Western Standard - November 02, 2023


'Make Genocide Great Again'


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

123.72683

Word Count

741

Sentence Count

79

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

In this episode, we discuss the growing support for genocide by the far left and right wing of the Israeli political system, and how it impacts our understanding of what it means to be a Jew in the 21st century.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Okay, well, on to a happier subject. Make genocide great again. We debated this headline at our morning meeting today. It's about the crassest headline I've ever written, but I thought it captured things.
00:00:15.540 You know, we're, we're wearing poppies right now, but remembrance, you know, we talk in terms of genocide of the Jewish people in the 20th century, never again, never forget, and we're seeing Hamas, whose founding charter is genocidal, and their every action since their founding has been genocidal.
00:00:39.540 Actually, I think we actually have a clip from representative Hamas. Let's just hear it from Hamas right now.
00:01:09.540 Okay, good.
00:01:37.540 All right. So pretty clear.
00:02:05.580 This is not about getting Israel out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
00:02:09.940 This is about getting the Jews out of the area they call Palestine, period.
00:02:14.660 And getting them out from the when they say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
00:02:18.400 That means dead. No Jews. You didn't find.
00:02:25.020 And, you know, it's cloaked in decolonial and oppression, social justice language.
00:02:35.580 The left has really unmasked itself here.
00:02:38.160 Jen Gerson at the line, I think that's the second time I quoted their columns.
00:02:41.100 She had a great, great piece on how the left has unmasked itself here.
00:02:44.680 And it's not universal.
00:02:46.880 There have been some more reasonable liberals out there who have been appalled at what they're seeing on their own side of the fence.
00:02:53.100 It's like, holy shit, guys, this is this is not us.
00:02:59.500 You know, the Jews weren't just a fashionable minority for a while.
00:03:02.940 And now we've got other more fashionable minorities.
00:03:04.700 There are people that must be protected.
00:03:07.060 But this is open support for genocide.
00:03:12.820 And it's either being a certain denialism among the domestic left in the West or among certain political conservatives being just as bad.
00:03:23.940 Actually, I'll say on social media, I've been getting it from both sides when I talk to this issue.
00:03:27.960 Oh, it's the Zionist conspiracy theory.
00:03:31.180 Those Zionists have to be wiped off the map.
00:03:33.380 It's just those Jews controlling everything.
00:03:35.080 And this is coming from crazed right wing.
00:03:37.120 So the crazed left and the right have actually found some common ground.
00:03:39.940 But that is the...
00:03:40.840 Okay, when I say far right, I mean far.
00:03:44.260 Yeah.
00:03:44.500 Right, the extreme, genuine crazies, not, you know, how we would get called far right.
00:03:53.340 There is a hundred miles of difference between us far right and their far right.
00:03:57.140 There's always room to move over.
00:03:58.620 Yeah.
00:04:00.300 But support for what Hamas is doing here is among the mainstream left.
00:04:07.220 Union bosses, academics, even politicians, usually a bit more veiled language, but supporting what's happening to some extent.
00:04:18.240 And it just seems to be a mainstreaming of support for genocidal actions or quasi-genocidal.
00:04:24.520 Like, you know, you had mobs of pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas activists going through Toronto outside of the Lanver Cafe, a chain of Jewish restaurants.
00:04:40.340 Jews that make schnitzel.
00:04:41.140 So I got to try these people out.
00:04:42.400 I actually walked by that restaurant in Toronto a couple this summer.
00:04:46.620 I really should have gone.
00:04:47.580 But also going, even protesting and threatening outside of a Jewish community center with daycares and a pool outside.
00:04:55.620 Like, it's clearly...
00:04:56.760 Students on campus.
00:04:57.280 Jewish students on campus.
00:04:57.900 This is clearly not an Israel thing.
00:04:59.500 And Israel is just another state that we think is oppressive and colonial.
00:05:02.520 It's...
00:05:03.500 They're outside the Jewish community center.
00:05:06.520 It's friggin' clear.
00:05:08.180 And we've seen this shit before.
00:05:11.680 I just don't know.
00:05:12.460 At what point did open support for pogroms and genocide become politically acceptable in Canada?
00:05:20.840 Like, when did this switch flip?
00:05:23.160 It's been a slow-growing thing, though.
00:05:24.920 We've seen the rumbles.
00:05:25.680 We've seen the outrage.
00:05:26.580 Some of us have gotten offended when you see some of these academics and some of these students over slower boil-ups.
00:05:31.700 And you'd see that language coming out.
00:05:33.180 And people have called it out.
00:05:34.540 It's been there.
00:05:35.400 It's been sitting under...
00:05:36.680 Just under the surface.
00:05:37.760 It's like Jen said.
00:05:39.300 The mask came off.
00:05:40.440 But it was always there.
00:05:41.400 And this event has just exposed their ugly faces for what they are.
00:05:46.180 And we've allowed it.
00:05:47.220 We should have nipped this in the bud decades ago.
00:05:49.560 And now it's a rot that we're seeing in front of our faces.
00:05:53.160 And it's vile.
00:05:55.400 But still, we're caught flat-footed.
00:05:56.900 We didn't realize how bad this is until it's been exposed.