advancement of their business plan, a plan that provided Yasser Arafat the means to own hotels in the Swiss Alps and Hamas leadership to lead lavish lifestyles in Qatar. A leadership in Gaza that has one use for its people, and that is as soldiers or pawns.
I am sorry that you are too biased or too stupid to realize that the only way Palestinians are ever free is for Israel to be victorious, even though I am fairly certain that a large number of you protesting and shouting Free Palestine are doing so more out of a deficiency in your own lives than out of a real concern for the well-being of anyone else.
I am sorry you do not know what genocide means. If Israel truly wanted to commit genocide, Gaza would be leveled by now, and rather than 10,000 deaths, a number that reflects Israel’s restraint as opposed to debunking it, their would be at least hundreds of thousands of deaths and this war would be over.
I am sorry that you do not have the intellectual or moral wherewithal to look at the events of October 7th till today and see the difference between the depraved barbarity of Hamas and the calculated and careful self-defense tactics of the State of Israel.
I am sorry that you have no clue that there are 16 million Jews and 1.9 billion Muslims in the world, and that Arabs live and work in Israel, are members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and are even members of the military, while in the majority of Arab countries Jews have virtually no rights, and yet you call Israel an Apartheid state.
I am sorry you do not realize that those people you are supporting, will come for you when they are done with us.
I am sorry you hate Jews and do not think we have the right to survive.
I am sorry you do not realize that when we say Never Again, we mean it.
I am sorry if you thought this was an apology, but in case you did, let me be crystal clear. As a Jew, I am sorry you feel the way that you do, but frankly, I don’t give a damn.
So you say you want Palestine to be free, do you? Ask yourself what that means. See if you can come up with an answer other than the packaged lines being fed to you. Let me guess. “Israel’s committing genocide”. “The Israelis are occupiers and colonizers”. “Israel targets babies”. “Israel is an Apartheid State”. And of course this week number 1 hit on the charts, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. Having fun marching in the streets? Found something to be part of have you? You might be in for a surprise. That’s if you even have the intellectual capacity to realize it when it happens. That’s if you are even smart enough to know what the term intellectual capacity means.
If this sounds like you are being ridiculed, that’s English for being made fun of, maybe you are not completely mindless. But if you are part of the group of people doing this in a Harvard or Penn, you certainly are nowhere close to as smart as you think you are. Your “cause” is actually calling for a true genocide. You are marching in support of a group that is calling for the death of 16 million Jews. For those who march but know nothing, which I suppose is most of you, 16 million Jews is not the number of Jews in Gaza, there are actually none(unless you count the Israeli military taking out the trash). It’s not even the amount of Jews in Israel. There are a little over 7 million Jews in what your puppet masters refer to as occupied land. 16 million Jews is actually the number of Jews on the planet. That is the number of people the group you are supporting wants to see killed.
Trying to debunk your logic, that is English for showing you why you are full of crap, would be a waste of time. You hear a lie once or twice, maybe it takes three times, and you decide it to be true. You make no effort to verify it-doubt you’ll even find the word verify on Tiktok-make no effort to determine if what you are marching for is harmful, and you have no concern for the consequences for yourself, let alone others. To say you are stupid is insulting to stupid.
So let me help you make some sense of it all.
“Israel’s committing genocide”. In a genocide the population becomes less. The population of Gaza has consistently increased (that means gotten bigger).
“The Israelis are occupiers and colonizers”. There were no Israelis in Gaza till Hamas invited us in to wipe them off the face of the earth.
“Israel targets babies”. Israel warns families with babies to get out of the way but Hamas doesn’t let them.
“Israel is an Apartheid State” You have no clue what Apartheid is anyway so why bother.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. As far as this one is concerned, if you can name the river or the sea, we’ll talk then. But I’m not worried.
