A Jew and a Palestinian Walk into a Bar

How foreign adversaries strategically shape, manipulate, and use our own values against us (also, the world’s longest penis joke).

A Jew and a Palestinian walk into a bar.

In the corner, sits a one foot tall man playing the piano. The Jew and the Palestinian go up to the bartender, and they’re like, what’s with the little guy playing the piano? And the bartender’s like, there’s a genie in the bathroom, granting wishes.

So the Jew and the Palestinian run to the bathroom, and a few moments later, the whole bar fills up with GEESE! Running all around, plucking people’s eyes out, wrecking havoc, feathers a-flyin’— and the bartender sort of just laughs to himself and shakes his head— he’s seen it all too many times before.

Eventually, the Jew and the Palestinian emerge from the bathroom and the bartender’s like, you wished for world PEACE, didn’t you? And the Jew and the Palestinian sort of just look at each other, confused, and say, what? No… we just…

wanted the birds. 

I have been a Jew for as long as I can remember. The daughter of immigrants from the artist formerly known as the USSR. I know, I know, a Russian Jew in this economy? Introducing my background these days seems to be met with an expectation of a ten page disclaimer and formal apology. I was raised secular, in an atheist, democrat-voting, household, and even in comparison to most secular Jews I knew, Jewish culture played a role in my upbringing almost not at all.

My family was not a part of any Jewish organizations, I didn’t have a Bat Mitzvah, I didn’t go on birthright, there was no push to keep Jewish custom and tradition alive for the sake of custom or tradition. The closest I ever got to jewish culture in my own home was a perfunctory celebration of Hanukkah— because presents are fun and candles are pretty. Maybe a bit of Rosh Hashanah because who doesn’t like apples dipped in honey? I hear Jews love honey. Honey, I think— or was it, with an ‘m’—? Anyway—

All of this to say, I never really felt Jewish for most of my life. In fact, I often felt more like an outsider in Jewish spaces than I did among general company. To me, being Jewish wasn’t a matter of religion, culture, or even identity, it was purely a matter of biology. You’ve heard of the biological woman, now let me introduce to you the biological Jew— now with fifty percent more oppression points!

Despite their lack of interest in Jewish culture, throughout my childhood, I remember several distinct moments where, my parents, would see something on the news then promptly sit my sister and I down and give us “the talk”. No, not the birds and the bees (though as previously established Jews do, for some inexplicable reason, love birds and honey), but, the other “talk”.

The one where they’d warn us that there are people out there, in our own country even, who are going to dislike us, or even hurt us, because of the ancestral lineage we happen to come from. The one where they’d warn us about hate crimes against Jews being on the rise, citing statistics like the fact that 60% of all religious based hate crimes in the U.S. are against Jewish people despite Jews making up only 2.4% of the population. The one where they’d attempt to educate us about how historically, Jews have been evicted from their land, then scapegoated and persecuted in many of the lands they tried to live among as minorities. The one where they’d plead with us to listen, because there may come a day, in our own lifetimes, where this will happen to us, and if it does, we will have nowhere to go but Israel— not out of love for the country, not out of ideological affiliation, not out of support of Israeli leadership, but out of pure survival.

And like a good Jewish girl, I listened to my parents’ words carefully, took heed of their instructions, and drank in their wisdom like water.

Just kidding!

What kind of teenager (and even young adult) would I be if I hadn’t rolled my eyes, hand waved their concerns, and dismissed their worries as paranoia and hypervigilance brought on by an upbringing in the overtly antisemitic Soviet Union? Surely things like antisemitism don’t exist in the United States— we have laws against that! And the only people who ever admit to having anti-Jewish sentiments are like, literal Nazis. Come on, how many literal Nazis do you know?

So I spent the first years of my adulthood blissfully unconcerned about silly things like foreign policy, geopolitics, or international law. These sorts of things were only of interest to my dad, whereas I, an intellectual, had far more pressing political concerns to weigh in on, like, is it racist for white people to wear braids? Is it gay for a man to date a trans woman? Do men care about how many people a woman has slept with, or in other words, does body count really matter?

Until there came a day that so rudely interrupted my musings and I could no longer be willfully ignorant, at the ripe age of 26, to the realities of the world beyond my own, personal horizon. The day was October 7. And to answer my last question, when it is 1,195 dead and 251 taken hostage, then the answer is a resounding yes, body count does matter. It matters more than anything.

