Genocide Is Evil

But Substack's antisemitic caucus allows an exception for the Zionist Entity

Just delete the second not and the lie becomes truth…

---

It pains me to say that Substack has become a safe space for the most crude and loathsome forms of antisemitism. Things have gotten so bad that I find myself tempted to call for a virtual purge of these creeps who parade their bigotry, hatred and bloodlust on this platform. But no: Out of respect for freedom of speech and for reasons of moral hygiene it’s necessary to share this space with people whom Frau Goebbels would have been pleased to invite to tea. We need to know who and what they are.

Take, for instance, Australia’s gift to postmodern fascism, Caitlin Johnstone, who has hit upon what she doubtless believes to be a devilishly clever way of sanitizing her hatred of Jews: It’s a free speech issue!

Zionism is the single greatest threat to free speech in the western world. Israel and its supporters. They’re coming for our rights. They’re not even hiding it.

Even my saying this will probably get my name on another list in the Israeli government and/or the Australian government, but just the fact that this is something I have to worry about now proves that what I am saying is correct. There is absolutely nothing on earth that poses a more immediate threat to our right to free expression than Israel and its supporters.

Johnstone exploited the Bondi Beach massacre as an opportunity to flip the script, claiming in effect that those wicked Zionists were using dead Jews as an excuse to silence her. Like the equally egregious Tucker Carlson, Caitlin is “just asking questions,” you see. And how dare anyone venture to note that she’s playing the victim to deflect attention from the sickness that corrodes her soul?

Needless to say, no one is trying to shut Caitlin Johnstone up. The sheer volume of rhetorical sewage that she pumps out on Substack and elsewhere is proof enough of that. Jews and Zionism, she declares, are the font and focus of evil in the modern world. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Gazans, the Iranian ayatollahs, Maduro and, of course, Caitlin herself are the real victims.

Johnstone is perhaps the most vile and prolific Substack antisemite, but she’s far from the only one. They’re always easy to spot. The self-described “antizionist” who claims to have nothing against the Jews but is merely a critic of Israel gives the game away the moment he or she drops the word genocide. The narrative goes something like this: The nefarious Bibi Netanyahu and his cronies knew in advance that Hamas was planning a pogrom in southern Israel. And those monstrous Zionists let it happen—just to provide an excuse to launch a genocidal campaign against the Gazan Palestinians. For instance:

It's not antisemitic to be against the actions of the regime in Israel. They are committing genocide against Palestinians. I don't support Hamas either, but Israel had behaved abominably. Bombing and starving civilians, including thousands of children. Collecting and storing tissues from dead Palestinians. Truly immoral.

There are several tells in the above passage. The democratically elected government of Israel is characterized as a “regime.” The writer claims not to support Hamas, but all of her detailed condemnation focuses on the supposed atrocities perpetrated by Israel, which has “behaved abominably.”

There’s just one problem with these charges of atrocities and genocide: It’s all a pack of lies, as demonstrated by the casualty figures released by Hamas itself.

According to Hamas, the war it started has claimed the lives of 68,800 Gazans, 25,000 of whom were Hamas fighters. That leaves about 44,000 dead, 10,000 of whom expired of natural causes. Subtracting them leaves 34,000 civilians either killed by Israel or killed by Hamas and other terrorist groups militant groups—executed, victims of friendly fire, etc. In short, the figures supplied by Hamas itself show that in its conduct of the Gaza War, the IDF’s civilian-to-terrorist death rate is close to 1:1—an extraordinary achievement in a battle fought over urban terrain, in which typically the civilian death toll can greatly exceed military casualties.

If you call that genocide, you’re a liar. And why are you lying about it? Because you’re an antisemite.

Over and over, the charges of genocide and war crimes hurled at Israel by the antizionists have been decisively rebutted. Remember that famine in Gaza? It never happened. Remember that hospital that Israel supposedly destroyed? It wasn’t destroyed; what happened was that a rocket fired by one of Gaza’s resident Islamofascist terrorist groups struck the hospital’s parking lot. Remember all those wild-eyed charges that the IDF was carpet bombing Gaza? Another lie.

Earlier, I mentioned the Bondi Beach massacre. That atrocity supplied Substack’s antisemitic caucus with another opportunity to spread its lies. There was this, for example:

A gentle reminder, Gaza has suffered the equivalent of 42,500 Bondi terrorist attacks or 212 September 11s.

If 16 dead Australians and 3,200 dead Americans was a “national tragedy” for both respective nations, then what do you call this?

Do you get why the Israelis want to whitewash the genocide and hide the numbers under the rubble?

My not-so-gentle reminder to the individual who wrote this: Hamas started the Gaza War and fought it in such a way as to maximize civilian casualties, whereas the IDF did everything it could to minimize civilian casualties. That’s a fact. And I believe that you know it’s a fact. Yet still you lie.

Another theme of the Jew bashers is the illegitimacy of Israel. This owes something to postmodern colonialist theorizing, which supplies an intellectual gloss, though it’s been an antisemitism theme since the foundation of the Jewish state. In its present form, this theme portrays Zionism as a form of fascism and the Jews of Israel are cast as white settler-colonialists, oppressing indigenous brown people. All this is nonsense. But it’s an issue of such importance to antizionists/antisemites that their opposition to genocide embodies one exception: the Zionist Entity, which must be destroyed. But when I asked one purveyor of this idea precisely who was going to destroy the Jewish state, I got this bizarre comeback:

Who’s going to destroy the vile state of Zionism? It’s going to fall apart under its own weight of rape, pedophilia, self hatred psychopathy and hatred for the rest of the world. Israel runs on hate,

Israeli Jews are already desperate for a second passport and are fleeing like rats from the “rape capital” of the world.

Ah yes, Jews = rats. A person with a head full of hatred like that might be dismissed as mental patient, a lunatic, crazy as a junkyard rat. But Mr. Genocide is Evil is no outlier. He has plenty of company on Substack. And his screed illustrates a larger point: that antisemitism deranges all those who succumb to it. They become incapable of processing facts or perceiving reality. No slur or slander against Israel or the Jews, however fantastic, is too much for them. They’ll believe—and repeat—anything.

I began by saying that out of respect for freedom of speech and for reasons of moral hygiene, I’m opposed to banning such people from Substack. But their evil deeds can’t be ignored either. Who these people are and what they think deserve, indeed require, exposure and condemnation. Sorry Caitlin, if you feel persecuted.

These days, there’s a lot of talk from Democrats and progressives about the vital necessity of defending “our democracy.” Well and good. But many of the people who shoot this line are the same people who, to a greater or lesser extent, are implicated in the horrific upsurge of antisemitism in America since 10/7/2023. Ilhan Omar belongs to the Democratic Party. She’s a member of Congress. And she’s a rabid antisemite. How can she, or the people who tolerate her inclusion in their ranks, be taken seriously as defenders of democracy—here on Substack or anywhere?