While your behavior deserves this mockery, it is also pitiful and scary. In gravitating to an evil, cause just because that cause sees you as fresh meat and sucks you in, is all it takes to make you part of something, you either have a life of misery or come from a sad and pathetic past, and for this I pity you. But looking at your numbers is the scary part, not just because you are attacking me as a Jew, but because of what it bodes for the history of the planet. And as far as the consequences are concerned, if what the people you are marching for and for whom you are tearing down the pictures of babies being held hostage for, ultimately get what they want, I suspect they will give you 2 choices. Become one of them or die. But hey, your friends are doing it, so why not?
As the full scope of the barbaric attack on Israel is still unfolding, people’s true colors are on full display. For all those tourists who visited Anne Frank’s House, or movie lovers and Hollywood types who loved and honored Schindler’s List, for all of those who have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., or took selfies at Auschwitz, this is your time to speak up. The world is on trial now, and the verdict will likely not only determine the fate of Israel and the Jewish people, but very possibly the fate of the planet for decades, maybe even centuries to come.
Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. By the time he was conquered in 1945, while estimates vary, the death toll was believed to be around 60 million people in total, more than two thirds of which were civilians. While Hitler rose to power on the back of economic devastation in Germany, much of what powered him was an insane, uncontrollable homicidal hatred for, you guessed it, the Jewish people. Yet the world did nothing while Fascists groups rose and spoke up all over the world, including a pro-Nazi rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. Had it not been for Pearl Harbor, one could would wonder if the United States would have even entered the war at all. While America and Great Britain eventually played significant roles in defeating the Nazis, their knowledge of the tracks leading to Auschwitz never lead them to destroying them. Ultimately what it came down to then, and still comes down to today, is one very sad truth, and that is the fact that for a large portion of the planet, Jewish blood is cheap.
I know there are many good people. I know there are many who would die just as quickly to save a Jewish life as they would for any other innocent life. But still today there are far too many people out there who are tolerated for unimaginably distorted ideas of what the Jewish people are and what Israel is as a nation. People who saw videos of young women, children, elderly being kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Women raped and brutalized. Families slaughtered in their homes. Jews dehumanized as they were by the Nazis in what would turn into the mass murder of 6 million Jews. Many of who were Jewish women and children, raped, brutalized, humiliated, terrorized and experimented on by evil “doctors”. All lead by the obsessive hatred of one man, whose obsessive hatred led him to seek world domination that ended in the death of tens of millions of civilians.
Are you scared yet? You should be. Because that same hatred has been indoctrinated into a generation of Palestinian youth, youth that have now grown up to want what Hitler wanted, the death of all the world’s Jews.
So, politics aside, if you are anyone who tolerates anti-Semitic rhetoric from your local politicians, you are ultimately digging your own grave. If you are a social activist who is believing the rhetoric that Israel is an Apartheid State, you are digging your own grave. If you are a member of the LGBTQ community marching and shouting Free Palestine, you are marching against the one country in the Middle East where you could live freely, and yes, ultimately digging your own grave. But most of all, if you are watching brutality playing out before your eyes against innocent Israeli citizens, including women, children, and the elderly, and you are still blaming Israel, you are digging everyone’s grave.
This is not a game. The world is on trial, and those of us who believe in God might say that he is watching very closely. Watching to see who makes the right choice, and who makes the wrong one. This is real life, and whether those of you who hate Israel and think Jewish life is cheap want to admit it or not, you are fighting a battle that will end in your own demise. Ironically, not from those you are attacking, rather from those that you are supporting.
As a proud Jew and vocal Zionist, I find the recent backlash against Bradley Cooper to be beyond ridiculous. Before anyone chooses to criticize the choice of how best to look like Leonard Bernstein, one needs to start by doing one thing. Look at a picture of Leonard Bernstein. The man had a pronounced nose. But as someone who has a stake in this conversation, I believe this whole discussion needs to go much deeper. What is my personal stake you ask? It is a simple answer. I am the author of a book titled , “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi-occupied Holland.”
