Today in New York City, tens of thousands are expected to participate in what should be a beautiful, joyous celebration of democracy and freedom: the annual Israel Day Parade.
Unlike the imaginary global ogre portrayed by the media, the actual dot of democracy and modernity in MENA, delivering innumerable advancements that benefit the world, should be celebrated.
Just as people from other countries celebrate their connections to those lands, at times accompanied by visitors from those countries, members of Am Yisrael (“Jews”) who know the facts have thousands of years’ worth of reasons to participate.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is serving as honorary grand marshal. Wearing a Jewish star necklace, she said how proud she is to participate, and described the extensive security measures in place.
Unprecedented security is, of course, necessary, as hate crimes against Jews in New York City have been skyrocketing.
The city’s anti-Israel Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who expressed love for convicted funders of Islamist terrorism, will be the first NYC mayor not to attend. Perhaps he’ll spend the time with his wife, who celebrated the October 7 massacres.
In the more than 2 1/2 years since the massacres orchestrated by Iran, there have been many gatherings of people who recognize the importance of Israel’s fight for survival. And they’ve been peaceful. No one’s been burning American flags, toppling public property, or defacing buildings, either. Meanwhile, for anti-Israel hordes, violence and destruction are standard M.O. And they openly celebrate terrorists.
But in news coverage, the media gives people the exact opposite impression. It mischaracterizes violent protesters as “anti-war.” They don’t oppose war — only Israel and, often, the United States. As I discussed in Episode 95, calling these protesters “anti-war” is like calling the January 6th insurrectionists “anti- all elections that ever happen anywhere.”
The media also mischaracterizes Israel’s proud supporters as “pro-war,” even though they want nothing more than for the terrorist groups to stop so peaceful coexistence is possible.
In my latest episode, Jesse Brown, editor and publisher of Canadaland, discusses what happened when Canadian media did this. Listen now:
“The anchor of the CTV National News, the most popular television news broadcast in Canada, is Omar Sachedina. In the early days after October 7th, the first major rally of Jews in Canada, after months of antisemitic violence, on the nightly news broadcast, that rally was described as a ‘pro-war rally,’” Jesse explains.
“So if people were wondering who could possibly support this terrible, ‘genocidal’ war, here they are. Lo and behold, two teenagers were arrested. They were in possession of explosives, and were going to murder as many Jews as they could.”
When the media uses this kind of language — and condones those who use it — it fuels terrorism.