So I read articles, listened to debates, learned the history, studied the timelines, read the Law of War, learned the difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, studied the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, asked what is an apartheid? How about genocide? Dolus specialis? I tried to memorize the treaties, the battles, the negotiations, all while twitter discourse was growing rampant with my own “side”, the left, suddenly becoming the side of unwavering Palestinian leadership sympathizers.

And the more I learned, the more clear something was becoming to me. Something that I couldn’t stand was beginning to seem true. Something that no person ever wants to admit to themselves— fuck, I think my parents were right.

But it is so much worse than that.

This will not be an examination of my personal edification process or lesson in humility. Rather, the rest of this piece will serve as an exploration of political manipulation and division in my own country, an explanation of how adversarial powers shape, manipulate and use our values against us on both sides of the political aisle, provide a conceptual framework for understanding what is going on between major powers beyond the one dimensional reasons typically attributed to global conflicts on social media, all with the intent of answering the question— what’s going on?

We will laugh, we will cry, it will be a tale of deception, collusion, triumph, and what tale is complete without a romance?— A love triangle! And if you stick around ‘till the end, I promise, you will get to hear the punchline to what is amounting to be the world’s longest (pun intended) penis joke. 

Despite the values of most of the Middle East seeming to be characterized in stark opposition to core left-wing values, no one yells louder of their unconditional support of Palestine than those who self-identify as “progressive”. These mostly young, socialist, feminist, LGBT-affirming, trans-advocating, anti-racist, ambassadors of equality, are suddenly joining forces with foreign military groups who, if they had things their way, would turn the world into a religious dictatorship— a place where being gay or trans would be punishable by death, a place where all people would need to pledge allegiance to the god that they so happen to believe in, a place where women would be the legal property of men, where they couldn’t ask for a divorce, receive an adequate education, or show any semblance of skin in public, a place where rape laws would be non-existent, where political figures would attain power not through democratic elections, but through violence, a place where the lion’s share of a country’s wealth would fund military efforts to suppress any ideological opposition, while citizens would starve in the streets, and a small number of high ranking military officials would collectively net billions of dollars to fund their personal, luxurious, lifestyles. Does this sound like a communist utopia to you?

Let me be clear, unlike many other critics of the pro-Palestine movement, I am not trying to claim that these progressive people in any way actively or consciously support any of these things. In fact, I would bet that if you asked them in a different context, they would all vehemently condemn such beliefs. So the question becomes, why do they then perform all manner of mental gymnastics to rationalize and explain away this very valid criticism of their position when it comes to this conflict?

Take for instance this tweet from Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law school, it reads:

Is wartime sexual violence a horrific crime? YES, with no mistake. But sex exceptionalism is also traditionally used to whip up support for entire military campaigns — we see Israel and the U.S. doing this now to justify a prolonged disproportionate air and ground war.

Did you hear that, kids? Sure rape is bad, but I feel like sometimes women are asking for it just for attention and sympathy! As a woman, I sure do love using my sex exceptionalism card to cash in a free rape every now and again.

Or how about this tweet, from Briahna Joy Gray, host of the Bad Faith Podcast, who wrote:

Zionists are asking that we believe the uncorroborated eyewitness account of *men* who describe alleged rape victims in odd, fetishistic terms.

Shame on Israel for not seriously investigating claims of rape and collecting rape kits.

And what are these “uncorroborated eyewitness accounts of *men* ” you may ask? Well, take this account, for instance, of a 26 year old *woman* going by the name of Sapir, who’s first hand experience of Oct. 7 was written about in this New York Times article:

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Sapir provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw.

Briahna, my love, please enlighten me about how one would go about performing a “rape kit”, when the requisite body part may or may no longer be attached to its original owner.

This sudden defense of rape, among feminists, no less, is the equivalent of a Catholic walking into Sunday Mass, only to find the priest giving a sermon on the impossibility of god given our current understanding of thermodynamics and relativity, then asking everyone to please turn to chapter 18 , verse 22 in their copy of Fifty Shades of Grey before passing around the collection jar to donate to the local Planned Parenthood.

And let’s take a brief aside to address the use of the word Zionism, which has grown from a term popularized in 1897, by Theodor Herzl, founding a movement to establish a Jewish state in the wake of rising antisemitism, to a broader term used by the left to disparagingly refer to anyone who supports Israel, to a term that now, seems to just be synonymous with “Jew”, as the Pew Research Center shows, about 90% of U.S. Jews believe that Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid.

