It was a throwaway line, but it stuck in my mind after the rest of the insults blurred. I got sucked into a pointless argument on a social media post last week, although the word “argument” gives it too much more credit. It started with a post in a group for language enthusiasts and descended into a battle of words.
The post itself listed the six “Oldest languages still in use” – Greek, Chinese, Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, and Tamil. Predictably, instead of a reasoned argument over whether Sanskrit, for example, should be included in the list, many of the comments took exception to the absence of Arabic, and many more tried to make the point that modern Hebrew is an artificial language with nothing in common with the ancient tongue.
OK, they didn’t quite put it like that – more like: “All you filthy genociders brought to life an extinct language to justify your occupation” and “Current Hebrew is a made-up colonial language invented by Zionist Europeans to give them legitimacy for colonizing [and] invading Palestine.” Other comments used shocking terms for those claiming to be language lovers. Some were thankfully deleted, having gone too far even for social media.
The trolls (or bots) didn’t appreciate the irony of telling me and other Israelis in the group that the language we speak – and they don’t – doesn’t exist. No wonder I sometimes feel like I’m talking to a brick wall – and not the Western Wall (Kotel).
At some point – and I probably should have given up earlier and gotten on with my real life – I started a comment with: “As a proud Israeli and Jew…” The reply that swiftly followed declared: “‘Proud Israeli’ is far beyond my comprehension. Proud jew [sic] I can understand. Even when ‘proud’ is a horrible word.”
When I noted that there’s obviously a lot that is beyond her comprehension, she shot back: “I understand there’s a genocide, a cult, pedophiles, corruption, stolen land, lies, crimes against humanity.” I avoided the temptation of noting that she’d missed some of the usual tropes – where was the control of the banks and media, for example? – but she got me thinking nonetheless: What makes the word “proud” so horrible in her prejudiced eyes?
Pride comes before a downfall, but without it, the West is in a spiraling free fall. If you don’t care about your country, don’t expect someone else to respect it. You don’t end up with a collective sing-along of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and a “brotherhood of man”; you end up being abused by the bully in the global village who’s not playing the same game, let alone bound by the rules of fair play.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with national pride. It’s an inherent part of what makes the world go round. What would be the point of the Olympic Games, the Eurovision Song Contest, or the FIFA World Cup if you couldn’t back your own country’s team?
It is natural to be proud of your compatriots’ achievements. I’m thrilled to see Israeli Deni Avdija’s success in the NBA (even without understanding basketball), Gal Gadot’s stellar Hollywood career, and the phenomenal reach of Israeli hi-tech and deep-tech companies, which gave Israel the moniker “The Start-Up Nation.”
Part of the effort to belittle pride – unless of course it’s Gay Pride or Palestinian pride – is an attempt to erase the basis of the global order. As has been noted, the Jews and the rest of the world drew contrasting conclusions from the Holocaust – while much of the world concluded that national pride led to nationalism and nationalism led to Auschwitz, the Jews realized that without a national home, they would never be safe. Destroying Israeli pride is part of the same battle to destroy Israel itself and the Jewish links to it.
I was reminded of an opinion piece by Brendan O’Neill in the UK’s Jewish News in December 2015 under the title “The wretched reason why Israel became Europe’s whipping boy,” in which he concluded: “Plucky, keen to protect its sovereignty, considering itself an outpost of liberalism… Israel is a painful reminder to today’s morally anchorless European thinkers and agitators of what their nations once were. They hate Israel because they hate themselves.“Israel has become the whipping boy of guilt-ridden Western liberals who’ve given up on the very idea of the West.”
After the October 7, 2023, invasion and mega-atrocity by Hamas, which was followed by rocket attacks on seven fronts, British journalist Douglas Murray came on a fact-finding tour of Israel, described in his book On Democracies and Death Cults. Marveling at the courage and commitment of Israeli soldiers fighting back, he wrote: “Whatever the years ahead hold for the West, I know that Canada, Britain, Europe, Australia, and America should be so lucky as to produce a generation of people like Israel has.”
Number of antisemetic attacks growing in the West
What the West has in store can partly be seen in the ever-growing list of antisemitic attacks, many of them having links to the Iranian regime. This week alone, there were three attacks on Jewish sites in the UK. One hit very close to my old home with the firebombing of Kenton United Synagogue, which played a central role in my life growing up, before I moved to Israel more than 45 years ago.
Jonathan Sacerdoti pertinently noted in The Spectator: “Over the last couple of years, there have been around 20 documented cases of arson or firebombing attacks targeting synagogues across the world, from North Africa to Europe, North America and Australia. A synagogue in London is simply the latest in what has become a global pattern.
“But this is not only about Jews. In the same period, churches have also been targeted. Across Europe, 94 church arson attacks were reported in 2024, nearly double the previous year. That amounts to almost two churches every week.”
In a seminal essay titled “Zionism for Everyone – the real reason we’re all fighting about Israel,” Tablet Magazine editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse, wrote: “… Zionism became a target because it represented what Westerners on the right claim to desperately want but are unable to attain, and what Westerners on the left wish to define as impossible: a form of nationalism that is oriented toward the future rather than the past and that is able to defend its own particularism while protecting individual and social freedoms.”
I’m not alone in my feelings of national pride, far from it: Ahead of this week’s back-to-back Remembrance Day and Independence Day, Israel Hayom dedicated its weekly survey to the question: “To what extent do you feel pride in being Israeli?” The response was a whopping 52% “Very proud,” followed by 27% “proud,” 14% “not so proud,” 4% “not proud at all”, and 3% who “don’t know” (maybe the question itself was beyond their comprehension).
Apparently, Israelis are able to ignore the ongoing libels and lies, or perhaps the need to fight the hatred, along with the rocket attacks, brings us together. The political and religious splits are wide and worrying, but nonetheless, there is still a common language that unites us.
On Remembrance Day, people mourned – almost every Israeli can put the name and face of a fallen soldier together, particularly post-Oct. 7. On Independence Day, people got together to have barbecues and picnics, concerts, tours, and the increasingly common local ceremonies, festively reading aloud the Declaration of Independence.
There are some 15 million Jews worldwide, of whom some 7 million live in Israel (total population 10 million). Incidentally, this means there are more Hebrew-speakers than, for example, Danish-speakers. And if you were wondering who still speaks Aramaic, it is undergoing a cultural revival among some Israeli Christian communities in the Galilee, while Aramaic speakers in Iran, Syria, and Iraq are feeling threatened.
The continuity and solidarity are factors in our national pride and probably contribute to Israel’s consistently high spot in the World Happiness Index.
We are proud to have survived, against the odds, exile and return, exile and return. There is strength in our pride. Israel is a miracle. The revival of Hebrew is a miracle. Israeli hi-tech and defense technologies are close to miraculous. We have reason to be proud, but it is beyond the comprehension of some, and for others, it’s something they’d rather not know.
Source:
www.jpost.com
