Is the Best Response No Response At All?
“Oh yeah, you really smacked down my bad ideas,” Dave Smith, Jewish comedian turned anti-Israel activist, sarcastically remarked on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “I have, you’re just too stupid to realize it,” Elica Le Bon, pro-Israel X personality, quipped back. And the truth is, she did, but did anyone hear her? Did she change anyone’s mind? Having devoted so much time myself to defending Israel since Oct 7, I’m beginning to question the value of these debates.
I know exactly how Le Bon felt at that moment. You’re shocked that someone could hold these views. If only I could convey the factual reality, then maybe this person would see the light. But the rabbit hole the antisemitic crowd is descending seems too steep and endless to come back from.
Since the end of the Iran conflict, the number of times I’ve heard the term “war crimes” seems innumerable. The world’s refocus on Gaza is demonizing the Israel Defense Forces once again. The hyperfocus on how much food the Gazans are not getting, coupled with the death of the innocents allegedly at the hands of Israeli soldiers, has come back with a vengeance. As always, the IDF has launched a full investigation. But before the findings could be published, world media had already censured the Jewish State.
The punk rock artist Bob Vylan led the audience at Glastonbury Festival in a chant of “death to the IDF,” while fans waved Palestinian and Hamas flags. The fact that this concert took place in England is not a shock. The vast majority of Europe has turned against Israel. Ireland recently became the first European country to ban trade with the “occupied Palestinian territories.”
Candace Owens purported that American rabbis are paying $2500 in Bitcoin to Evangelical pastors to criticize her. One such rabbi, according to her, is Rav Shlomo Riskin. I happen to know Rav Riskin well. To say he’s advancing in years is an understatement. But even on his best day, he could only navigate his home town of Efrat with a driver. I can assure you that since he’s lived in Israel for the past 45 years and most likely knows little about Bitcoin, Owens’s intel is quite unreliable.
The more fanciful these claims become, the more unhinged those making them seem. As a rabbi, I tend to describe the world in halachic terms. We live in what I call a legal multiverse – multiple realities existing at once. Take conversion, for example. There’s no such thing as a universally accepted conversion to Judaism. Therefore, a person can be both Jewish and not Jewish at the same time, depending on the community.
However, the same is not true of facts and terminology. Since Oct 8, the term genocide has consistently been used to describe Israel’s actions. There is a legal definition of this word and its application doesn’t hold up even to the most basic of scrutiny. Israel has never conducted an effort to eradicate the Palestinian people. What there has been is a war with tragic consequences. No matter how much people wish to vilify the war effort, it just isn’t true.
So, maybe the best response at this point is none at all.
At the beginning of June, a post on Instagram claimed we should never respond to these types of attacks. Antisemitism is a societal problem and the more we respond, the more we reinforce the lie that we’re on trial. Our only duty as Jews is to live proudly and embrace our heritage.
At first glance, this seems like a winning formula. We should be resolute in who we are and what we know to be true. But the world is not so simple. My concern is always with those in the gray area. The Candace Owens and Dave Smiths, who are feverishly committed to their warped world view, are long gone. We are fighting for those on the fence. The undecided and uneducated, who could easily be persuaded if we remain silent, are the reason we must press on.
To Elica Le Bon and those like her who stand up for Israel in the social media sphere and beyond, I commend you. Never give up the fight, no matter how many closed-minded people you fail to convince. They’re not your target audience. It’s those watching and reading who need your help. And believe me, you’re helping more than you know.
