One of the things I hear sporadically when I write about Israel-haters and antisemites is “Why are you giving these people attention?”
I have to admit, the refrain becomes annoying – if you don’t get why I do it, why are you even reading my posts? Ignore and move along.
But just so to make things clear, I do it for a number of reasons:
- To show people on the fence/people who are intellectually honest the kinds of people who spread their hatred of Israel; to expose their nastiness in order to show the moral depravity of the other side
- In the case of anti-Zionists-not-antisemites, to show how invariably, those claiming to just “oppose Israeli policy” are really virulent Jew-haters
- To fight back against the antisemites by making life highly uncomfortable for them, even to the point where there will be real-life economic consequences for them
I do not do it to convince the haters of the error of their ways, even though that actually has happened (albeit rarely). Rather, I try to make an example of them, hoisting them on their own petard, as it were.
To illustrate the effectiveness of this strategy with regards to my third bullet point: antisemitic thug Yazied Assad has been spreading his antisemitism not just to his audience of thousands of people, but beyond it, since his followers have been able to share his videos. After I exposed his recent antisemitic, genocidal rant, he first reacted by threatening to sue me. But then, the bravado gave way to something else. He made his Instagram account private.
Granted, he still has his Tik Tok account, but the mere fact he made his Instagram account private shows the unwanted attention was getting to him. He might yet decide his craving for attention will trump his desire to avoid people coming down on him for spreading his antisemitic lies and hate, but do not dismiss the idea of making life uncomfortable for these folk.
It is the very least we can do to fight back.
