Yom HaShoah 2024

Yom HaShoah / Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah, known in English as Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day begins tonight at sundown and runs until Monday evening.

For my entire life I've heard the rallying cry, "Never Again!" But it's happening again.

It is now over six months since the pogrom of October 7, 2023. This was the greatest loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. Many of the men, women, and children taken as hostages by Hamas and their allies in Gaza still languish in captivity, among them several American citizens.

Indeed, the Hamas founding charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. You can read an English translation of the 1988 charter here. 

In other words, Hamas is not too far different from Nazism regarding Jews.

Since October 7th, I have seen more antisemitism in the United States than I did in my previous 55 years COMBINED. The level of open hatred on display in "progressive" media and on university campuses should shock the conscience of every upstanding American.

Much of this hate that we're now seeing domestically is the direct result of allowing mass quantities of people from traditionally antisemitic cultures into the county, and allowing donations to American universities from places like Qatar (which is one of the biggest supporters of Hamas).

What can we as Jewish Americans do?

• Jewish business owners should blacklist from any kind of financial support any university that allows the pro-Palestinian protests to continue. Peaceful protest is our right as Americans but these immediately went far beyond peaceful to harassing and intimidating Jewish students and faculty.
• The "protestors" on American college campuses are providing material aid to terrorist organizations and should be treated as such.
• Identify organizations and companies that provide support to the Palestinian protesters, and boycott them. Make them infamous for their support of Nazi ideology.
• Demand that foreign countries be barred from donating to American universities.
• Demand the explusion and deportation of any foreign students who participated in these protests.
• Demand that immigration from places like Gaza is shut down.

But all of these will take time and in the interim Jewish Americans are seeing increased levels of harassment. Most of us are of Ashkenazic ancestry and in one way or another are infected with the Shtetl Mentality. For our survival that needs to be discarded.

As I have said many times, Jewish Americans need to embrace their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. As Americans we have the nearly unique ability to arm ourselves for self- and the common defense.

For "Never Again!" to mean anything it must be backed up with more than words. It needs to be backed up with the ability to immediately and decisively respond to violence with force. Without that, the slogan may as well be, "Never Forget."

Nobody will protect us, but us. And this is something we as individuals must take to heart. Even in Israel the government not only failed miserably to protect its citizens, it actively prevented them from defending themselves because most Jews in Israel are disarmed.

I have decades of experience with firearms so back in November 2023, I published the first version of an ebook, "Guns for Jews." It's a primer especially intended for American Jews who are looking into buying a gun for self preservation. In it I include some justifications for doing so under Jewish law, some general recommendations, and some specific recommendations.

Last week I uploaded v3.0 of "Guns for Jews" as a PDF that you can download here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WgjlXp2sDGPYTpjNdskWqYQVwF380SlG/view?usp=sharing

Note that in the document I am not trying to sell anything. This is a brain dump to benefit my fellow Jewish Americans. I also encourage sharing the link or the file in the hopes of spreading knowledge.