Now I understand the desire for name-calling, so like my people are known to do, let me bargain with you. I think we can strike up a deal that captures all the bright-eyed, liberal portrayal of the Jew of the criminal, murderous variety, yet, with the refinement and sophistication of the loan-lending, money-hungry Jew of the right— all while maintaining politically correct nomenclature to circumvent any criticism. Now that a black person is a person of color, and a fat person is a person of size, here’s my final offer— Jew, or, person of interest. I think it’s got a nice ring to it.

That being out of the way, let’s go back to the original question— why are progressives becoming increasingly sympathetic to Hamas? I think this question can be answered, in part, by something I am going to coin ideology hijacking, which I will define as: a phenomenon where a person or group begins to suddenly think and act in stark opposition to their own value-system, after a highly charged issue infiltrates their faculties of critical thinking, often leading them to abandon their ideology altogether. I will refer to these “highly charged” issues as loaded-issues and they usually involve three components:

1. They are highly emotionally salient— pressing on an individual’s empathy, insecurities, base desires, or fears, making them ignore other pertinent facts.

2. They often tie in a “perfect storm” of values that are part of an individual’s value system just enough to make the target feel like this is a hydra-issue, worth more than the sum of those issues alone.

3. They make the target overestimate the credence assigned to the truth of the claim, or the degree to which the claim is an actual problem in society.

I believe that what we are now seeing with the progressive left, is a bad case of ideology hijacking, with the loaded-issue being the colonizer/colonized paradigm— that global conflicts can be defined primarily as a class conflict between a large, powerful colonizer, and a small, less powerful victim group who are being unjustly displaced from their land. This paradigm hijacks the empathy of well-meaning progressives by tying together a millefiori of issues they do care about— racism, wealth disparity, islamophobia, inequality, and of course, colonization, to name a few.

It makes people ignore details like the fact that the land now belonging to Israel and Palestine has never belonged to the Palestinians, and that Palestine has never been its own country— that it belonged to Britain, and before that, the Ottoman Empire until its collapse after losing World War I. Facts like that Israel was established through agreements, treaties, and land acquisitions, being finalized by the Balfour Declaration which Palestine initially agreed to, before reneging on the agreement on the same day Israel was established as a nation, by violently attacking the fledgling country, starting the Arab-Israeli War of 1948; or the settlements being established as a result of a series of Arab nation led hostility, finally culminating in the Six-Day War (1967) through which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank through fair play land acquisition as is unfortunately the result of war. It makes people blind to the fact that this is not just between one powerful country and their small helpless neighbor, but one country (Israel) versus 20 or so other nations in the region.

It makes people cover their eyes and ears at any mention of Oct. 7 being an attack initiated by Hamas, not against the IDF, but against teenagers and young people at a music festival.

Nobody gets punched in the face on the first date. In fact, your charming suitor will probably say, you’re so beautiful, you’re so intelligent, I’ve never felt this kind of connection with anyone before. He will tell you tall tales of his eternal suffering— the mother who didn’t pay enough attention to him as a child, the psychological demons tormenting him, all the crazy ex-girlfriends who used and abused him. Then he’ll tell you that because of your unique capacity for empathy, you’re special— you are the only one who can save him. He needs you. And you’ll believe him. So when the mask slowly starts to slip— an insult here, a shove there, you’ll explain it away, saying, oh it’s not his fault, he’s just really hurt. And when your friends and family start to take notice, and out of fear, confront you, he’ll tell you that they don’t really care about you, they don’t want what’s best for you— soon, you are entirely alone. He’ll tell you what you saw or what you heard isn’t real— you’re imagining it. That left is right, and right is left. Up is down and down is up. And in the vertigo, good and evil will spin before your eyes in an indiscernibly-tangled, ever-changing web. Then, he’ll split your own mind right down the center. You’ll begin to hate yourself. Everything is your fault, obviously. So by the time you are lying at the bottom of the staircase with a bloody face and three broken bones, you are nothing more than a million, irreducibly small fragments, and he has no use for you any longer.

