The Luxury of Performative Moralism
We used to say Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East.
And the reason wasn’t just that it’s a democracy, but also because of its unusual tolerance toward government opposition, something unmatched anywhere else in the region.
But this tolerance should no longer be compared to the Middle East at all; it belongs to an entirely different league and should be measured on a global scale.
Last night in Tel Aviv, protesters against the continuation of the war, who are essentially against Netanyahu’s rule, were marching while holding photos of dead Gazan children.
How many countries in the world would allow something like this?
That a country is at war with a force sworn to show no mercy to any part of its population, and yet some of its own citizens march holding photos of the victims on the other side, demanding that war should stop immediately?
As some would say, even in today’s America this wouldn’t be possible, because under the current U.S. administration, many people don’t dare to demonstrate in favor of Palestine.
Because they believe that the U.S. government doesn’t know how to distinguish between Hamas supporters and those who simply grieve for Gaza’s children, or it deliberately chooses not to.
The Israeli left suffers from a kind of complicated naïveté. It has been proven hundreds of times that when Palestinian militants gain the chance for violence, they make no distinction between a Jew who mourns Gaza’s children and a Jew who doesn’t care about anyone in Gaza. Both are killed just the same. October 7 showed this clearly: Hamas attacked a music festival filled with exactly the kind of people considered “sympathetic” to Gaza. And yet no lesson is learned, that for this crowd of terrorists, gestures of morality and humanity are entirely irrelevant.
Because for them, the only acceptable Jew is one who is either dead or is displaced thousands of kilometers away.
Sometimes the left claims they aren’t seeking Palestinian friendship at all, and that their compassion for Gazan children comes from pure moral concern: “Even if they are evil, we must not become evil in fighting them.” As though there’s an option where you can fight one of the most brutal forces of the era and still remain untouched, morally “clean.” But in reality, that option does not exist. Sure, there are regulations you can follow, but even following them won’t keep you from getting your hands dirty. The only real choice is simple: defend yourself violently, or don’t, and let the terrorists do whatever they want to you.
And once you choose to defend yourself, there is no further choice about whether you get “dirty” or not. This fantasy of “fighting the savages and staying Mother Teresa” is childish naïveté. But in the current Israeli society, people are free to display this naïveté openly and even take moral pride in it. In Tel Aviv, they are exercising a level of freedom that would be considered premium-plus in most other countries around the world, while the country is at war in seven fronts. – Afshin Azad
The Ummah Against Allah
No one is as disobedient to Allah’s commands as Muslims themselves.
Allah’s expectation from a Muslim is simple: perform amal salih—righteous deeds. You’ll find it on nearly every page of the Quran.
An amal salih is any act that divides time into before you and after you.
If you fund the construction of a new faculty building on a university campus, something has happened that wouldn’t have happened without you. The university now exists in two states: before you and after you (assuming, of course, that the building improves the university for everyone, which it would if the university functions properly). Someone who truly understands this framework doesn’t care whose name ends up engraved above the building’s entrance.
In Syria, however, those who have seized power spend every single day taking revenge on one minority or another for their perceived ties to the Assad regime: one day the Kurds, another the Alawites, and today the Druze. Punishing hundreds of thousands because a tiny fraction among them once benefited from the old regime is, in itself, an immense act of evil. But Syria doesn’t even debate this most basic moral question.
What matters there is this: “Anyone who collaborated with the old regime must not be allowed to live unpunished.”
To side with a butcher like Assad because he happened to favor your tribe, or even to wish for his regime’s survival for the same reason, is the “gray zone,” and in their view, it’s worse than being the butcher himself.
But an amal salih would be for those in power to declare a general amnesty, forgiving those in the gray zone who insulated themselves from others’ suffering under Assad’s rule. That’s the kind of act that changes history. That’s what could have split the Middle East into “before” and “after” under a new ruler who chose forgiveness.
But Muslims see such a person as a fool. They believe that if you let those who didn’t oppose the previous regime “get away with it,” you’re weak. And they don’t want to be weak.
For the Muslim mind, the foundation of thought is cunning in power, not wisdom in righteous acts. And the way Muslim’s think and act is infinitely more humiliating for Allah, than wearing a t-shirt that says: “Allah is Lesbian”. – Afshin Azad and Yusof Ruyanfar
The Epstein Island of Antisemites
The only reason the girl is alive is because, when the Palestinians attacked the music festival she was attending and started massacring everyone’s kids, she pretended to be dead. And that is how she survived. Unlike many other survivors, instead of sinking into depression or committing suicide, she decided the best thing she could do was continue pursuing music and singing.
Now she’s competing in Eurovision, and they show up waving Palestinian flags to protest her inclusion. As if their real wish was that she hadn’t survived. As if they wanted her dead, or at least wished she had killed herself. And they’re doing it under the flag of the same people who came to kill her on October 7.
This level of audacity, this celebration of cruelty, isn’t acceptable in any other context on Earth except under the umbrella of antisemitism.
And that’s exactly why the Israel–Palestine war will never end: because the world doesn’t want it to end.
While it’s ongoing, it provides a legal, socially sanctioned outlet for “permitted audacity.” Why would anyone who enjoys being openly vicious and antisemitic ever want to destroy that outlet?
Imagine there’s an island where sex with children is legal. Do you think the people who go there regularly would ever expose it? Of course not. In fact, such an island did exist for America’s wealthy elite, and it only came to light because one of the victims exposed it.
No one willingly destroys their own special privilege.
Antisemitism gives the world permission to be shameless, guilt-free, and cruel in public. That privilege is too intoxicating to ever give up. – Sohrab Asemaanparast