Before And After: The Vile Hypocrisy Of Jew Hatred

Bigotry requires one standard, or condemning it is a lie.

Antisemitic lowlife and Bob Vylan singer shouting “Death, death to the IDF,” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival. Photo Credit: X

I started writing my Orange County Jewish Life column (where many of my Substack articles originate) before October 7, 2023. The publisher and I were both aware at the time that antisemitism was rising to an alarming degree – and had been for some time. We both felt that awareness was a key tool in fighting that alarming trend. I have been grateful ever since for the opportunity to write this column for Orange County’s Jewish community.

However, post October 7 - I am not the same person who wrote that first article, and I assume that many of you are not the same either.

I have been very committed to Jewish life ever since I can remember. I am no Tzadik (righteous person), but I have always believed, and felt, that being Jewish is the greatest gift possible. I mean that. We all won the lottery. For me, all things Jewish - Judaism, our history, our customs, our humor, and everything else, has always been fascinating to me (I can thank my father for a lot of that). It’s fascinating to me in ways that nothing else is. I also am “passionate” (a word that is so overused – it’s almost useless now) about other things, so as they used to say: “I have what to compare it to.”

So, I am definitely Jewish-centric, and proudly so. But before October 7, I had more tolerance, and patience, with less overt types of behavior that could be classified, but also weren’t always, antisemitism.

Not anymore. Now I have zero patience for even the slightest appearance of anything that may be a product of an individual’s bias against Jews. To put it another way, I no longer care about the “benefit of the doubt,” whether an individual act is intentional or not, or whether the person expressing those views is “just ignorant.”

I’ve learned that people are far more aware of what they are saying than I thought previously. I’ve also learned that people don’t express negative, or seemingly negative, views about us unless they actually hold those views. That may sound obvious – but it isn’t. What used to seem potentially innocuous, I now know is usually the “tip of the iceberg.”

In fact, I couldn’t care less at this point what causes people to hate Jews. It doesn’t matter. We don’t deserve to be hated (quite the opposite), so their motivations are utterly irrelevant. The “why” is meaningless. The critical factor in the rise of antisemitism, before and after October 7, is that those who expresses those views, and/or acts on them – is doing so because it is socially acceptable for them to do so. Put simply: they do it because they can.

None of it is innocuous: the vast majority of “innocuous” remarks are often just a beginning, a toe in the water, or training wheels. They are a test for more hardcore antisemitism down the line.

That experience has crept into my own life frequently since 2023.

Most recently, I went to a concert in downtown Los Angeles where I met a non-Jewish buddy. Previously, this same person, when I mentioned the pogrom of October 7, stunningly replied “What happened then?” It was very obvious that he was serious. This is a well-educated person, who anyone would assume knew at least the basic outline of what happened to us on that day. October 7 wasn’t on his radar because it was inconsequential in his world.

During a break in the concert, he complained that there was not enough “diversity” on stage. I expressed the (formerly obvious) opinion that race shouldn’t define anyone, and that music is music – no matter who is playing. As a typical Los Angeles liberal (sorry if that offends you - it’s true), he reflexively began the usual speech about how certain races have been victimized by other races, etc. and that I as a “white” person with privilege really shouldn’t be commenting at all (he is white). I pointed out that I am actually part of a very small minority, and that violence against us has exploded over the past several years.

That triggered a look of smug bemusement, followed by the typical comment that I find among the most aggravating of the now customary set of responses in this situation. He claimed that I had no right to be insensitive to the plight of (certain) victimized communities because “no one is more sensitive to Jewish things” than I am.

He did not mean that I should be more sensitive because I am sensitive to Jewish issues. What he meant was that because Jewish issues are not legitimate in the intersectional mind, I had no right to comment, at all. Why? Because for this white, privileged, educated liberal – Jews are on the wrong side of the racial/economic/historical fence and therefore we are not supposed to express an opinion that opposes their narrative. Legitimate minorities can, we can’t. My opinions are meaningless because our grievances are meaningless.

I KNOW that had I been black, gay, transgender or Hispanic, any comments about race/gender would have been greeted with an air of awe inspired reverence.

But I am a Jew – so not only is my experience as a member of a minority not relevant: any talk of the hatred we encounter across the globe on a daily basis is just a case of being “overly sensitive.”

Another recent example. I spoke earlier about having other interests, and one is definitely music.


