All Eyes on Useful Idiots

Also, Genocide is Not a Verb, Morons

If you have any sort of social media connections, you will have seen the “All Eyes on Rafah” post. People should care about civilians being killed in war, no matter the people, no matter the war. I certainly do. The images from Gaza, as from any war zone, are heart-wrenching. Standing up for both Palestinians and Israelis is a display of humanity. I have an objection to selective outrage, however - to people who have never written or posted about the hostages, about Israeli girls being raped, about Boko Haram, about Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Syria, Yemen and so on, posturing when Jews are involved, enthusiastically spreading propaganda. Worse are those who never post about politics at all now being in a state of fury at, frankly, the wrong people. I follow one woman who, for years, has only ever posted recipes and yet this week, she is mad at Israel. One wonders where her eyes were on October 7th, not to mention that “All Eyes on Rafah” does not hold Hamas accountable for what is happening. Make no mistake, every death in Gaza, every death in this conflict, is on them. They use their own children as human shields. Do you really care about Palestinians if you cannot acknowledge this, if you do not call for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages? The war would end if those last two things were to happen.

Any better future - for the region, for Gazans, for Israelis - demands that Hamas’ power be dismantled. Any morally serious person who claims to care about Palestinians should want Hamas destroyed. People say you can’t dismantle an ideology, and while that is true, you can destroy that ideology’s military power and governing structure, which is not a small thing. (See: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And remember that the enormous number of dead civilians in that war were entirely, no ifs ands or buts, on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Yes, even when Allied bombs killed them. Such is war.)

So many people on my contact list who have published this drivel are female - possibly because I follow more women than men, but also, I think, because so many women want to appear virtuous, cool, in with their friends. They want approval. It’s pathetic, actually, and as I have asked before, is this what feminism hath wrought? Honestly, I think both evolutionary biology and dreadful education play huge roles in the women-as-sheep syndrome. I see so bloody much of it, especially among young women. They have a lot of rage, which I get - I was a young woman once and I remember that - but their focus is off. Way off.

Another matter is that news coming from Gazan officials (i.e., Hamas and Iranian officials) has time and time again been proven wrong. The initial accusation - that Israel deliberately bombed civilians in Rafah - has been proven untrue. Same with the Shifa Hospital, the overall casualty numbers (which the UN has quietly walked back), the aid massacre, mass graves, deliberate starvation - all of these allegations fell apart under examination but that did not stop people from parroting them. Would it be worth considering that the useful idiots out there are providing fuel for Hamas with their noxious antisemitism? One could conclude that many would rather believe murderers and rapists than believe Jews. As a famous Jew once said: Seeing they see not and hearing they hear not.

I agree with them on one matter, though: we should have eyes on Rafah, as the IDF has discovered over 700 tunnel shafts there, several dead hostages and two living ones (so far), enormous munition storages (placed next to civilian homes) and also senior Hamas officials (so bravely hiding out among the civilians). Would it be impolite to ask why senior Hamas leaders were holding their important planning meetings (aka, “How to kill more Jews”) and their deadly weapons in what they insist was nothing but a refugee camp? So yes, we ought to look at Rafah. Happy to read this morning that the IDF now controls the corridor between Gaza and Egypt, an area that had previously been used to smuggle weapons and people.

(Good piece here from Brendan O’Neill about Rafah and the evils of Hamas. Another from Matti Friedman about media coverage. The latter is from 2020, but every bit as fitting today.)

[Enrico David Di Veroli. Italian Jew murdered at Auschwitz. Victim of an actual genocide. One of many “stumbling stones” or pietre d’inciampo in Rome’s Jewish quarter. Photo: Rondi Adamson, 2019]

So there’s my wee rant, and what I really wanted to write about today is poor grammar and non-existent words. I am a language teacher in my other life and it has been making me bonkers these past few weeks hearing half-wit protesters use “genocide” as a verb. I have heard “genocided” and “genociding.” Lizzo referred to people “being genocided” in her insane anti-Israel video - she is trying to stay relevant, I guess. Oh, for the love of God! Make it stop! Telling lies is bad enough. Must you make up fake words in order to do so? First of all, Israel is not committing genocide. The only act of or attempt at genocide in this whole sorry tragedy is what Hamas did on October 7th. Israel has successfully moved nearly a million people away from the war zone in Rafah and routinely contacts civilians - either individually or via pamphlets - to help them escape harm. (Remember when Hitler did that? No? Right. He didn’t. Because he was committing genocide.) Second, “to genocide” is not a verb. Please do not turn it into one. It grates as much as “dialogue” being turned into a verb. We need to dialogue. No, we don’t. We might need to talk, or even have a conversation. Or, at the limit, have a dialogue, though I still think dialogue is what you find in a script. Anyway, I’ve decided to write a piece at a later date all about language that we maul, mangle, make up and overuse - I have a working list.

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I am convinced, more than ever, that we - the contemporary West - no longer want wars to be properly won. I think that conviction gets intensified when it comes to Israel. But I don’t think we want the U.S. to win wars (see: the abandonment of Afghanistan) and sadly, I think we have given up on Ukraine. Zelensky gave a speech about a month ago in which he used almost exactly those words. One despairs.