And when you’re young, desperately trying to find your place in the world, trying your hardest to figure out what it means to be a good person, and you hear your name being called in a loud cry screaming genocide and apartheid, of course you’re going to want to help. And when you’re met with evidence of your helpless admirer bombing innocent civilians, at a music festival, for instance, you’ll explain it away saying, no you don’t understand him like I do! He was pushed to do this after decades of abuse and oppression! And when he takes hostages— pregnant women, children, the elderly— you’ll say, aw isn’t he sweet? He gave them food and water and sometimes let them live! The isolation will happen slowly, then all at once. First he’ll start by turning you against your foreign allies. Then, he’ll convince you that your own government is evil— it doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t want what’s best for you, baby. When he rapes and murders innocent women right before your eyes, he won’t even need to tell you that you’re imagining it—you’ll say it for him. He will split your already fragmented country further down the middle, turning you further against those who may vote differently. He will then turn you against your own side, and you’ll start ending relationships with friends who may be an inch or two to the right of you. And then, he will make it personal. He will riddle you with guilt and shame for being white, or for being rich, or for being a colonizer— and suddenly, left is right, and right is left, and you can’t remember which side you’re supposed to be on.

Unlike some Jewish people who villainize and cut-off relationships with progressive, anti-Israel, Palestine supporters on the basis of antisemitism, I prefer to take a different approach. I don’t think that it is fair or logical to simultaneously accuse someone of being manipulated and brainwashed, but at the same time hold them fully morally accountable for their actions. So I would like to take a more charitable route. I don’t think these people would condone tattooing a number on someone’s wrist and sending them to a camp. I don’t think they would be unsympathetic to hate crimes against Jews being committed on the streets. And I believe it’s important to remember that no matter who you are, or how smart you are, or how self assured you are—nobody is completely immune to manipulation whether it be political, romantic, or otherwise.

For instance, just this morning— I was walking down the street when a man approached me and said, oh my god, you’re so beautiful! Can I please have your number? I looked at him, shocked and horrified, and said, excuse me, sir— we have names now!

Just kidding. I didn’t say that. I was much too flattered by the fact that a handsome stranger had thought me pretty to acknowledge what was so clearly a blatant and unequivocal act of antisemitism.

So instead, I replied, um, actually, I go by Sophie. But here’s a thought, why don’t I give you my phone number!

Which brings me to my next point. Seduction.

For this, I’d like to shift gears a bit, and turn our attention to the other half of my cultural identity, the Russian half— the Hyde to the Jewish Jekyll, if you will. The red-lipped femme fatale to the ingenue. And to prove how unbiased I am, I’ll even take a strong position against this dangerous seductress, so that you can marvel at my self-awareness and know that it’s okay baby, you can trust me. Only this time, I’m going to leave my progressive friends alone. Haven’t they suffered enough? And after all, I’m more in the mood for a strong, red-blooded, American male— that’s right conservatives, I’m coming for you. What, you thought you’d get out unscathed? That’s sweet.

On February 22, 2022, two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, escalating it’s now decade-long war to the largest, European conflict since World War II, conservative political commentator, Tucker Carlson, went on Fox News, and said this:

Since the day that Donald Trump became president, Democrats in Washington have told you, you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It's not a suggestion, it's a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason.

Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin […] It might be worth asking yourselves since it is getting really serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much?

Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs?

These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is "no." Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. So, why does permanent Washington hate him so much?

Now, dear reader, I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by explaining to you how rhapsodically coming to the defense of a war mongering, opponent-murdering, anti-democracy, anti-free speech, anti-U.S. dictator, as an American citizen, might not be the best look. And if you find this position even at all controversial, I’d like to directly address whoever is reading this article out loud to you, or helping you sound out the big words: Don’t act suspicious. Just subtly click this link to read Dr. Seuss’ Butter Battle Book— they won’t notice the difference.

Tucker’s statement is so obviously absurd, so clearly ridiculous, that it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning if not for what happened a month later, when in the throws of the war he had just started, Putin was quoted saying this, during a speech:

“They canceled Joan Rowling recently, the children’s author,” Putin said, referring, amazingly, to J.K. Rowling. “[…] just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights. They are now trying to cancel our country.

Did you catch that? If you blinked, you may have missed it, so let me slow it down for you.

Every woman knows that if a handsome stranger is trying to get your attention from across a room, the last thing you are going to do is walk up to him and strike up a conversation. Instead, you are going to make eye contact exactly once, then turn around and keep going about your business. You are not going to stand on a table and dance, you are not going to remove your dress, you are not going to loudly begin telling a story to someone next to you, in fact, you’ll soften your voice. Power doesn’t scream, it whispers— it makes them lean in. Perhaps an “accidental” flash of the thigh or décolletage, and then, he’ll come to you. He’s yours.

