ALPERN AT LARGE - Whether it’s Hasan Piker or Abdul El-Sayed from the Left, or it’s Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens from the Right, Jew-Hatred is rearing its voice louder than ever it has for decades, and nowhere in the world does the seething hatred and history-revisionism blare as loud as it does in the “enlightened” entertainment world.
Macklemore is a Jew-hater, and one can call out grave concerns about the plights of the Palestinians without enabling the persecution and physical harm of Jews throughout the world. Anyone who thinks that Jew-Haters like Macklemore are just exercising their rights to free speech might very well be a Jew-Hater, too.
Even among those Jews who will do, say, or believe ANYTHING to be liked by the “cool kids”, and who increasingly are embracing the recent trend of “Jew-Hatred”.
It was once “cool” and acceptable to be anti-Irish…and now the Irish rank among the loudest (at the government level, and at the rich-and-famous level) of turning their ire at Jews who’ve been on the run for centuries and are guilty only of practicing the “Never Again” vow after World War II and the REAL Holocaust.
Armenians have suffered their own nightmarish, hellish Holocaust from a Turkey that is very different today than the Armenian massacres at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries—and although Israel (to its shame) was late in recognizing this Armenian Holocaust—Jews throughout the world pulled it forward in moral clarity and unity.
Meanwhile, the same Uganda that once saw blatant Jew-Hatred and terrorism under the regime of Idi Amin Dada is one of Israel’s most stalwart friends and partners.
Israel has recognized Somaliland as its own nation on the Horn of Africa and is now entering into new relations with Morocco as part of the growing list of nations joining the Abraham Accords (and is probably helping the Saudis and other Arab nations behind the scenes against Iran in that messy conflict that WILL end after November).
Jews were first and foremost in the civil rights battles against Jim Crow and anti-black, anti-slavery, anti-human rights efforts against ethnic minorities throughout the nation and the world—we’re commanded by our faith to work REAL hard to see the other side and prove we can leave the world a better place than when we arrived in it.
So, for those of you/us/them who’ve used their history books as toilet paper instead of vital recountings of what really happened in the past, and who’ve confused what the heck a “Holocaust” versus a “War is Hell” situation is, there would have BEEN a Palestine decades ago had that people wanted one…
…but the two-state solution that Jews have pushed for in Israel/Palestine is NOT what most Palestinians (when polled) really want—their political leaders have influenced them to want Israel and its Jews slaughtered and exiled and have prevented any Palestinian from wanting peace with Israel from staying alive for a few decades now.
Ugly, and horrible, and unspeakable, but like this unenlightened fool Macklemore, too many in Palestine (a.k.a. the Gaza Strip that was in 1948 part of Egypt and the West Bank that was in 1948 part of Jordan) have been the victims of educational malpractice and agendas from the United Nations and Jew-Hating nations, and are walking the same road that Holocaust-deniers and even Holocaust-implementers are too quick to skip blindly down.
And oh, by the way, many who support Israel’s latest military actions absolutely DESPISE Netanyahu…but also recognize that too many (the majority, quite likely) in Palestine and throughout the world want lots of Jews hurt, raped, dead, and subservient to pay for, well, something or other that they believe have “kept them down”.
Had the Oslo Accords of former President Bill Clinton taken hold, there would BE a Palestine today, and the two-state solution that too many Jew-Haters claim they want (but in reality keep slapping away) would rather suffer and die, and have their children suffer and die, instead of getting along with neighbors to make money, make new cities and infrastructure, make new technological advances, but not make war.
So the so-called “entertainer rapper” Macklemore, who probably thinks he’s enlightened but has no clue who’s been walking him down the road to darkness instead, wouldn’t shut up about his anti-Israel sentiments (not just “give peace a chance” on tour with Ed Sheeran, and Robert Kraft and other stadium/venue owners prevented Sheeran from performing unless he brought Macklemore to bear.
Macklemore wouldn’t cool his jets, wouldn’t stop pissing off about half his crowd, and was dropped from the Sheeran tour. Sheeran has taken abuse from the rest of the entertainment world who ALSO doesn’t know the difference between “free speech” and “hate/alienating speech”…
…but Sheeran, a class act, got Robert Kraft to match Macklemore’s $1 million donation to Palestinian relief organizations when Sheeran asked Kraft to match Macklemore’s own donation, and Kraft came out to donate $2 million to Palestinian aid efforts.
Macklemore screams vitriol as a way to “bring people together” while Sheeran promotes restraint and kindness, and Kraft wanted to build bridges in response to Macklemore’s aims to burn those bridges.
But Macklemore is young, and maybe he’ll realize that—like so many of us who did NOT want a single Gazan to die or suffer since Israel allowed the Palestinians the ability to create a proto-homeland in Gaza—we all need to make sure that his food money goes for food, and his medicine money goes to medicine, and that a peaceful Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas was the entity that killed all the Israeli-cooperating Palestinians in Gaza, stole and taxed the food meant for civilian consumption, and built a huge system of underground war tunnels from the billion given to Palestine from throughout the world for peaceful causes.
Let’s hope that THIS time the money goes to the people of Palestine, and that the Gazans realize that they’ve been played HARD by Hamas to fight a neighbor who wanted nothing more than to co-exist and were made to feel righteous by being civilian shields to defend an Islamist/imperialist Hamas that has no role in the modern world.
So, we’ll hear a lot less, not more, from Macklemore, and we need not fear him or his Jew-Hating ignorant supporters on the Far Left and/or Far Right…but maybe, just maybe, we’ll see more folks like Sheeran and Kraft make Macklemore realize HE was PLAYED, too…
…and that this whole damn Gaza nightmare could have been AVOIDED 25 years ago had we done what Egypt and Jordan did when THEY finally wanted peace after decades of pointless conflict.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as a Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
