Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at the City University of New York (CUNY).
(JNS) On Columbus Day, Jewish Voice for Peace held a demonstration outside of the New York Stock Exchange. The group was mainly led by women cheerleaders there to scream their usual chants: “Free, Free Palestine,” “Stop arming Israel,” “Jews say stop arming Israel.”
Many of these protesters were not masked, unlike at other such rallies. One can only surmise their reasoning. Perhaps they are so proud of what they’re doing that they want photographs of themselves or maybe they want to be arrested to become martyrs for the Gaza cause.
This begs the question: Are JVP members totally out of touch with reality?
During the last year, at least 26,000 rockets, missiles and drones have been launched at civilians in Israel from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. In the last year, more than 1,700 Israelis have been murdered by Islamists, among them 888 civilians, 740 soldiers and 75 police officers. More than 100 of the 251 people—many of them civilians—taken on Oct. 7 are still being held hostage in Gaza.
In the past few days, Hezbollah and Iran have launched thousands of projectiles into north and central Israel, wounding some 70 civilians and murdering at least four soldiers. And hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians have been displaced from both the south and the north of the country since last October.
JVP, one of many anti-Zionist hate groups, doesn’t care about any of these facts. They join Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and other anti-Zionist elites in celebrating the murder of Jews who, in their warped view, are guilty of having oppressed and colonized the Palestinian Arabs, and who have refused to allow the Arabs in the region to have a Palestinian state.
They ignore the reality that Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005 and that the Arabs have rejected statehood time and again.
However, truth is not JVP’s objective. Controlling the narrative is, destroying both Israel and America as a goal. They rely upon the mainstream media to help them garner support by airing photos of Palestinian Arabs mourning and burying their dead, and “Pallywood”—doctored footage of children being burned alive in Gaza. At the same time, Israelis are shown mainly as combat-ready soldiers and their suffering ignored.
JVP was founded by three Jewish women at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1990s. They have not stopped since.
Wearing professionally printed red “Not in our name” and “Stop arming Israel” T-shirts, the mainly white, young and even a bit athletic JVP members raced to their designated spots outside the stock exchange on Monday morning.
So, who is paying for this continuous display of anti-Israel and anti-American hatred?
According to Gerald Steinberg at NGO Monitor, in recent years, these young women have received funds from the Kaphan Foundation ($441,510); the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($340,000); Quitiplas Foundation ($200,000); Matthew G. Krane Foundation ($198,000); Open Society Policy Center ($150,000); Vivian and Paul Olum Charitable Foundation ($117,500). But let’s not forget the anonymous donor-advised funds provided between 2019-2021 through Schwab Charitable Fund ($654,233); Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund ($260,705); Morgan Stanley Global Impact ($175,600); Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($98,650); Tides Foundation ($75,000). On and on, it goes with too many foundations to list.
Jew-hatred is big business, and some Jews are actually profiting from this blood lust.
But why are so many Jewish women involved? Have they been so amorously taken with terrorists that they identify with them? Is this a gesture of appeasement? A death wish? A weird way of rejecting what they see as patriarchal Judaism by identifying with an even more patriarchal Islam?
Or, perhaps, it is a way of opting out of the freedoms of Western society or embracing the barbarian lies as a way of “going native,” and finally becoming accepted tribally.
Has Western feminism passed these young women by completely? Are they mindless not only about Jewish survival, including their own, but also about the plight of women under Sharia law? Have they learned nothing about the virtues and importance of Western post-Enlightenment thoughts and values?
I ponder these questions night and day, looking for a way out— way to understand such traitorous, dangerous and suicidal/homicidal behavior.
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Are Biden and Blinken inhabiting that same world?
It seems like a Chamberlain redux, just the American version
Biden and Blinken are actually holding Israel hostage on behalf of left-wing Democrats and in the hope this hostile, even homicidal action vis a vis Israel will help Harris win the election. They have now refused to send the minimal promised weapons to Israel until or unless Israel overcomes Hamas's profiteering stranglehold over Gazan civilians and somehow manages to deliver more aid, more food, into Gaza over and against the callous objections of Hamas.
Imagine Churchill and Roosevelt not being allowed to fight Hitler's genocidal aggression until or unless the United States began feeding the German civilian population in 1943 and 1944. Bomb Dresden? Hell no. Civilians--pretty much all Jew hating Nazis--but still, not in uniform. Did the Allies have any obligation to save their enemies or risk going down in history as the barbarians they are trying to defeat?
Imagine Churchill and Roosevelt being told to supply food and medical supplies for Japanese civilians after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Or, as Japanese soldiers were torturing, force marching, murdering captured American soldiers--should we have fed and given medical aid to those who wished to destroy America?
Why is Israel alone being forced to do so?
I am not a maven of military matters but going forward, Israel cannot depend on America for military assistance. Israel must not outsource its military needs. Israel needs other far more reliable allies.