Stones on my Chest

I’m asking for your forgiveness in advance for whatever self-pity comes out in this post. This is the last thing I want to write about but it’s the only thing I’m thinking about so I feel as though I don’t really have a choice but to get it out. The simple fact is, I feel heartbroken and I don’t know how to express it or where to put it. The world is breaking my heart right now. Maybe yours, too. Maybe that’s just what the world does and I was too naïve or privileged to know.

For years, Parker Molloy, a trans friend of mine (who, by the way, has a terrific Substack) has been posting on Twitter about how exhausted she is dealing with people questioning her right to exist. I’ve tried to support her, to listen, and to sympathize. Black friends have spent their entire lives dealing with similar nonsense from those who would have them shut up and sit down. From conflicts across the globe, we hear the sentiment echoed again and again: “Why doesn’t anybody care about us?” All of them heartbroken in different circumstances and for different reasons, but all of them heartbroken.

My own heartbreak doesn’t compare to theirs. Nobody wants me dead (although I don’t trust Tom Hanks and never have). Nobody is expelling me from my home or my community. Nobody is bombing my local hospital. Nobody is massacring my friends at an outdoor music festival. My heartbreak does not compare and I don’t want to say it does. But it’s heartbreak nonetheless, and it hurts.

I don’t pretend to have an answer for what’s going on in the Middle East but I know that the hatred out there - towards both sides - isn’t progressing us towards a solution. I know that the world is, once again, turning its eyes towards Jews with suspicion and, sometimes, hatred. I know that my sympathies are more with the Palestinians caught up in circumstances beyond their control than it is towards the Israelis who are exacting a collective punishment against a cabal of murderous thugs who aren’t even in the place where that punishment is taking place. For what it’s worth, I hope Israel pulls a Munich on them, and soon.

I also know that, despite my sympathies for the Palestinian cause, I cannot abide those who would cheer on the actions of Hamas. Nor can I entirely condemn Israel for needing to do something in reprisal. For days, people have been screaming on Twitter that I’m “condoning genocide” because I, correctly, stated that some of the people marching in these pro-Palestinian demonstrations stand with Hamas. Social media trolls don’t normally bother me too much, but these do. The progressive left, standing in solidarity with jihadists, bother me. The thinly veiled antisemitism from so many of them bothers me. No, it doesn’t bother me and I should stop staying that it does - it breaks my heart.

I’ve been told I’m on the wrong side of history, that I’m no better than a murderer myself. I’ve been told I’m complicit in killing babies. I’ve been told that Hamas didn’t rape anybody and, if they did, it was probably just a few. I’ve been told not to get too bent out of shape over the 1,200 Jews killed in an afternoon because most of them were soldiers (not true). I’ve been told the true figure is probably more like 600, as if 600 dead Jews is an acceptable number. I’ve been called every name imaginable.

I know social media isn’t the world. But the world is the world, and the view isn’t much lovelier out there. The protests are ugly, histrionic, occasionally violent. As others have pointed out, where are these protests against the Yemeni War, in which Muslims are killing Muslims. Where were they over the Syria Civil War? Where were they when Iraq and Iran were at each other’s throats. It’s only now, when Jews are fighting Muslims, that people come pouring into the streets. What do I make of that? What conclusion should I draw? What conclusion would any Jew draw?

It's too simple to blame everything on antisemitism, and I don’t. I understand that, to many, Israel is simply another occupying power propped up by American money. They equate the struggles there to the struggles here, powerful interests keeping their boot on the neck of an oppressed minority. It’s simplistic and it’s incomplete. The parallels aren’t that neat, and they aren’t entirely apt.

At the same time, Elon Musk is parroting Great Replacement Theory and a antisemitic preacher named James Hagee is somehow allowed to speak at a pro-Israel rally in Washington DC. The leading Republican presidential candidate dined with an avowed white nationalist and his bi-polar Black buddy. Tik-Tokkers are apparently “re-evaluating” Osama bin Laden. Synagogues are being desecrated. How long before real violence erupts, again, against Jews? I know the same thing is going on in Muslim communities.

Why are we so stupid? Why are we so easily led by the nose? Why are we so ready to pick up pitchforks? Why is there so little patience for a message of empathy, patience, and kindness? What are we doing to each other?

Last night I had a dream in which a drunken policeman took off in his car while another cop watched. I asked him, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you stopping him?” The cop just kind of laughed at me because in the town of my dreams, certain people did what they wanted and the rest of us were left to deal with the mess. I tried to reason with him but he ignored me. I don’t know. Maybe I should be ignored. I just feel very old right now, and foolish. And heartbroken.