So what was Putin’s proverbial flashing of the décolletage? You guessed it, the satanic panic that has every conservative up in arms— trans people.

And sure enough, next thing you know, Tucker is on a plane flying to meet with Putin face to face, to produce one of the most absurd pieces of Russian propaganda in modern history, influencing all of his millions of conservative fans to side with Russia.

And thus, lured by the siren’s song, the sailors fatefully drown.

But Putin’s simple “song” was far more sophisticated than upon first listen. He wasn’t even addressing conservatives at all, but Jk Rowling, Author of Harry Potter, who is now most notable for her “activism” as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Rowling, and the likes, have fallen prey to their own ideological hijack, with trans women seeming to be their loaded-issue— using their fear and feminist values against them to increase the credence with which they believe trans women are dangerous perverts and cis-woman are being targeted and erased.

And in one fell swoop, he managed to rally both right-wing conservatives and left-wing feminists of the gender-critical variety, under their common hatred of “cancel culture” and “gender ideology”, attacking from both sides to kill two birds with one (philosopher’s) stone; while simultaneously fueling the fire of the trans culture war to distract from more dangerous global issues.

Who would have thought that feminists and conservatives had so much in common? It seems that this whole time the political right’s problem with feminism was not that it was too radical, but that it was simply not radical enough! And in some twisted paradox, the issue that got them to see eye to eye just so happens to be one of the most divisive social issues of the decade— trans women. And I don’t know, I for one think that’s beautiful.

But on a more serious note, if you find yourself being strange bedfellows with your most extreme political dissenters, and then getting lauded by the world’s current most formidable dictator, perhaps it’s time to rethink your approach.

And Tucker Carlson is just one drop in the ocean in regards to the span of Russia’s reach. Russia, along with other adversaries, prolifically engage in something called narrative laundering, which this publication describes as: A means of spreading false or misleading information by concealing the source of that information. […] Narrative laundering uses both real news outlets in other countries, as well as fake news websites that look real, to lend legitimacy and credibility to false stories.

In the court case, United States v. Internet Research Agency LLC, it was revealed that Russian agencies had created hundreds of fake social media accounts with the goal of creating more political division in our country. These accounts, often portraying themselves as leftist activists helped incite anger and outrage from both the right and left, a concept in common internet parlance known as rage baiting.

And I’d be lying if I said that there have never been any times where I have opened my phone, saw some insanely brainless take on some issue, usually from the left, and wanted to distance myself from the party. However, I think the next time that this happens to any of us, it’s important to ask, who stands to benefit from you getting mad over this?

Most recently and possibly most shockingly, several of YouTube’s most popular conservative political commentators including Lauren Chen, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin, have been criminally indicted for knowingly receiving millions of dollars from Russian organizations in exchange for promoting certain political viewpoints. As it turns out, when you try to climb into somebody’s pocket, chances are you’ll just end up getting fu— in their pants.

Though the amount of social media political commentators that have fallen for the russian allure is concerning, probably the most alarming victim of our cunning Delilah is none other than former president, Donald Trump, who if this were a cartoon, would have hearts in his eyes every time he glanced in his direction.

Trump, and the Republican party which he has grown to represent, have become increasingly more dovish and isolationist in light of both the Israel and Ukraine wars, which of course Russia and Iran have a vested interest in. And perhaps one of the scariest things about a second Trump term, is his antagonistic relationship with NATO, which he attempted to pull us out of entirely in 2019.

Now I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps pulling out of an agreement where 31 other countries have promised to defend us as well as sharing the responsibility of defending our other allies might be part of a larger scheme to disempower the United States. And for both moral and strategic reasons, some amount of interventionism may be necessary even if your primary goal is to protect America.

I think this point can be most succinctly described by a poem I remember reading in high school. I’m reciting from memory so forgive me if I get some of the words wrong, but I think you’ll get the gist:

First they came for the fascists, 
          and I did not speak out—because I was not a fascist.
Then they came for the Nazis, 
          and I did not speak out—because I was not a Nazi.
Then they came for me—
          and there was no one left to speak for me.

