(((Civil_DiscourseNY)))🇺🇸🇮🇱🇺🇸🇮🇷🇺🇸

A disturbing new ritual has emerged in our culture. A faded actor, a musician no longer topping the charts, a novelist whose last book sank: each has discovered the one thing guaranteed to bring them back into the light. Say the word “Palestine,” claim there's a genocide, wrap the keffiyeh, and the applause is heard again. The attention is back. Above all, though, the warm sense of being a good person returns. What's so sad about this is not only the obvious narcissism, but how little any of them actually know about Israel, Palestine, or the Middle East. They can't tell you which river or which sea. They use “genocide” as though it were a mood rather than a crime with a specific meaning. They know the slogans, but they don't know the history, the maps, or the parts of the story that would, of course, derail their attempts to regain status. Look at the heinous things they almost always conveniently leave out of their messages. Hostages starved in tunnels and paraded for the cameras. The rapes and sexual mutilation of October 7 and beyond, documented and then shrugged away by the masses, or worse, outright denied. The founding charters of groups that state, quite openly, that their aim is to kill every Jew — man, woman, and child. And the fact that the wars waged to destroy the Jewish state have been launched against it, not by it. None of this matters, because none of it is the point. The timeline can be reversed, victim and aggressor swapped, language emptied of meaning, so long as the performer arrives at the only destination they ever cared about: “Look at me. I’m one of the good ones — accept me again.” This isn't compassion. It's vanity. It's a mirror. And it's disgusting. @ShawnMendes, you should be ashamed of yourself.