I’ve had a lifelong love affair with words, so I try to be as precise as possible. If I think something is astonishing, for example, I won’t say it’s surprising.
Over the years, I’ve used an endless amount of words to analyze, describe and call out antisemitism and antizionism.
But here’s the thing with words. The more you hear them, the less impact they have. That’s the situation I find myself in.
Take New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Pretty much everything has been said and written.
He ran on a campaign of “affordability,” but for some reason has been obsessed with Israel. Not North Korea. Not China. Not Sudan. Not Iran.
Just Israel—the world’s only Jewish state.
Last week, in a video that got 150 million views, he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being “a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Normally, I would use words like liar and hypocrite, but you’ve already read those somewhere.
He’s a hypocrite because he singles out Israel while ignoring countries that are exponentially worse. And he’s a liar because, as a promoter of justice, he knows that you don’t call someone a criminal who’s only been accused (by the International Criminal Court) of being a criminal.
In fact, when Mamdani condemned the man who stabbed a Jew on the Upper West Side a few days after his speech, the mayor was careful to call him the alleged attacker.
The examples of Mamdani’s obsession with the Jewish state are too numerous to list. Indeed, that obsession mirrors the world’s own fanatical fixation with the Jews and Israel.
What kind of words can best describe such madness? Should I go with the usual menu — outrageous, unfair, hypocritical, unacceptable, double standards, hateful, and so on?
However true they are, we already see these words everywhere. It’s like hearing the word “amazing” over and over again to describe anything that’s great. After a while, the word loses its luster.
Our vocabulary to describe Jew-hatred is losing its luster.
So, to add some precision and impact to the world’s surreal infatuation with the Jews, I’m now calling it creepy.
Yes, creepy.
Creepy is a word I use for anything that has gone so far it weirds me out. It makes my skin crawl. It’s spooky.
There will always be smart, sophisticated words to analyze and describe Jew-hatred. I use them myself. I’m just adding a fresh one to the mix.
Simply put, the world’s absurd obsession with a group that is less that 0.2 percent of the world’s population has crossed the boundaries of moral vocabulary and into creepiness.
The United Nations condemning the Jewish state more than all other nations combined is not just discriminatory. It’s bizarre. It’s creepy.
Take the typical American college that goes out of its way to protect minorities from the tiniest microaggression that might offend them. But when Jewish students face venomous macroaggressions like being called “baby killers”? Suddenly it becomes an issue of free speech.
That’s not just wrong. It’s spooky. It’s creepy.
Accusing Israel of “genocide” against Palestinians, when the Palestinian population has grown from 1.3 million to 2.1 million in Gaza and 2.4 million to 3.4 million in the West Bank since 2005, is not just sinister and libelous.
It means you’re accusing the people who suffered through a genocide of committing their own.
That makes my skin crawl.
As George Orwell wrote, “One of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true.”
This is how my friend Dr. Orli Peter, who is a clinical and neuropsychologist, describes the danger of the “genocide” libel:
“The power of the genocide libel,” she writes, “is that it doesn’t just persuade people, it changes the moral rules. Once you’ve convinced the public that Jews are the ultimate moral evil, a ‘genocidaire’ or a ‘baby killer,’ you’ve handed millions a psychological permission slip to conduct acts that would normally be unthinkable.
“Spitting on Jews, humiliating them, assaulting them, even killing them, become easier to justify because the Jew is seen as not deserving of the same moral protections. That’s why the genocide libel is vital to the movement. Its power is as a psychological weapon even more than a legal argument. By the time the evidence catches up, the damage has already been done.”
Yes, that truth creeps me out.
Hearing the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population use words like “genocide” against Israel definitely creeps me out. His obsession with Israel makes him look like a stalker.
You know how I feel about political candidates who now put Israel above all other local issues? Exactly. They’re weird. They’re creepy.
You know how I feel about the Jew-haters who heckle comedians like Jerry Seinfeld while they’re performing? They’re not just loud or rude. They’re creepy.
In his book of essays titled, “Co-Existence and Other Fighting Words,” Professor Judea Pearl describes what he calls “the psychopathy of Zionophobes” in the wake of Oct. 7: “The scent of blood, it seems, triggered a hunger for more. Hordes of predators emerged from their ideological tunnels, rushing to indict, sentence, and lynch Israel in the finest tradition of herd madness.”
Indeed, that is creepy.
All of this has nothing to do with legitimate criticism of Israel, which Israel deserves as much as, say, America does. No, this has to do with a delirious, over-the-top assault reserved for no other country than the world’s only Jewish state. That is creepy.
But here’s one of the amazing things about life: Just as some things may creep me out, others give me the goosebumps.
Take the poignant new song (clip below) by Boy George titled, “We Will Dance Again.” It seems to have come out of nowhere.
The melody, the reggae beat, the vocals, the lyrics move me to no end. Here are excerpts:
“You say genocide, I say war
When you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for
Does it get ugly? You bet it does
When I know you wanna kill
Every last one of us
Every last one of us
“You never mention October 7
Young girls raped against trees
Murdered brutally
For the crime of dancing.
“But trust me, we will dance again
We will dance again
We will dance again
And there will be no war
But if you’re ever confused
I stand with the Jews.”
If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews. I find those words not creepy but astonishingly precise.
