I saw two articles regarding Jews and the Gaza protests, one fills me with hope, the other with dread.

First to Samuel G. Freedman of CNN.  A Jew to took the Blue Pill.

Thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, it’s Jew vs. Jew

The Jewish national movement of Zionism, a kind of secular religion, offered a parallel way of unifying Jews in the cause of creating and sustaining modern Israel. Though relatively few American Jews ever immigrated there, multitudes enacted their Zionism with financial support and political advocacy.

So liberal Jews that don’t practice Judaism.  They just eat bagels, get the inside joked in Woody Allen films, and have Jewish last names.

This year, however, Shavuot will arrive as a painful travesty for the vast majority of American Jews. The events that unfolded in the Middle East on May 14 put an almost unbearable strain on the covenant between the two largest Jewish communities in the world, one in the United States and the other in Israel.

Why?

On that date, the 70th anniversary of Israeli statehood, Israel military forces killed more than 50 Palestinian protestors and wounded another 2,700 in a confrontation, as marchers tried to breach the security fence on the Gaza border. At about the same time, the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem turned into a virtual worship service for President Donald Trump.

You mean Israel shot and killed a lot of Hamas terrorists that were fomenting protests so they could have human shields as they tried to invade Israel?

In normal circumstances, a consensus of American Jews would have unreservedly cheered the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Jews of all stripes regard as the national capital despite international refusal to do so. In most other periods of terrorism, armed conflict or outright war, American Jews have readily rallied to the side of the Jewish state.

Let me guess.  But TRUMP!

But the toxic partnership of Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has damaged the bonds between Jews here and Jews there. Instead of being an emblem of the entire Jewish people, Israel has overwhelmingly become the province of right-wingers — the settlers in the West Bank, their political patrons in Israeli politics, evangelical Christians in America and the minority of this country’s Jews who support its divisive president.

Oops, Trump and Jew Trump (Netenyahu).  Leftists hate American and Israeli leaders who take pride in their country and try do defend it from attack.

When Netanyahu and Trump’s presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner spoke of “peace” at the embassy opening, the word lost all meaning. The peace process, and the hope of a two-state solution, is effectively dead. It now seems that the only options on the table are a binational state, which would provide equal citizenship rights to all Jews and Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or an apartheid regime of Israeli Jews ruling over Palestinian Arabs.

The two State Solution has always been dead.  It can’t exist as long as those in the region want to wipe out Israel.  Nobody has ever gotten the Palestinians to actually agree to recognize the Jewish state.  This isn’t on Israel.  This is on Muslim Jew hatred.

For liberal and moderate American Jews — the 71% who voted against Trump — a combination of entrenched sentimentality and practical fear of civil war will stop them from endorsing a binational state. Yet their democratic and progressive values also mean they cannot support the transformation of a sovereign Jewish nation into South Africa 2.0. American Jewish silence will speak volumes.

Are you kidding me, South Africa 2.0?  Apartheid?  How about asking Palestinians stop murdering Jewish babies in their cribs and sending pregnant women into hospitals with bombs attached to them to blow up Israeli doctors.  This is the worst sort of Leftism.  The Palestinians aren’t killing Israelis because of the security measures, the security measures are they because Israelis are being killed.

Even if Trump and Netanyahu continue to invoke a peaceful future under some “great deal,” their own alliance has alienated the mainstream of American Jewry. Trump’s recent pull-out from the Iran nuclear agreement echoed Netanyahu’s meddlesome campaign against it during Barack Obama’s presidency. As a result, Israel has rapidly shifted being from a bipartisan cause into a conservative Republican one. A poll by the Pew Research Center early this year found that 79% of Republicans, but only 27%of Democrats, sympathized more with the Israelis than the Palestinians.

Obama was the worst president for the Jews but you loved him.  Trump is the best and you hate him.  You can’t be a “Blame Israel First” Lefty and a Jew at the same time.  Pick one.

