I have been a Zionist since before I could speak. But a long time ago, I began to question the whole methodology of debate. I look at Zionists like Alan Dershowitz and his book, “The Case for Israel”, and question if that is really what I want to be doing. There are so many smart people touting Israel as the high-tech nation, the only democracy in the Middle East, the ethical IDF, making the desert bloom, and I am convinced that these arguments are pointless and perhaps even counterproductive. 

Ben Shapiro says “Facts don’t care about your feelings”. But he forgets that when it comes to Jew-haters, feelings don’t care about the facts. The facts are clear and all these positive points about Israel should be indisputable. 

But I have watched the absurd rewriting of history that has taken place over the course of the last ten years. While the history of the Jews and Israel has remained undisputed for 2,000 years, the new narrative has erased this entirely. Archaeology has proven the Jewish history in Israel countless times without uncovering a single shred of evidence for the existence of a Palestinian nation.

However, The Palestinian cause does not need facts or even logic. One month after the October 7 massacre, Hamas was still being portrayed as militants and freedom fighters, their actions on that horrific day already forgotten and unmentionable. And they have their own “facts”, the most important one for them being that Israel is an occupier.

I do not debate. Debates will not save the Jews. Debates will not save Israel. Rashida Tlaib stood up in the House of Representatives and claimed that “From the river to the sea”, the slogan of Hamas, the PLO, and the PFLP, is not a call to genocide, which she claimed to be a victim a well.

The age of reason has passed. My response to the passionate calls for a Palestinian homeland is silence. Despite the Holocaust, despite 2,000 years of oppression, despite five wars in which the Arabs tried to drive us into the sea, despite Palestinians’ depraved efforts to murder Jews even at the expense of their own lives, I will be silent.

Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz’s short story, “Bontsha shvayg” (“Bontsha the Silent”) first published in 1894, describes a long-suffering Jew who remains silent throughout his life despite injustice and hardship. When he finally arrives at the heavenly court, he is judged and accepted as a tzaddik, a righteous Jew. When told that the entire heaven is his for the asking, Bontsha shyly requests a fresh roll with butter.

The story brings into question the suffering of the Jews in exile. Were the Jews austere for accepting the trials and tribulations of the over-long exile? Was it a credit to their God?

The final enigmatic line of the story of Bontsha has the prosecutor laughing bitterly at the request for a buttered roll, bringing into question the worthfulness of silent suffering.

But I am not Bontsha. Less than 20 years after the ovens in Auschwitz were extinguished, I was born an exile Jew. Over thirty years ago, I moved to Israel. I will not die an exile Jew.

Unlike Bontsha, I will not suffer in silence. I will not argue with this new generation of Nazis. I will not try to refute their lies. I will answer them as a son of King David, motivated solely by a love of Israel and the God of Israel.