— Feature, Musings —01.29.2024 11:03 AM
My latest: the rough Beast, awake
October 7, 2023 is a day that will live in infamy.
It is also a day that has caused a massive shift, everywhere – culturally, politically, militarily, strategically.
Even on the personal level, October 7 has dramatically re-ordered the lives and priorities of many who are far from the battlefields: when a Jew is afraid to wear an indication of their faith outside their home – when they are afraid of posting a representation of it on the doorframe of their home – you know that all is changed, per Yeats, changed utterly.
The news is not all bad. By war’s end, Israel will have mostly defeated Hamas, and inoculated itself against another such attack for a generation or more. Moderate Arab nations, who have been quietly applauding the demise of Hamas, will continue to forge trade and political ties with Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu – who had been told October 7 was coming, disbelieved it, and did nothing to prevent it – will be gone, consumed by serial corruption trials or Israeli fury, or both. Israel will likely be governed by Benny Gantz, who is what Israel needs, because he represents the desired mix of military experience and centrism.
The world’s civilized nations – already brought closer by Putin’s foul war on Ukraine – will embrace a further and superior alliance, one that is better equipped to defeat terrorist threats as well as military ones. Donald Trump will not be the one to lead it.
But one glaring, shocking problem will remain. And that is that the Beast is awake.
The aforementioned William Butler Yeats wrote of it in his Second Coming poem: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Yeats’ Beast was the anti-Christ, probably, a monster that he believed would extinguish Christianity and the world. In the post-October 7, 2023 context, it is anti-Semitism – ironically reawakened in Bethlehem, which is located in Palestine. Not Israel.
The Beast of Jew hatred is everywhere – in Canada, a Jewish restaurant in Toronto vandalized, its windows smashed as in Kristallnacht, and a synagogue in Fredericton attacked on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And that is just in the past two days. Two days.
Anti-Semitism, the oldest hatred, is everywhere we look, these days. It has shaken the historical alliance of Jews and blacks, forged in the civil rights years. It has riven academics and unionists in a way that will take a decade or more to repair. It has made the class wars far worse, because of the (provably false) perception that Jews are all rich and white.
But the Beast of anti-Semitism is seen most visibly in one place: among our youth.
This writer has seen the public opinion research, conducted in Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond. And what it reveals cannot be denied or dismissed: vast swaths of Generation Z ( who are 18 to 26) and Millennials (who are 27 to 42) are wildly, avowedly anti-Semitic. More, much more, than the university professors or public sector union bosses or anyone else you can think of.
The polling, by Leger and several other firms, is shocking. A third of young Canadians – Gen Z and Millennials – support targeting Jews. A quarter of them say they want Israel destroyed. Forty per cent of them do not want those who promote genocide – a criminal offence, in Canada – punished.
And on Hamas, that Satanic and malevolent force, they shrug. Forty per cent of them don’t care about Hamas’ butchery, and refuse to condemn it. A Harvard poll, conducted right after the carnage of October 7, found that more than half of American Gen Z support Hamas. That it was “justified.”
On the Holocaust, which was the mass-murder that Hamas was emulating, the numbers are just as depressing. Twenty per cent of young Americans call the Holocaust a myth. Thirty per cent of them “don’t know” if it is a myth. Thirty per cent of them think “Jews wield too much power.”
There’s more – too much more – but all of the pollsters have concluded the same thing: anti-Semitism is back, everywhere, and almost half of our young people have embraced it.
That, to this writer at least, represents a greater threat than Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the idiotic professors and union bosses put together. We are at risk of losing an entire generation to Jew hatred.
The Beast is awake, but it is not slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.
It has been birthed already, and it is everywhere.
And it is taking hold of our youth.
It’s fighting a losing battle. Getting white progressive after white progressive to admit they want Isreal destroyed is just depressing.
Warren,
Makes you wonder what kind of upbringing so many of these people had. Seriously. One plus one can never be anything other than two: Hamas Terrorist Atrocities on October 7th + Mass Deaths of Innocent Israeli and Jewish Civilians = IDF Invasion of Gaza. One logically flows from the other, not the other way around. But for terrorism, the IDF would not be in Gaza. (1 + 1 = 2).
I thought selective recall was only the stuff of NeoNazis and other hate groups. Apparently not…
Wishful thinking. Disagree? Consider how little energy anyone is putting toward Ukraine at this point, and that war had far more unanimity in favour of supporting the Ukrainian people. The West is about as not-united on Israel as it ever has been.
Nobody likes Hamas, but if you’re going to continuously flash photos of victims of October 7 as evidence for the need to press the war further, you cannot possibly be surprised when the photos of grandma getting gunned down with a white flag are used for the same purpose on the opposite side – to great effect.
Extremism isn’t a group, it’s an ideology – one that doesn’t care if a million of it’s adherents are fed into the meat grinder of war. I’m not sure there’s any avoiding it at this point, but I forsee Islamic extremism making a comeback beyond what we saw 23 years ago. Sloganeering isn’t going to fix that.
Jason,
I haven’t yet reached a conclusion about the recent white-flag deaths. They are at first blush at least worthy of independent investigation. If they turn out like the first one, it will be kryptonite for the IDF.
Warren,
In my book, the Anti-Christ is alive and well and living in the United States. If you ever meet him, look into his eyes. And by the by, his name isn’t Trump. I think I spotted him in a New York minute. (Maybe, maybe not.)
My wife and I had dinner at a wonderful little Israeli eatery on Denman Street in Vancouver last night. Its only employee is the proprietor, an Israeli immigrant to Canada who has been vocal in her support for her home country in the face of such terrible atrocities. Checking the recent online reviews of her restaurant, it is obvious that there is an ongoing assault on her and her business because she is Jewish and supports Israel. The reviews clearly misrepresent the quality of her (excellent) food and her warm and friendly service. The campaign against her is repugnant and heartbreaking. She, and other targeted Jewish businesses, need our support.
I’d say the Rough Beast that has awakened is far more general – the overall appetite for conflict, by numerous foreign antagonists simulteneously.
Each of North Korea, Iran, Hamas/Hezbollah, and other Middle Eastern factions have all been beligerant at various points. However, rarely has it been simulteneous as it is now – and is encouraged by Russia. China is almost certainly seeing an opportunity re Taiwan now.
And this is the problem – the cumulative effect of evil. The “good” nations (yes, I am using that simple word) only have so much capacity to resist evil. It can’t be done simulteneously, which seems to be what we are now faced with.
It is frightening, in a way I haven’t felt since the 1980s.
Funny after the likes of Zudel the skinheads and white power groups that it would appear the the woke crowd and Their warped ideology that is the largest threat to the Jews in 2023-24.
The Trudeau government announced they were suspending UNRWA funding.
Question. When was their last payment made ?
There are allegations Trudeau prepaid a UNRWA contribution that wasn’t due until the spring.
https://twitter.com/MelissaLantsman/status/1752090321788273063
Some idiot bureaucrat trying to get it out the door before the 31/3/24 year end to help with budgets because that is what idiot bureaucrats do.
So sad that after all these years anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head – in young white men and in parts of the Muslim population as well. It’s a disgrace and the folks espousing hateful views should be ashamed.