I have so many problems with this discussion that I almost don’t know where to start. I will start by saying that if you are someone who sees depicting an immensely talented Jew in a different manner than he actually looked, your attempts to avoid prejudice indicate either an ignorance as to to what it means to be a Jew, or a leaning toward such prejudice. Whether or not this movie is prejudiced against Jewish people will be indicated in the plot and dialogue, not in the attempt for the lead actor to look like the person he is playing. On the surface, I am not concerned. Leonard Bernstein was a brilliant conductor. This is why this movie is being made. Other aspects of the movie, be they favorable or not, will only indicate prejudice if they are incorrect or used to push an agenda against Jews. If for no other reason, this alone would be enough for me to tell people to get a grip.
What also bothers me is something that has bothered me for quite some time, albeit a wonderful opportunity for self-promotion. The word Jew is not a bad word. The context in which any word is used when describing a person or group will often determine how good or bad a word is. One of the main reasons I called my book “Jew Face” is because when you looked like my mother in 1940 Amsterdam, there was no questioning the fact that you were Jewish. But funny enough, not because she had a pronounced nose, which she somewhat did when she was younger. Rather because of the fact that she had dark hair, and a darker complexion than the typical Dutch person, and being from Spanish-Portuguese descent, even darker than many Jews. One of them being my fair skinned, redheaded (at the time), father. I guess that would mean, by 1940’s Dutch standards, if you got someone with dark hair and even slightly dark skin to portray my mother, that would be seen as Jew Face as a negative term. So this speaks to how perception is what creates this problem, not fact. The fact is, that if you depict a Jewish man or woman accurately, you are being a responsible reporter or filmmaker. If you break away from the truth to depict a hateful stereotype, THEN you should be seen as a problem. It should not be based on how accurately you attempt to make the person’s facial features look.
Going back to how the word Jew is not a bad word, I will reflect on a story regarding my late mother Sipora Groen, the woman on the cover of “Jew Face”. When speaking to a group of people and telling her story with the help of my book, someone confronted her saying, “Jew Face is an ugly title”. My mother responded immediately saying, “it was an ugly time”. If your focus is on the fact that the way something sounds offends you, rather than the importance of its content, you become part of the problem.
Which brings me to my next point. If you are up in arms about a prosthetic nose, used to depict a Jewish legend with a large nose, I must ask you where you were in the past? Where were you when Ilhan Omar said, “it’s all about the Benjamins”, when criticizing Jewish influence? Or when Marjorie Taylor Greene said that there are “Jewish space lasers” trying to shoot down Santa Claus. Or when Bryan Adams distorted facts about Gaza while never criticizing Palestinian terrorists targeting Jewish civilians. Have you paid to hear Roger Waters lately? The man who repeatedly calls Israel an Apartheid State? Or are you just concerned about a high profile nose, because it suits your agenda or speaks to your ignorance?
Bradley Cooper has never exhibited any public prejudice towards anyone. For all I know, and I won’t research it because I don’t care, he isn’t even the one who decided on the nose. If you want to fight for Jewish causes, how about taking on the difficult fights. Not the one that brings attention to a silly stereotype that only means anything if you associate it with something negative. All this is to me is another example of virtue signaling. For those who don’t know what virtue signaling is, it is when you express a strong opinion because you want to show how good you are, not because you really care. Before you say another word about Bradley Cooper and a prosthetic nose, look into your heart and figure out how much you really care.
I just finished reading your statement as to the reasoning behind you cancelling your trip to Israel, and although your message was masterfully articulated, it is sadly riddled with an enormous undercurrent of serious & unfortunate ignorance. You see Michael, what you and so many others fail to realize, is that over the years filled with constant terrorist attacks murdering Israelis and manipulated uprisings, citizens of Israel have been victims more than the Palestinians have and most of the victimization of the Palestinians has been predominantly at the hands of their very own leaders, not the Israeli government.
