Look I do realize that the problem is we’re speaking two different languages. Perfectly understandable.

I am a pragmatist. Someone who sees that what is going on Gaza is a very complex and complicated situation, involving many factors. These include, but are not limited to, Netanyahu’s corruption and right wing policies that helped lead to what happened in Gaza, the fact that the government of Israel has been constantly rising and falling for decades, the Hamas takeover of the Palestinians, the geo-political position of Israel in the Middle East, its position in regard to both the American and the international government and the long and complicated history of Israel going back to its founding along with the many shifts in the Arab world along the way.

You, by contrast, are a leftist. And as I’ve come to learn leftists, much like their conservative counterparts, only seem things in black and white with no middle ground. A leftist as you have made clear is not so much in favor of any one solution to problem but against the system that created them. In your world there are only the oppressed and the oppressors and no middle ground in between.

Now I do realize that the events of October 7th have put you and your ilk in a difficult position that your own language has created for you. You can’t simply say you are ‘pro-Palestine’. First of all, it would go against your de facto position of being pro really one specific thing. You and your ilk are all about nebulous concepts and no idea how to realize them outside a classroom. Being on the side of Palestine directly would force you to deal with the many contradictions in the struggle. It would be being on a side where the government is engaged in terrorist activity and is, in a way, indirectly responsible for what is happening in Gaza. It would mean that you are taking the position of fundamentalists, who you berate as wrong in America particularly when it comes to organized religion. And it would mean taking the side of a sect that is very prominently against many of the causes you claim to stand for – among them the repression of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. I realize that some of you have threaded that needle in the past – I’ve seen some extreme versions on this site – but the bigger problem is the spectre of anti-Semitism (which this article was about as you’ve clearly forgotten) and the issue of being on the side of bigots – particularly the ones that you and your sect have spent much of the last decade condemning.

Hence the term ‘anti-Zionist’ which has many advantages. It does what the left does so many times and puts the blame on ‘the system’, which is as is always the case the West. It’s been your go-to boogeyman for awhile and I more than acknowledge that they make it very easy for you. The white supremacy card never will go out of style because of its basic truth.

Of course in this case you’ve had to make some spectacular contortions. The first is that the European Jews are somehow both the victim of the West, who used them against the Islam population in the Middle East, and also the aggressors against the Muslim population in that particular section. You also, somehow, have managed to completely ignore the existence of both World War II as well as the Holocaust, which is particularly odd considering that you basically have been crying genocide whenever it happens anywhere else in the world but don’t seem to think it should serve as a cause or an effect here. The Jews had of course suffered thousands of years of Anti-Semitism of which the events of World War II were the most extreme result. What exactly the Jewish people should have done in the aftermath never enters into the discussion somehow but it’s never been your main focus.

And so you now have a generation who admits that the left has an anti-Semitism problem to solve but would rather do anything to admit that their current position after the events of October 7th have anything to do with it. So when you like your colleagues see an article discussing the issue of anti-Semitism as a result of what happened in October 7th (which I believe had exactly one paragraph in this original essay) you go back to the argument all leftists do which is to double down on your original position and argue the people who say your wrong are bigots.

All of which I should mention is why I will always prefer the far-right’s brand of bigotry to you and yours. These days, sad to say, it’s a lot easier to tell what the far right means when they talk about anti-immigrants or ‘DEI’ or when they march with tiki torches. You and your little flock (and it is smaller then you seem to think it is) are genuinely convinced in the certainty of your righteous position that you can’t see in that you’re part of the problem yourself. The author mentions someone like you and you turn it around and attack the messenger because you don’t want to hear the message.

I know enough about how this goes that one of us will end up blocking the other because as I said at the start, we’re speaking different languages. And I also know that, for all the education and enlightenment you claim to have, you’d rather do anything than listen to someone who uses different words than you. I’m not talking so much to you but to those who might choose to speak my language. I know that it’s hard to accept for a sect that really thinks the world revolves around them but I’m old enough to know better.