Because I’m a Gen Xer, the music of the 60s is very familiar to me. So, I am ACCUTELY aware of how political popular music has been since that era. I lived through the 70s, the punk era, and the grunge era. Artists in general were venerated for their outspoken views on politics.

My high school was also an art school (Crossroads School For The Arts & Sciences). The teachers never shut up about how artists define opinion, mirror our society, seek truth… blah blah blah. In other words, they (wrongly in my opinion) believed that artists are the best equipped members of society to engage in social commentary. And because the school leaned/leans heavily left: “progress” was always presented as positive, whether it is constructive or not. “Change” is good.

This is the same school which I wrote about previously because I was kicked out of an alumni group for demanding that Jews be included in a seminar on racism. I was told that as a non “BIPOC” (look it up if you enjoy nonsense) person, I was a “racist” for even bringing up the inclusion of Jews. This was pre-October 7. I was eventually removed entirely from the alumni list and assume that I’m pretty much “persona non grata” at this leftist hellhole of indoctrination my former high school.

Parenthetically – the friend from the concert earlier in the article was in my class. Same school.

Like a lot of kids – music was entertainment, but also a refuge. I would like it to still function as a refuge. But because artists are overwhelmingly on the left, it is becoming increasingly trendy for them to express anti-Jewish and anti-Israel views. That list is VERY long. Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Green Day, Paul Weller, Taylor Swift, Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill, and hundreds more – have expressed anti-Jewish views.

At two of the world’s largest music festivals musicians spewed obviously antisemitic slogans. Both at Coachella and, more recently, Glastonbury, nazi salutes, calls for genocide against the Jewish people, blood libels, etc., were not just expressed, but were celebrated (it also happened to a lesser degree at Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert, where one of the Jewish performers was loudly booed).

My favorite band has always been The Beatles and one of the groups I belong to on Facebook is run by two guys who used to host one of the world’s most popular Beatles podcasts (It’s a terrible name taken from a lyric in “Strawberry Fields Forever” – “Nothing Is real”).

Discussing Glastonbury, group members uniformly behaved like none of the anti-Jewish incidents had happened. While there were chants from the stage of “death, death to the IDF,” “from the river to the sea” and nazi salutes, this group was posting about Glastonbury like it’s still 2022 when Paul McCartney played, or any other previous era when NONE of this was the norm.

I chose to say something, commenting that it was appalling that people were behaving as though this were a typical music festival, when there were literal calls of genocide coming from the stage.

The reaction was predictable. I was met with a cascade of blatantly antisemitic comments (the usual – we “stole” the land, we’re “colonizers,” “baby murderers,” etc.) and told by the former host of the podcast himself that I was no longer going to be allowed to comment on “politics.” When I pointed out that this wasn’t politics, but racism (it’s not theoretically racism, but almost nothing else is that is called “racism” today is – so I am using the term) and antisemitism.

That elicited a private response condescendingly chastising me for my comments. Knowing it would be a total waste of my time, I gave him a brief history of Israel, provided critical facts about the rise of hate crimes against Jews, including the fire-bombing of Josh Shapiro’s house while he and his family slept upstairs, the murder of Karen Diamond, and the setting on fire of Melbourne’s synagogue that very week (weeks later, police are still laughably “searching for a motive”), and MANY other incidents post 10/7.

His reaction? A single emoji.

If I had been black, gay, Hispanic etc. and something similar had occurred – these very same people would have been endlessly expressing their dire outrage to signal their supreme virtue to each other.

We ALL know that is true.

So what is the point of still giving people the “benefit of the doubt”? Is it a negative to not be willing to indulge in the fantasy that people who are not obvious in their Jew hatred are somehow just misinformed?

So many people apply a double standard to us. We, however, should have one single standard for all levels of antisemitism: total non-acceptance and tolerance. We should treat all antisemites as being equally vile.

I live now in the world of reality. I have no more patience for ANY level of antisemitism. Why should I? They aren’t trying to understand us. Their empathy is NEVER directed toward us. I am out of excuses – you should be too. Delusion isn’t going to help us in the battle ahead. Antisemitism is skyrocketing and this fight requires VERY clear eyes. And a lot of davening.

Never be afraid. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai.

This article appeared originally in Orange County Jewish Life.

Joshua Namm is a longtime Jewish community pro, passionate Israel advocate, and co-founder/co-CEO of Moptu, a unique social platform designed specifically for article sharing, and dedicated to the principle of free speech.