If even a small fraction of the funding given to the Palestinian leadership had been put into developing their neighborhoods and cities, the Palestinian quality of life would be so much better we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Instead the billions of dollars received has primarily been used for funding terrorism and making their leaders extremely wealthy people. Naturally they do not want you to know this because that would destroy their illegitimate narrative of having a plight similar to those of non-white citizens of the former Apartheid regime in South Africa. The truth is that even blacks from South Africa have come out often attacking this comparison saying that what happens in Israel is far from being Apartheid. I urge you to view this video of a South African member of Parliament and a man of color, Kenneth Meshoe, discussing the misguided view that Israel is an Apartheid State. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFVV9QdvZU
I further encourage you to take note of these 3 quotes from the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose picture you chose to exploit as evidence for your misguided stance.
“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!”
“The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world”
“Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
No one with any decency and reason will say or has ever said that Israel has done everything right, but the stance you have taken puts the entire burden of blame of the government of Israel. That is not only disingenuous and harmful towards the very people you claim to now care so much about, it is also blatantly anti-Zionist, and if you are to use Dr. King’s picture as a tool on your Twitter page you best know that he would have seen you as being anti-Semitic as a result. Whether that is your intention or not, your judgment and subsequent actions create that perception and destroy your credibility. I suggest you revisit this issue and reconsider your stance.
If there is one thing you learn being a child of Holocaust survivors, it is that no matter how much you try to put yourself in their shoes, you just can’t. It is with that knowledge and awareness that I write this letter to you, those survivors that are condemning Israel over its actions towards the Palestinian people. Despite the shock your comments and sentiments have caused to so many of us, (CLICK HERE TO READ STATEMENT) out of the respect I have for what you went through I have chosen to write this letter as more of a plea for you to come to your senses than a criticism of your actions. I will make it a given that your intentions are pure, even if I and many more like me believe they are misguided.
No one who survived the horrors of Nazi Germany needs a lesson from me or from anyone else of my generation as to the actions committed during what is one of the blackest mark in the history of humankind. Having spoken often to my parents, my father of blessed memory and my mother who is, thank God still alive and well, I have as good of an understanding as I can in my position, as to what took place. I know that Hitler hated the Jews from the start. Targeted them, scapegoated them, dehumanized them, and ultimately murdered them in massive and devastating numbers. He made the elimination of the Jewish race more than just an emotional cause, he made it a government sanctioned law. Even before the mass murdering started, he left no doubt that he wanted Jews to be no part of society, not only in Germany but everywhere his Nazi party occupied. As is so clearly stated in the definition of Genocide, once he managed to rally the support of a desperate German nation behind him, Hitlerspecifically targeted the Jews in a deliberate and systematic attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. I will spend the next paragraph outlining the similarities between what Nazi Germany did to the Jews and what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
It will be a very short paragraph. THERE ARE NO SIMILARITIES!
As I previously stated, this is more than a letter to all of you. This is a plea. I am practically begging you to come to your collective senses. Israel has not been perfect in its treatment of Palestinians, but it’s not only done more for them than many other nations do for a minority population, it’s done more for them than any Muslim nation in the world has done.
Please read the Hamas charter. It calls for the elimination of Jews from Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. With that in mind I ask you this question. Had there been a Jewish army in 1943 or 1944 would it have been wrong for that army to bomb Berlin, even if in targeting official government locations it would have killed German women and children?
I appreciate and agree that dead women and children dying in war is always a tragedy. I just urge you to realize that the deaths are not always the fault of the ones dropping the bombs.
In the name of God and all that is good and decent I ask all of you to stop this madness. The last line of your statement may be the most important one in that it references the phrase “Never Again”. I agree that “Never Again” means NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE, but it also means that sometimes actions, often harsh and painful actions, need to be taken to back up that phrase.