Enough of this boring politics nonsense, let’s move on to something more interesting. I promised you a love triangle, but I’ll even do you one better— a rectangle. Imagine you have a friend, Mary, who is going through a rough patch with her husband, your other friend, John. After years of owning your town’s most popular ice cream shop together, John and Mary have grown bitter and resentful of one another to the point of not being able to be in the same room without an argument. One day, Mary meets a man, we’ll call him Bob, and Bob tells Mary that he knew John back in college— and he can’t stand him! Feeling validated, Mary and Bob bond over their growing hatred of John, and thus begins a passionate love affair. At the same time, John meets a woman, say, Rachel, and it just so happens that Rachel was an ex-friend of Mary’s and turns out, Mary is a real bitch! The rest, is history. As the affairs progress, you begin to notice that John and Mary’s ice cream shop isn’t doing as well as it used to— sales are down, the ice cream is all half-melted, the floors haven’t been mopped in months. One day, you come to the shop after hours, and find Rachel and Bob together, with John and Mary’s top secret ice cream recipe in their hands! Turns out Bob and Rachel have been married this whole time, and just so happened to own a competitor ice cream shop in a neighboring town.

Now, in a situation like this, if you were John or Mary, you would probably realize that you were being played for a fool, set aside your differences, and come together to dismantle a common enemy— after all, you are husband and wife.

But for some reason, when you replace some of the nouns with political parties and countries, and change a few minor details, we all seem to be perfectly fine remaining in denial. Bob loves me! Wow, who would have thought this would be another metaphor? These conflicts that we’ve been discussing are all part of broader political schemes with part of their goal being to undermine and weaken what is, for better or for worse, the most powerful country in the entire world— The United States. I know, leave it to the U.S. to make everything about US.

When it comes to the Middle East, you cannot simply reduce the war to a territory conflict between two states as it is most commonly portrayed across social media. The truth is, this is a much broader, ideological proxy war. It starts at the very, very, bottom, and goes all the way to the top. First, with truly innocent Palestinian civilians being used as pawns by their own leadership, Hamas, who is in the business of spiking up their own people’s death tolls to villainize their opponent and garner international sympathy. They do this through maneuvers like co-locating their primary military headquarters with the largest hospital in the area, or, instructing civilians to stay in their homes after Israel endlessly warns that they will be sending missiles through phone calls and roof-knocking. Even if you believe that Israel is the most evil country in the world, from a purely strategic standpoint, it would still be in their best interest to have as few Palestinian deaths as possible to maintain international support. However, Hamas itself is also being used by a more powerful militant group in the area, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, to do their bidding, without, until very recently, being directly involved. And for all this talk about the side of the “little guy” or “underdog”, keep in mind that Hezbollah is considered the most powerful, non-state military, in the world. But it doesn’t end there. Hezbollah, then, is being used as a proxy by Iran, who, along with other nations in the region, are interested in expanding their global power by destabilizing the “West”, which it considers Israel a part of, geographic location notwithstanding. Take Egypt for example, which famously refuses Palestinian refugees despite claiming that they are being indiscriminately murdered. And who has been, under the table, slipping Iran money and weapons to support their cause? That’s right, none other than our favorite succubus, Vladimir Putin, who is raging war against his neighbor, Ukraine, then threatening us with nuclear weapons, to alienate us from, yet again, another ally.

Did you hear the one about the Jewish mother? So there’s this Jewish mother, right, and for her son’s birthday, she decides to knit him two sweaters. So the next morning, he comes downstairs wearing one of them and she looks at him and goes, what? You didn’t like the other one?

I fear, that when it comes to evaluating our politicians, we have all become the Jewish mother.

We vote our congress into office, knit together the fabric of our political ethos through culture wars and virtue-signaling, present ourselves with two options, and when somebody makes a choice, we turn around and make them feel guilty and inadequate— setting our expectations unrealistically high and impossible to fulfill.

In light of the upcoming election, the choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is often framed, by the left, as “choosing the lesser of two evils”— Republicans are villains, and Democrats are just three Republicans in a trench coat. Artists like Chappell Roan (who’s music is all I have listened to for the past four months, and will continue to do so, with the Spotify history to prove it), who has gone viral for begrudgingly saying that she will be voting for Kamala Harris, made sure to disclaim that “both sides are bad” and that her words should definitely not be taken as an endorsement of the 2024 democratic nominee.

