There is a Global Pogrom under way.
This is a terrible truth. And people tend to ignore terrible truths. So it must be said again: There is a Global Pogrom under way.
And another terrible truth must be spoken: The Global Pogrom has been under way for more than a decade. It has taken lives. It has destroyed property. It has injured, brutalized, and terrified Jews and Jewish communities in many nations. And it is creating a silent exodus, a de facto expulsion, an ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
To say again, because it must be said again, this is something almost no one wants to admit. A truth that almost no one, including many Jews, wants to speak or hear. But over the past month, it has become a truth that is impossible to ignore.
Yet even in the face of this, many continue to deny it, or at least to minimize it. And many, one regrets, have chosen to blame it on the Jews themselves.
My latest article at The Tower, on why Israel's growing media presence around the world could make it the world's next cultural superpower.
Despite its high international profile, Israel has always been a somewhat provincial county, with a domestic culture largely unknown to outsiders. The classic pieces of Israeli pop culture, such as the comedy group Ha'Gashash Ha'Hiver, Eretz Israel and Mizrahi music, and the classic bourekas movies, remain ubiquitous in Israel—most Israelis can quote lines from them at will—but almost nowhere else. Everyone in the world knows who Brad Pitt is, but no one outside of Israel knows Yehuda Levi, his rough Israeli equivalent. Indeed, when Yair Lapid suddenly emerged as Israel's newest political star, the global media proved completely ignorant of a man who had been one of Israel's most famous media personalities for decades.
But this may be changing, and very quickly. Over the past decade, Israeli films, actors, television shows, celebrities, and music have spread and, more importantly, been embraced around the world. This includes films like Walk on Water, Fill the Void, Ajami, Or, and the cinema of Amos Gitai, which have won international prizes and foreign distribution, often with considerable success. There are television shows like Betipul, remade almost word-for-word as HBO's In Treatment, and Hatufim, whose American remake Homeland is a runaway success; game and reality shows have also been reproduced and remade in numerous other countries.
Actors like Noa Tishby, Ayelet Zurer, and Mili Avital have appeared in American and European films, become stars, producers, and conduits through which the Israeli film and television industry can reach into foreign markets. Zurer in particular has met with significant Hollywood success, co-starring in Steven Spielberg's Munich, as well as blockbusters like Man of Steel.
Even more surprisingly, musicians like the heavy metal band Orphaned Land and Mizrahi singer Sarit Hadad have become popular in countries that have historically been ambivalent or violently hostile toward Israel, garnering fans from nations like Turkey and Syria.
While it is too soon to know for sure, it increasingly looks like Israel may well be on the road to becoming a cultural superpower.
In English, on my article on Israel having to go it alone and the legacy of Rav Ovadia Yosef. Hosted by the excellent writer and my personal friend Alex Stein.
The Kindle version of my first novel, The Mighty Quinn, is temporarily available at a considerable discount. It's a dystopian satire of environmentalists, hippies, psychotic activists, and whales. Enjoy!
The latest issue of The Tower - of which I am associate editor - is now online. It contains some excellent articles by David Hazony, Armin Rosen, and myself.
If the reaction to the death of Helen Thomas, with its studied indifference to her cackling demand that the Jews "get the hell out of Palestine," has told us anything, it is that the embrace of racism among Israel's critics has become so ubiquitous that it has essentially been normalized.
Michael J. Totten, the prize-winning author of The Road to Fatima Gate, has called him "one of the finest American-Israeli authors of his generation."
Jay Nordlinger of the National Review has referred to his work as "some of the most intelligent, clearest, most honest writing I have read in a long time."