Signaled Virtue

The keffiyeh Nazi is still a Nazi, and the Jew who defends him is still a Jew.

That is the lesson which Jonathan Glazer – or perhaps his children – will learn at the hour of their deaths: that apologize as they might for the latest incarnation of the oldest evil on Earth, it will come for them anyway.

Glazer, like most of his self-servingly suicidal disposition, is an Ashkenazi Jew. He passes for “white” in Europe, and despite being Jewish and raised in a Jewish community, he probably feels more “white” than anything else.

He hears stories of the Holocaust – stories like the one told by the film he was awarded for – and doesn’t hear Jewish persecution, but human persecution. He, and all those like him, is the target of Elie Wiesel’s scathing rebuke: “No, the Holocaust was not about ‘man’s inhumanity to man!’ It was about man’s inhumanity to Jews!”

Glazer accepts the appropriation of the Holocaust by the other nations into a shared “human” event, depicting the capacity of “all men” for evil. Two things are implied: one, that somehow, all nations (“humanity”) were affected and harmed by the Holocaust; and two, that any nation could be the victim of a repeat.

The first premise is designed to reduce, and eventually remove, Western guilt for a Western crime. In this realm, it has succeeded. Never has Holocaust denial been more accepted than in the era which Glazer heralds. Never have people cared less about the ability of Jews to live freely and securely than in Glazer’s brave new world. Never have more people been eager to accuse Glazer’s brothers and sisters of the crimes for which they themselves are guilty – Glazer himself supports them.

The second premise is designed to diminish the Holocaust, to prevent it from having any incorrect lesson for the world. It could have happened to anyone, they say, and Glazer nods along. Only it couldn’t have happened to anyone, because it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to Jews. The Holocaust, in its ruthlessness, in its barbarity, in its complete and utter removal of humanity from its victims, could and did happen to the Jews precisely because we are Jews.

Ironically, the thing which comes closest to actually diminishing the Holocaust is the thing which Glazer readily accuses his brothers and sisters of, but would never think to happen against him: because the Holocaust happened, it is by definition not unique. Because the Holocaust happened, it is possible, and can happen again.

It is precisely this which the West has been preparing for. The seeds, I should note, were planted very long ago. The saplings sprouted on October 7th, and grow more with every day. They are watered by many people, some of whom – like Glazer – speak of “shared humanity.”

Glazer, being a Jew, fails to realize that the others around him who speak freely of “common humanity” do so because they never saw him as a fellow human being.

Glazer, being an assimilated “white” Jew, does not see himself as his white friends see him: the sewer rat which talks like a man, acts like a man, thinks like a man – but is most assuredly not a man. Just a sewer rat.

Glazer, preferring to be educated in the history of all people instead of his people (and for this crime, I hardly blame him, for what grim reading it makes!), has learned exactly the lesson intended for the other nations: that the Jews aren’t so special; that they should just stop whining about that Holocaust all those years back; can’t they just go back to what it was like before, when they all sat like good little ducklings in the other nations’ lands, waiting to be culled?

Glazer learned from the West the lesson they intended for their own children, not him: the Jews are corpses, things you learn about in high school; not really people (although you may know a few, here and there), but representatives of a much larger and more noble thing: dying for the sins of other men. What could be more beautiful, more heart wrenching, or any less Jewish?

Many phrases are said to capture the essence of Judaism. My favorite has always been: choose life. Of all the things to differentiate us from our cousins – our most prolific murderers – that is the most prominent. The extremist Christians emulate their savior’s sacrifice, the jihadi Muslims glorify themselves in death, and the Jews build defense systems to remain alive; clinging to one another in one of the oldest remaining communities on Earth.

Where does the war in Gaza come from? Paradoxically, given the death toll, it comes from that commandment. When asked to choose between martyrdom or living service, the answer has always and will always be: choose life. What is the point of life if not living? What is the point of ending the war, saving tens of thousands of their lives, when almost 10 million of ours will be taken for that “mercy?”