One of the loudest ovations at the Pro-Israel rally in Times Square yesterday July 20, 2014, was for none other than a Palestinian man. When the man took the microphone and shouted the words, “I am a Palestinian. I love Israel and I hate Hamas”, the crowd erupted. To all those who call Israel an Apartheid state I present this challenge. Find me one none-white individual who ever said they love South Africa during the reign of Apartheid. And then find me an instance of a crowd gathering in support of South Africa’s government of that era that welcomed a person of color with love and support as this man was yesterday. You won’t find it. It’s very simple. Those who want to live in peace are welcome and will be treated like everyone else. Sure there are people in any group that have an indestructible hate in their heart, but as a general rule this is the morality we live by. A morality of which we can and should all be proud.
The publishing of Ulysses by James Joyce; The first swimmer crossed the English Channel; Calvin Coolidge became president; the first Winter Olympics took place; Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic Ocean; Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse; Herbert Hoover became president; the Stock Market crashed;Penicillin was discovered; the planet Pluto was discovered; Empire State Building was completed; Amelia Earhart crossed the Atlantic; Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Party became ruling party in Germany; Social security was established; Golden Gate Bridge was opened; Japan invaded China; Germany annexed Austria; World War II; Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 60 million people killed in World War II; 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust; Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier; the State of Israel was founded; United Nations was formed; NATO was formed; Korean War; Elvis Presley; Polio vaccine created; Disneyland Opened; JFK became President; I was born; Cuban Missile Crisis; JFK assassinated; The Beatles; Vietnam War; Star Trek series; first Super Bowl; Apollo 11 landed on the moon; Terrorists Killed Israeli Athletes at Munich Olympics; Watergate scandal forced President Richard Nixon’s resignation; the movie Star Wars; John Paul II became Pope; Iranian Muslim revolution; CNN was formed; AIDS discovered; Personal Computers were invented; Soviet Union collapsed; Apartheid ended; Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa; 2 different Bush’s became Presidents; Bill Clinton became president; the Euro currency was formed; 3,000 killed in 9/11 attack in New York; Iraq War; the Internet was created; Holland lost 3 World cup finals; Justin and Kim got married.
These things happened, in the 92 years between the birth of these 2 people, my mother Sipora Groen and my youngest family member and great-niece Jara.
Israel, the Apartheid State. The government that is persecuting Palestinians. The regime committing genocide against the people of Palestine. Really? Does this sound like a country that would be taking care of the wife of the leader of the Palestinian authority? Well that is exactly what happened this past weekend as the wife of Mahmoud Abbas had leg surgery in a hospital near Tel-Aviv. But did the fair-minded speak out about this? Did they ever stop to consider what would have happened if three Palestinian students had been kidnapped and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife would need surgery in most Arab nations? Or even closer to home in the West Bank or Gaza? As three Yeshiva students remain missing, likely kidnapped by Hamas or another similar terrorist organization, the Israeli government welcomed in and allowed the wife of Abbas to be cared for. Does this strike you as the behavior of a state motivated to wipe the Palestinians off the planet. Does it look like a government lacking in ethical human rights behavior?
We all know the answer. Roger Waters knows the answer. Emma Thompson knows the answer. Alice Walker knows the answer. But these phonies, Anti-Semites masquerading as humanitarians would never utter the words of truth that are so evident from the events taking place. The worldwide movements to discredit Zionists, a smokescreen for decreasingly less subtle attacks on Jews, would never declare the truth about Israel, that it is a true democracy with true freedom and the highest level of human rights. To do that would result in elevating the status of Jews worldwide, which in reality is why it is not done. If you doubt this to be true just look at what it is happening in France on a regular basis to people because they are Jews, not because they are Zionists. And look at the recent murders in Brussels and wake up to the truth. And that truth is that there are people who want to wipe the Jewish people from the planet, regardless of where they live.
We all say Never Again to something that on some very frightening levels has begun to happen again. Did we ever know what we would do to stop it if it did? Maybe not. But it starts by seeing the reality of the situation and not closing our eyes, pretending it is not there and hoping it will go away. That never worked and never will.
Holland's Heroes 