When will you stop turning the other cheek?

As I write these words, a blend of sadness and melancholy grips me. Just like a friend who tries over and over to save his friends from the lure of booze, only to see them sink deeper and deeper into alcoholism, I feel grief and desperation at Israel’s apparent surrender first to the Biden Administration, and, perhaps, ultimately to Hamas.

I feel desperation that the once proud and defiant State of Israel, rather than devastating the Ayatollah’s after being directly attacked by hundreds of missiles, sees the fortuitous fact that the attack failed as a triumph.

I feel desperation at the sight of Sabra Jews reverting to the tragic Jewish habit of doing almost everything to please and pacify Gentiles.

Since I am a Gentile myself, allow me to let you in on a couple of painful truths:

Stop trying to please us, stop showing how good, kind, compassionate you are, because your goodness, kindness, and compassion is what triggers us most.

Of course, in public, we will claim that it’s beautiful that you build so many hospitals, endow so many universities, and help the poor and oppressed all over the place.

But deep down, we can’t stand it, because your goodness makes you look like better Christians than we and our ancestors ever were.

The reason we are eager to label your actions in Gaza as “genocide” is not because we really think what you are doing or want to do is genocide. If that were the case, we would rescue the so-called “genocide victims” to safety in Egypt, Sweden, or Ireland - or anywhere else.

The reason we accuse you of genocide is because we really wish your people and your religion were guilty of the same barbarism we and our histories are.

That is also why we toss around the term “Holocaust in Gaza” so eagerly against Israel and the Jewish people. And ignorance is not the problem. Believe me, Holocaust education, the way it’s done today, just aggravates the problem. That is the reason why generally, the less young people know about their ancestors’ complicity in the Holocaust, the milder their anti-Israel feelings.

A couple of decades ago I was watching images of carnage and destruction in Gaza, and cursed the Jews. This reaction shocked me. After all, I had spent wonderful months in Israel, spoke Hebrew, and knew well that the people Israel wanted to eliminate were terrorists.

Probing my thoughts, I then remembered that three days earlier I had watched a documentary in which a Jewish-Italian historian pretty persuasively argued that on the whole, Italians betrayed their Jewish neighbors after 1937.

I felt guilt, I felt shame, and as a result, was more than happy to vent my frustration at Israel to relieve myself.

Young, college-educated Americans today are not motivated by Holocaust guilt to be anti-Israel. As long as they viewed America as a Promised Land and cherished its Manifest Destiny, they were the most welcoming Gentiles the Jewish nation has ever known.

But then, educated Americans were submerged in feelings of guilt and shame. And since it is too late to return the 50 states to the Native Americans; since it is too late to erase the stain of slavery from American history; and since it’s too late to make amends for military adventures overseas, the easiest way to relieve historical shame and guilt is to denounce American aid and support for the world’s only Jewish state.

Much has been said and written about the role of Arab money and Arab students in recent college chaos. But the sad truth is that the problem is not limited to a few foreign students.

The images we see from American campuses suggest that the whole spectrum of beneficiaries of affirmative action are behind this anti-Israel hatred. Liberal American Jews are particularly shocked and appalled by the fact that “underprivileged” and “oppressed” communities are now cheerleading Hamas.

But this is not surprising to anyone familiar with human nature. During World War II, my grandmother’s family, which owned a restaurant in rural Italy, helped a family unable to feed its many children. After the war, this kindness was never forgiven either by the parents nor by their children.

The minorities American Jews mobilized to help, are showing how deeply they resented your help. This resentment is magnified by the fact that many recipients of Jewish kindness know that, unlike their Jewish mentors and benefactors, they don’t owe their positions and opportunities to character and intelligence.

The whole DEI agenda that liberal Jews were so instrumental in promoting has been weaponized against Jews, precisely because it is inherently hostile to meritocracy. And any place where birthright trumps merit, eventually kicks out Jews.

So, dear American Jews, please stop pretending you’re underdogs, that you have to “talk truth to power,” and that your security and fate in America is intimately tied to that of inner-city residents or immigrant sharecroppers. It’s not.

You are now sociologically “white” and part of the elites. And being part of America’s elites involves loyalty and gratitude to the values that allowed you to flourish in the Goldene Medina: fairplay, individualism, and meritocracy.

The last six months should wake you up to the sober truth that when these three basic values of the American way of life are undermined, Jews are the first to find themselves in the garbage can.

But I also have an urgent message for Israelis: Annihilate the Ayatollahs. If you don’t, you might as well pack your bags and move to Patagonia or Poland.

Annihilating the Ayatollahs doesn’t mean launching a massive conventional attack. That won’t work, just like it hasn’t really worked in either Lebanon or Gaza. Annihilating the Ayatollahs means making sure that Operation Samson is deployed before, not after, the Jewish State is destroyed.