Glazer and people like him: when they speak, they advocate for not just them, but all of us, to die for someone else. For something else. For a higher order ideology that says that there is a price too high to pay for Jewish existence. They look at the current war, the previous wars, our entire modern history in Israel – and they call it worthless; a waste of time and life.

4,000 years of history and they have learned nothing!

The thing that the Jews who choose to live must do, rather than die for Islamofacism, for Arab and white supremacy, for their sins, is simple: learn.

4,000 years of history and the rest of us are somehow surprised at our sudden demotion to second class within the West.

4,000 years of history and the rest of us are somehow discouraged from making aliyah, even though Israel is now safer to be a Jew than anywhere else on the Earth.

4,000 years of history and more French Jews have fled to Israel than British ones, even though it is in Britain where the police openly speak of refusing the enforce the law out of their own cowardice – literally creating a separate injustice system for British Jews. It is not a surprise that Glazer is in this crowd: like frogs sitting in a pot of ever-so-slightly heating water.

The Jews who choose life may be one step removed from the self-selected ignorance of Glazer and his circus, but that will do you no good when you are all thrown into the same burn pit.

The one thing you must do – and the only thing you can do, in the face of Glazer and Co.’s murderous stupidity – is to learn from your past, because it holds the keys to your future. My grandfather understood this so well that he correctly predicted the Holocaust, begged his fellow Polish villagers to come with him to Israel – and only Israel, even though there was no State then! – and when they refused, left without them. They chose to believe in “shared humanity,” and I’m sure that they believed in it right up until the Einsatzgruppen arrived.

My grandfather knew, because he studied our history, not only how to read the writing on the wall, but exactly where to go once that writing appeared. The Jews who did not study our history – or were so assimilated that they viewed it as an abstraction – did neither of those things.

Glazer did not simply fail to read the writing on the wall. He chose to learn the Western apologia for the Holocaust instead of the Jewish history inherent to it. He chose to advocate for Jewish death instead of Jewish life. He chose to blind himself rather than read the writing on the wall, which tells of his death alongside the others. Assimilation, conversion, hiding – Glazer should know and does, on some level, know that he cannot escape being a Jew, no matter how hard he tries.

My brothers and my sisters, you can read the writing on the wall as much as I can. The “good times” in the Diaspora aren’t simply over; they barely even existed. America might not fall as fast as the others, so strong is its constitutional republic. Yet how can any government that calls itself democracy resist the will of its people, when those people will eventually form the majority? As someone once told me, “antisemitism is always and everywhere a populist phenomenon,” and as you probably know by now, not even America is immune to populism.

Be watchful, my brothers and sisters, of what happens next. Assimilation is a poison that first intoxicates (what a rich cultural tradition this nation has!) then aggrandizes (what status I’ve attained in this nation’s society!), and finally placates its victims (I’ve called for a ceasefire; they know I’m not like the other Jews!) so the net can be drawn safely around them.

Do not wait for the water to boil before jumping out of the pot. Do not be seduced by the frogs’ way of thinking: Don’t be so worried; it’ll be all right; we’ve had worse; it could never happen here! Do not, as Glazer and those like him have, fool yourselves into thinking that you can do anything to escape their wrath, for as Sarte put it: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would create him.”

Jews like Glazer think they can live among the Nazis to avoid dying among the Jews. Yet when the Jews come together as Jews, the impossible happens. For the European Jews, the seeds of assimilation bore the fruit of extinction; for the Jews of Israel the Land, and later Israel the State, the seeds of Jewishness bore the fruits of freedom, safety, prosperity, and happiness.

If you can read these words, then it is not too late to learn. History does not repeat itself: it rhymes. There has not been a new form of antisemitism in at least a thousand years: everything you are seeing has been seen before, by eyes quite like yours.

And to those among us who ask: Isn’t this different? Didn’t everyone agree that the Holocaust was bad? Why should we fear another one?

Because the keffiyeh Nazi is still a Nazi, and the Jew who defends him is still a Jew.