Trump opposes most American Jews in his stances on issues ranging from immigration to abortion rights to separation of church and state. Indeed, as of a 2016 survey, nearly 80% of American Jews described themselves as liberal or moderate politically. As a religious minority, Jews feel indirectly threatened by Trump’s verbal attacks on other minorities — blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the disabled — to say nothing of his coddling of alt-right white nationalists.

By all means, let the same Muslims who are murdering Jews in Europe and making the Old World a Jew free zone do the same thing to the US.  Great plan.  Where will we go then?  To Israel?  Then you’ll demand that Israel let in Jew hating refugees.  Can you try not to advocate for Jewish suicide?

By clutching Trump so closely, Netanyahu has now branded Israel with a set of political positions that are detested by the mass of American Jews. He has made Israel’s main American allies the Tea Party version of the Republican Party and the so-called “Christian Zionists” of evangelical Christianity. As a Pew poll showed in 2014, Jews give a lower approval rating to evangelical Christians (34%) than to any other major religious group.

You elitist Manhattan Jews need to get out some more.  I’ve never had an evangelical hate on me.  I’ve gotten a lot of shit from Woke Leftists.  Between the Women’s March and the Tea Party, who attacked the Jews?

For Netanyahu and Trump, such evangelicals serve as a reliable political base. With friends like those, however, Israel has decisively parted ways with the liberal and moderate American Jews who were the staple of Zionism here for decades.

One of the scriptures read on Shavuot is the Book of Ruth. A woman sometimes considered the first convert to Judaism, Ruth famously says in the text, “Your people will be my people and your God my God.” That testament to an embracing, overarching Jewish community has never sounded emptier than right now.

Yes, because you chose irrational Trump hate and radical Leftism over the Jewish people.  You are siding with the terrorists who are trying to kill Jews over your fellow Jews.  I’m sorry that Jews defending their children, and siding with an American administration that supports Jews defending their children offends you.

Freeman needs to read the second article I read.  This one by
Daniel Sugarman of The Jewish Chronicle.

This is a Jew who woke up.  Not got woke, but had reality slam into him hard.  This is the red pill Jew.

I said Israel should be ashamed – now I am the one who is ashamed.

It’s never easy to say you’re sorry.

To admit you’re wrong. To announce publicly, “I made a mistake”.

But to apologise when that apology comes bound up with what is, perhaps, the most intractable conflict on earth, makes it a thousand times harder.

But that is what I am. Sorry.

I accept.

A few days ago I wrote a column about the latest round of violence on the border with Gaza.

It was a cry from the heart. I love Israel. I have always loved it, and cannot envision a time when I will not love it.

But in my office, I sit near a television set. And on Monday, I saw the following, side by side.

On the left, in Jerusalem, I saw happy faces. Self-congratulatory faces. I saw the Prime Minister of Israel talking about how the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem was a big step towards peace.

And on the right, simultaneously, in Gaza, I saw tear gas, and smoke, and bullets.

And it was in this context that I wrote my piece, which was an extremely personal one. I wrote it in anguish. I wrote it making clear that I despised Hamas and all it stood for. But I also wrote the following:

“Every bullet Israel fires, every life Israel takes, makes this situation worse. There are ways to disperse crowds which do not include live fire. But the IDF has made an active choice to fire live rounds and kill scores of people. You cannot tell me that Israel, a land of technological miracles which have to be seen to be truly believed, is incapable of coming up with a way of incapacitating protestors that does not include gunning dozens of them down. But no. In front of the entire world, Israel keeps shooting, and protestors, including very young protestors, keep dying. You may tell me that Hamas wants these deaths, wants to create martyrs, wants to fill the hearts of the people of Gaza with rage against Israel because the alternative is for people to look at their lives in Gaza and rage against Hamas. But if you tell me that, why are you not asking yourselves why Israel is so willingly giving Hamas exactly what it wishes?”

You didn’t just see what everybody else saw.  Your grokked it.

I received a lot of praise for my piece, from people I admire greatly, as well as from a great many unexpected sources, including from within the Jewish community.

Lefty Jews who write for CNN.

