Bari Weiss: ‘History has come for Israel, it’s come for Ukraine and it will come for the West next’
Weiss is known for her coverage of anti-Semitism in America, and calling out its manifestations is one of the things she’s best known for. Her first book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, published in 2019, was spurred by the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh the previous year. But when we met in New York in 2021, long before the Hamas massacre of October 7, Weiss had told me that, as an American Jew, she’d always felt she could hold her head up high, in contrast to those of us in the Old World. “I had an arrogance, a sense that, you know, anti-Semitism was for Jews of other times, certainly, but also other places. And I remember reading about things that would happen, and places, especially like France, and thinking that could never happen here. I have been disabused of that idea.”Fury over ‘sickening’ LRB article saying Israel leverages Shoah to ‘slaughter children’
The America that has roiled and reared up since Trump, since the Black Lives Matter movement swept over, and since October 7, has illuminated a new reality for Jews in the US. Weiss explains: “When we’re free, when freedom and liberty thrive, Jews thrive. Because, by their very existence, Jews represent the freedom to think differently, the freedom to believe differently, the freedom to raise their families differently. What we’re seeing now is a turn against freedom. In the grand sense, there’s the turn against the idea, even of the free world and [there’s this] kind of moral equivalency, whether it’s from the Leftists who glorify Hamas, or Rightists like Tucker Carlson [who] glorify tyrants like Putin.
“It’s also coming internally from… elite culture here in the States. I’m sure it’s the same in the UK, where the ability to discern between free and unfree, good and bad, and better and worse, seems to have been erased. The fact that there are whole realms of American life where in order to succeed you kind of need to tamp down or hide your Jewishness is a sign of that.”
Weiss went on a trip to Israel in January with young producers from the Free Press. As well as having drinks with Douglas Murray, she interviewed Lucy Aharish, Israel’s first Muslim-Arab presenter, married to Fauda star Tzachi Halevy, who is Jewish, and held an event in Jaffa with Natan Sharansky, the human-rights activist and former Soviet prisoner, to whom Alexei Navalny began writing in prison. I ask her what she’d like to happen in Israel in the medium term, but she scoffs at the question, because she feels it’s none of her business.
“The thing that really struck me [about the Israel trip] was the clarity, on the right and left, like, we know what we’re fighting for. We know what’s at stake. We know how thin the fence is that separates civilisation from barbarism. And I think if you ask most Americans, even many plugged-in Americans, a question like, ‘Would you fight for America? What are you willing to die for?’ I don’t even think they would have the capacity.
“Many people, especially many of our elites, well, there’s no sense of duty and responsibility. Leaving Israel [was] walking back into a society that I don’t think has fully recognised the history that has come for Israel and has come for Ukraine, and maybe will soon come from Taiwan, will come for us. How can you even conceive of war if you don’t even understand what it is that people are willing to fight and die for? And what are you willing to fight and die for?” Weiss’s coverage of October 7 in the Free Press has largely reflected her stance of staunch support for Israel’s response and the moral importance of its fight for survival, especially in the face of global condemnation.
For well-to-do Jews, Mishra argues, the Holocaust and an affiliation to the Jewish State, “turned into a badge of identity and moral rectitude”.Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech condemned by Son of Saul director: ‘He should have stayed silent’
Now the essayist argues that “Gaza has become for countless powerless people the essential condition of political and ethical consciousness in the 21st century [...] it seems that only those jolted into consciousness by the calamity of Gaza can rescue the Shoah from Netanyahu, Biden, Scholz and Sunak."
Mishra goes on: “Many of the protesters who fill the streets of their cities week after week have no immediate relation to the European past of the Shoah. They judge Israel by its actions in Gaza rather than its Shoah-sanctified demand for total and permanent security.”
The piece has drawn widespread derision from Jewish figures. Writing in The Times, JC columnist, Hadley Freedman, noted “the left-wing intelligentsia only tries this kind of provocative thought experiment with Jews”. The JC’s Anshel Pfeffer tweeted, “There [are] plenty of ways of criticising Israel over the war in Gaza but writing 8000 words lecturing Jews that they are like Nazis and anyway the Holocaust actually wasn’t so special so they should stop obsessing about it says more about this pseud than it does about Israelis or Jews.”
Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, wrote that the essay demonstrated the major challenge of “Holocaust inversion, especially when turned against Jews in conjunction with sickening blood libels.”
Political correspondent, Lahav Harkov, called the article “disgusting”, and said the writer’s use of “the concept of the Holocaust as a ‘universal reference point’ is part of the problem [...] It led to the idea that the Holocaust was not unique, and was also some kind of purifying experience from which Jews were ennobled and therefore supposed to behave a certain way”.
The argument over the LRB front page is the latest in a history of controversy between the journal and the Jewish state.
On 18 October, LRB published a letter signed by hundreds of writers which condemned Israel but failed to mention the October 7 massacre. The letter claimed, “The State of Israel commits serious crimes against humanity” and accused Israel of “genocide”.
The Hebrew Writers Association in Israel, representing 800 writers and artists, wrote a public letter condemning LRB for their initial response to the war. The group then denounced LRB when they failed to respond to their letter.
László Nemes, the director of acclaimed film Son of Saul, has criticised The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech.This is how Hamas used Gazan journalists for the Oct. 7 massacre
Speaking at the ceremony on Sunday, Glazer said he and his producer, James Wilson, “stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”
Glazer’s words have met with both applause and opprobrium, including from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who on Monday called them “morally reprehensible”.
The ADL posted on social media: “Israel is not hijacking Judaism or the Holocaust by defending itself against genocidal terrorists. Glazer’s comments at the #Oscars are both factually incorrect & morally reprehensible. They minimise the Shoah & excuse terrorism of the most heinous kind.”
This sentiment was echoed by Nemes, who – like Glazer – won the foreign language Oscar for a film about the Holocaust; in Nemes’ case his 2015 movie Son of Saul, about a Jewish prisoner forced to work in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. US Holocaust survivors’ foundation calls Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech ‘morally indefensible’
“The Zone of Interest is an important movie,” Nemes writes. “It is not made in a usual way. It questions the grammar of cinema. Its director should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilisation, before or after the Holocaust.
“Had he embraced the responsibility that comes with a film like that, he would not have resorted to talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, at the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth.”
PEOPLE WHO HATE Jews can be journalists, but they should not be reporting about the Jewish state. Therefore, Reuters is wrong to continue paying for pictures from photojournalist Doaa Rouqa, whose social media posts, revealed by HonestReporting, have celebrated rockets fired at Israel and called Hamas’s attacks “brave resistance.” Last week, HonestReporting also revealed a disturbing social media post by Reuters Executive Editor Simon Robinson, who shared an extremely problematic essay titled “The Shoah after Gaza.”
There is also plenty of evidence of journalists collaborating with Hamas that did not come through HonestReporting.
The IDF revealed evidence that two Al Jazeera journalists were active terrorists in Hamas. Mohammed Wishnah held a senior role in the terrorist group’s anti-tank unit and taught young jihadis how to fire anti-tank missiles and make incendiary devices. Ismail Abu Omar was found to have accompanied Hamas terrorists into Israel on Oct. 7, going to Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Gaza-based journalist Muthana Al-Najjar entered Israel on Oct. 7 and shocked Israelis with his stand-up to camera reports from Kibbutz Nahal Oz as gunshots were heard in the background. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet to make him identifiable as a member of the press, and clearly did not feel under threat from the Hamas terrorists in his midst.
Al-Najjar filmed the kidnapping of terrified Shiri Bibas and her small children, Ariel and Kfir, instead of trying to save their lives. He also shared a picture showing two of the terrorists triumphantly stepping on the body of a murdered Israeli, with a comment translated from Arabic: “Their dead under the feet of the warriors of al-Qassam Brigades.”
While Al-Najjar actively knew he was part of a Hamas plan, others listed here might not have. But the line in the Hamas document that Dayan revealed says clearly that the terrorist organization intended to take advantage of journalists, and on Oct. 7 it did just that.
After HonestReporting asked questions about the Gazan photojournalists, reporters from media outlets that we put on the defensive interviewed me and asked what evidence we had. When I honestly – and perhaps foolishly – replied that we had merely raised questions and did not claim to have answers, I was attacked personally and falsely portrayed as if I had backtracked and undermined my organization’s report.
Ilana Dayan’s report and the others mentioned here answer the questions and validate the work that HonestReporting is doing as a media watchdog. We asked legitimate questions, and now the answers are out there.