The Tale of Two Masks
Since 2020, the Western world has been on a covered-face fetish. The pandemic made the N95 mask an indispensable artifact of the coronavirus—more important an accessory than the iPhone. We came to accept that protecting our respiratory systems meant forfeiting our facial identities.
Soon faces were masked for infections of a different sort. Viruses migrated from human sickness to social pathology. Those who participated in Black Lives Matter vandalism needed to remain anonymous—even though local police were told not to make arrests. Masking added to the outlaw mystique of an anti-American upheaval.
Two years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023 massacre, the keffiyeh became the latest trend in antisemitic solidarity, an essential uniform worn by those who believed that calling for the death of Jews was the hallmark of a just society.
The keffiyeh was both chic and exonerating. Celebrities walked red carpets showcasing bloody red-hand pins and billowing keffiyehs. A death cult now made for a symbolic fashion statement. The submission so central to Islam was now firmly affixed on the faces of those wearing tuxedos and gowns.
Others got started masking themselves much sooner. Islamic societies, even those in the West, have long normalized keeping women under wraps—not to shield them from the law but to render them the property of their domineering husbands.
Burqas nullify the sighting of female faces. My guess is that Dearborn, Michigan and Patterson, New Jersey will soon become meccas for insecure Islamists who simply will not tolerate the outside world getting even a glimpse of their wives.
While this is all happening, Western feminists apparently forgot the first principle of their liberation movement: the right to be seen. Sisters in “covered” arms are invisible.
Two years after the October 7, 2023 massacre, global “feminists” have still not issued a definitive statement condemning the sexual violence of that fateful day. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Gazan civilians were given a pass to rape and mutilate Israeli girls.
Tens of thousands of white European women and girls have been similarly forsaken by their governments and quivering sisterhoods. Sexual courtesies are being extended to Muslims who have deferred martyrdom and the 72 virgins that await them.
Why not practice on infidels, instead?
The N95 was mandated to preserve life; facial masks that cover up bigotry are intended to give humanity a different look, one of denied dignity and murderous Jew-hatred.
The second anniversary of October 7 requires that we take stock of just how far we have fallen, the treachery that surrounds us, and how the masking of faces became a metaphor for societal shame.
The second anniversary of October 7 requires that we take stock of just how far we have fallen, the treachery that surrounds us, and how the masking of faces became a metaphor for societal shame.
On Yom Kippur morning in Manchester, England, two Jewish worshippers were murdered by an Islamist named, fittingly, Jihad. He rammed his car into them, then went on a stabbing spree. Law enforcement rightly declared the violence to be a terrorist attack. Yet Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer seemed genuinely surprised that such a tragedy had taken place on his watch.
What did he think would be the consequence of recognizing a Palestinian state as a reward for the carnage on October 7? The soundtrack of the latest British New Wave has been featuring an incessant loop calling for “Death to the Jews!” “Rape Jewish Daughters!” and “Intifada Revolution!” The nation’s leading media outlets—the BBC, Sky, the Guardian—along with universities and its cultural institutions, have all been validating the motives and methods of Hamas.
Where did Starmer think this would lead?
By the end of the day in Manchester, instead of national vigils commemorating the murder of British Jews, another rally sprang up celebrating their deaths and calling for more.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the songstress Lorde prepared a Yom Kippur surprise of her own. Performing at Madison Square Garden on Kol Nidre, she belted out, “Free F—ing Palestine!” with stage lights beaming the colors of the PLO flag.
Elsewhere on Yom Kippur, in Brookline, Massachusetts, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School was arrested for discharging a pellet gun pointed at Temple Beth Zion. When asked what he was doing, he replied that he was simply “hunting rats.”
This from a Harvard law professor? Actually, Harvard failed to check his social media postings. Back on October 7, he despicably wrote, “Rainy day, party time!”
October 7 is this generation’s Kristallnacht, but, apparently, without the reverence.
Jews have largely shown themselves to be complacent and remarkably unreflective in marking this new red-letter date in history. They don’t believe that what happened on October 7 has anything to do with them. After all, their children married non-Jewish spouses. They haven’t been inside a synagogue in years. And even rabbis use their pulpits to distance themselves from Israel so that progressives and Islamists will admire them.
Many affiliated Jews perform back-flips to blame Israel. Immediately after Yom Kippur, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism signed a letter supporting the right of pro-Hamas agitators on campus to call for the death of Jews, and accused pro-Israel groups of “weaponizing” antisemitism.
Nearly 4,000 members of America’s creative community recently signed a letter boycotting Israel’s film industry and deliberately mischaracterizing Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide. Curiously, the letter was silent on the fate of the Israeli hostages and the barbaric crime scene that was October 7.
Even after President Trump unveiled his 20-point plan to bring an end to the war, none of these bold-face names bothered to show their faces. Drunk on the Kool-Aid that attributes no tragedy to the spilling of Jewish blood. Clearly these artists are no pacifists: Disarming Hamas and leaving Israel intact as a Jewish state is unacceptable to their humanitarian impulses.
Worse still, far too many of the signatories were themselves Jews—Joaquin Phoenix, Andrew Garfield, Ilana Glazer, Jonathan Glazer, and Hannah Einbinder. But are they really Jews or just useful idiots, a dilapidated fifth column of self-hatred and misguided self-preservation?
Gaza was always a smokescreen for the casual acceptance of dead Jews and the destruction of Israel. October 7 unleashed an antisemitic campaign disguised as a human rights movement on behalf of a people made relevant only because they are pitted against Jews.
October 7 unleashed an antisemitic campaign disguised as a human rights movement on behalf of a people made relevant only because they are pitted against Jews.
The mournful Yom Kippur prayer, Avinu Malkeinu, has the Jews pleading with God to “annul the intentions of our enemies, foil the plans of our foes, and wipe out every oppressor and adversary from against us.”
That’s a tall order, even in years of less agitated antisemitism. These past two Yom Kippurs, however, provided an object lesson in the Gates of Heaven closing with God looking away from his Chosen People.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
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