I also received a lot of criticism. I got called a traitor, and that most vile of all insults a Jew can bestow or receive, a “Kapo”.

I’ve used that word for Jews like the kind you used to be.

People also wrote pieces in response. I was told that, as a Jew not currently living in Israel, my greatest worry was whether Starbucks would have almond-soya milk for my latte.

Beta male.

But the criticism I paid more attention to was from people who pointed out that it was absurd to deal in hypotheticals. I’d said that surely there must be a way the protestors could be stopped without shooting live ammunition at them – that Israel, with its incredible technological capabilities, must be capable of developing a way. That was a cry of anguish, but it was not an argument. If no such technology currently exists, then it was absurd of me to blame the IDF for not magically willing it into existence. The traditional crowd stopping technology would not have worked effectively. Rubber bullets are only short range. The same with water cannons. And with tens of thousands of people rushing the border, this would have been extremely unlikely to work effectively. The border would have been broken through. And then, without much of a doubt, a lot of people in Israel would have died. That was, after all, Hamas’s stated aim.

Suddenly holding Israel to an unreasonable standard for a nation surrounded on all sides by an enemy that wants to wipe it out seems like too much to ask.

But what really affected me the most was yesterday, when a Hamas operative went on television and claimed that, of the 62 people killed in the last two days, fifty were Hamas operatives. Islamic Jihad claimed three more, meaning that over 80 percent of the people who were killed while trying to breach the border were members of terrorist organisations whose direct aim is to bring death and suffering into Israel.

Those facts will get you every time.  That’s why Leftists don’t like to deal in them.

I had fallen into the trap I had always been convinced I would not fall into. I had condemned Israel for defending itself.

There are things one can write about how Israel could have acted differently in the run-up to these attempts to charge the border. But I did not write about those in my original piece. I wrote that, by killing the Palestinians running towards them, the IDF was giving Hamas exactly what it wished for – martyrs for the cause.

I failed to acknowledge that, either way, Israel would be giving Hamas what it wanted. Shoot at those charging at you and Hamas would have its martyrs. Fail to shoot and Hamas would break through the barrier and bring suffering and death – its stated aim – to Israelis living only a few hundred metres away from that barrier. The march may have originally been, as it was declared to be, about Palestinians returning to the homes they had to leave 70 years before. But Hamas’s aim was far more straightforward – “We will take down the border and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Ding Ding Ding!!!  We have a winner!  It’s unfair to put Israel in a Catch-22 then criticize it.

If Israel kills the terrorists, the Jew hating media will criticize Israel.  If Israel doesn’t, the terrorist will murder Jewish Children.  This is what we outside the bubble Jews and non-Jews have been saying for years.

We’re glad you figured that out.

I wrote in my previous article that Israel was a regional powerhouse, and that it was strong enough to take criticism from Jews in the Diaspora.

I still believe it is strong enough to do so. I just don’t believe that my criticism of it was valid. Given the circumstances, and the situation on the ground, I am at a loss in terms of coming up with a better solution. The choice was, quite literally, shoot at people running at you with the stated aim of killing you and your families, or fail to shoot and let them do it.

A few days ago I said I could not and would not defend Israel’s actions. Now, in the cold light of day, I could not and would not see how I would fail to defend them.

I said that Israel should be ashamed of its actions. But today I am the one ashamed.

Welcome out of the darkness and into the light.  We have so much more to teach you now.

I probably shouldn’t come across this sarcastic.  The fact is, this give me hope.

Jews like CNN’s Sam Freedman might be too far down the rabbit hole and irredeemably lost.

That a Jew like Sugarman can come around when he chooses to see the facts about the image on TV and not just the image on TV.  Means maybe more will come around.

Yes, 71% of Jews voted against Trump.

But the more and more the Left tries to make Hamas (and MS-13) the good guys, the more Jews on the edge like Sugarman will come on over.

A few more weeks of “Hamas terrorists are just misunderstood victims and the Israelis who shoot people throwing Molotov cocktails and grenades at people’s homes are evil” and that 71% might be down to 50% by 2020.