And as much as I love Chappell, I have to say, I couldn’t disagree more. Supporting a candidate who will protect your rights as a queer woman, support our foreign allies, and help de-escalate global conflicts before they spin out of control to full on World War III, possibly ending in a nuclear destruction of us all, as Putin lowers his threshold for nuclear response, is in no way even remotely close to our other “sweater”. A man who has become the first U.S. president to become a convicted felon, has been charged with falsifying business expenses to cover up a sex-scandal with the goal of tampering with the election, has stolen and hid classified documents in his luxury resort, and obstructed measures to retrieve them, has called electors urging them to change their vote, even going so far as to sending false electors to vote for him through a racketeering enterprise, incited supporters to violently storm the capital under the lie that the election was rigged with outcome-determinative results leading to a full fledged insurrection, tweeted to said rioters to go after his own vice president, after Mike Pence refused to change the outcome of the 2020 election, and based on that information alone, should not even legally be allowed to run for president under section III of the Fourteenth Amendment. Someone who led to the Supreme Court making the Immunity Ruling, one of the most shameful Supreme Court decisions of the century, using vague and obscure language to expand a president’s ability to act with impunity, including theoretically, legally being allowed to kill political opponents. Someone who will work to implement Project 2025, an initiative that will aim to consolidate executive power and implement more Christianity into government, a baby step in the direction towards theocratic dictatorship. Someone who has been quoted saying he does not care about the constitution and proven he doesn’t care about democracy. Someone who, if elected president of the United States— the most powerful position in the whole world, will be used as a useful idiot for a murderous psychopath with his hand on the big red button, with all the prowess of a love-struck thirteen year old girl.

And remember, there are powers in the world who intentionally facilitate and benefit from turning liberals and progressives alike away from democratic candidates (looking at you

Ana Kasparian

).

For all the criticism that one can leverage against the United States, I still confidently believe that it remains unequivocally, one of the best countries in the world to live in. Being able to live in a place where you can express yourself freely regardless of who you are, have your rights backed by a strong constitution that is (for the most part) able to hold up against characters like Trump, a place that is viewed as a threat by every country that doesn’t subscribe to western liberalism, and a place that every other country looks up to for guidance is a privilege, and in the midst of all this turmoil, we should remember that.

A Jewish man dies, goes to heaven, and meets God. And in typical Jewish fashion, the first thing he does when he meets God is he tells him a Holocaust joke. After a long silence, God responds, that wasn’t funny— that was actually really offensive. The Jewish guy shrugs, replying,

Ah well, I guess it’s one of those things where you just had to be there.

Now I don’t know, maybe that story’s not true. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. It does seem kind of suspicious, a Jew, getting into heaven? Really? And I don’t know about God, but I do know that it can be said with certainty that I am here. And so are you.

In the words of Bojack Horseman’s Sarah Lynn, life is a never ending show, old sport, except, the minor detail that it ends. And when that happens, and you’re standing face to face with your maker, whether it’s the Jewish god, the Muslim god, the Christian god (they’re all the same god) or Charles Darwin— or whoever I’m supposed to pray to— when you meet him, is the worst joke you could tell God about your side of history, going to offend him more, or less, than the ones told in 1945?

It’s been a long ride, I think it’s safe to say we could all use a drink. Let us then rejoin our Jew, our Palestinian, our genie, and our geese (which we’ve actually grown quite fond of) at the bar. Come one, come all— everyone’s welcome. The room is dim, the candles flicker. In the corner, the one foot tall man softly begins playing John Lennon’s Imagine on the keys. Can you hear it?

It’s not fair, I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted a place to feel safe. Says the Jew. 

I know. We all say in unison.

Well I didn’t ask for this, I just wanted the same thing. Says the Palestinian. 

I know. We all say in unison.

Well I didn’t ask for Kamala Harris. I wanted some real change in this country.  Says the progressive. 

I know. 

Well I didn’t ask to be sitting at a bar with a Jew, a Palestinian, and a woman. Says the Nazi.

We know! We all shout.

I didn’t ask for any of this… You say.

I know. I say.

Me too.

Now, the Bartender, who up until this point, has been desperately trying to mind his own business, just cannot bite his tongue any longer. So exasperated, he slams the whiskey glass he’s been polishing down on the table sending shards flying in every direction, looks to us all, and says, 

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. All of you. Listening to your moaning and bitching is insufferable. We all have problems! Take me, for instance, do you think I asked for a twelve-inch PIANIST?!

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Roll the end credits: Listen here or read the lyrics below which feel just as strikingly relevant now as they were in 1992.

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