After arguing for a preventative nuclear attack against the Ayatollahs in an article title "The Fearless Operation Needed to Thwart another Shoah”, the three main objections I received were:

1) We cannot do it because America opposes it

Friends, remember that America also opposed the Osirak Raid against Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor and that America would have also opposed Israel’s successful strikes in June, 1967. Also, remember that the stronger and safer Israel is, the greater an asset you are for America. And finally, bear in mind that once a preventive nuclear strike against Iran topples the Ayatollahs and ushers a reformist pro-Western government in Iran, both America and its allies in the Middle East will be immensely indebted to Israel.

Even Biden's threats to allow the International Criminal Court to indict Israel's Prime Minister are a pathetic bluff. Netanyahu should have no qualms about informing Biden that once he is on trial in The Hague, he will immediately demand that the highest American, British and French government officials testify about their wartime decisions. And as soon as this happens, it will be more than obvious that the White House, the Élysée Palace and Downing Street have to answer for far more "war crimes" in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and Mali than does Israel in the Gaza Strip.

2) We cannot do it because the European Union, Russia, and China oppose it

The European Commission is composed of craven, spineless, and characterless bureaucrats who do and know next to nothing apart from murmuring politically-correct platitudes and wasting taxpayer money. When Israel single-handedly topples the Ayatollahs, and is in a position to intimidate nations on three continents, do you seriously believe that Ms. Von der Leyen and her colleagues will do more than release another strongly-worded statement calling on all parties in the Middle East “to de-escalate tensions”?

Of course, Russia and China will both be incensed at the fact that Israel has deprived them of a friendly regime in Iran. But since neither country can retaliate against Israel without also destroying itself, their sensitivities should not deter Israel from securing its survival.

3) Diaspora Jews oppose it

Diaspora Jews are in an increasingly vulnerable position. In both America and Europe, rising Muslim numbers increasingly jeopardize their safety and future. Thus, it will be tempting for Jewish Diaspora leaders to try to buy time and quiet by making Israel pay the price for the safety of their communities. But this is a short-sighted Faustian bargain, because history proves that Israel is the ultimate guarantor of Jewish security. Israel should therefore ignore Diaspora Jewish voices trying to buy peace and quiet at the cost of Israel’s survival.

It may well be that Israel’s elimination of the Ayatollah regime stokes a wave of anti-Jewish violence in Western Europe and America strong enough to boost aliya numbers significantly. Nevertheless, this development should not be unwelcome since it will strengthen the Jewish majority between the River and the Sea, and prevent assimilation in the Diaspora from further eroding the world’s Jewish population.

In other words, dear Jews and dear Israelis, please stop turning the other cheek.

Sundry Thoughts over Pesach

1) Too many Israelis and Diaspora Jews fret over the “PR catastrophe” of the last six months, blaming Netanyahu and his government for destroying Israel’s reputation. The real mistake Israel committed was taking over six months to destroy an enemy that should have been destroyed in six weeks. Israel didn’t do so, since the civilian casualty count would have been higher. Given the zero credit the world gives Israel for its care and given that charges of committing genocide just mount, Israel’s humanitarian ethos has proved self-destructive.

News of Yahya Sinwar walking the streets of Gaza with impunity, if true, just proves that by being compassionate to the wicked, Israel will be wicked to the compassionate. Indeed, Hamas' resilience will just strengthen Islamists in the region, a development that is particularly regrettable given that their prestige and popularity in the Arab and Muslim world prior to October 7th was clearly on the retreat.

2) Mrs. Pelosi’s denunciation of Israel’s Prime Minister is beyond disgraceful. President Trump got roasted for saying that there were “very fine people on both sides” after the Charlottesville demonstrations. Yet what Pelosi has just done to an ally reeling from the greatest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust is akin to asking African-Americans to stop murdering Whites in the wake of Dylann Roof’s massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston.

3) The mounting American pressure on Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas might give the impression that Israel is more vulnerable than ever. The truth is that the Biden Administration is in a far more vulnerable position. The Democratic Party faces a serious fissure between anti-American antisemitic woke activists and the sane mainstream Americans it needs to draw to the polls. Rather than giving in to Biden and to moral nullities like Schumer and Pelosi, Israel’s leaders must speak out with one voice and clearly state that Israeli lives matter more than the anti-Israel hatred of voters in Dearborn and Berkeley.

In an open confrontation with the White House, Biden will lose: Sanctioning Israel would amount to siding with Hamas. And despite what the the Washington Post and the New York Times would have you believe, mainstream America still respects Netanyahu and Israel far more than Hamas cheerleaders like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and AOC.

Rafael Castrograduated from Yale and Hebrew University. A Noahide by choice, Rafael can be reached at [email protected]