Ignorant, at Best

In my last post, I half-seriously suggested that Michigan senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed of Michigan heed the words of a fictional character in 30 Rock, who said "... just say Jewish, this is taking forever." No need to say that to podcaster Emma Vigeland, who helpfully, if ignorantly, has done just that.

Why clip the first 40 seconds, in which I make clear that this is about the *aftermath* of the Holocaust, if you’re going to smear me with one short quote? I'm literally saying Nazi Germany deserved harsher treatment.

The Zionist AI bot that scans our episodes is getting lazy. https://t.co/ntHQzUDQj1

— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) September 2, 2026

 

In this curious word salad, Vigeland stated

It should be, I think, a teachable moment for people about what Zionism is really about as a white supremacist ideology that has been tied into an ancient religion and should have nothing to do with it and has put so many Jews on the front line of hatred in a failed attempt for reparations for the Holocaust where nobody who really perpetuated it saw much outside of some select few who paid for their crimes of Nazis. Many of them fled to countries with the help of western governments, too, and European governments. The people who bore the brunt of the Holocaust were the Palestinians.

It's easy, though critical, to knock Vigeland for the utterly preposterious statement "the people who bore the brunt of the Holocaust were the Palestinians."  The individuals killed by the Third Reich were European Jews, and not even those residing in the ancient land of Palestine or as Scripture would have it, Judea and Samaria. That should be clear to everyone, especially those possessed of such knowledge and wisdom that they feel a need to present us "a teachable moment.

Some did, indeed, flee to the West with the help of European and American governments. However, they fled to escape likely punishment for war crimes and in general

The Allies recognized the appeal of Nazism to a defeated people. The movement had sprung from Germany's humiliating defeat 27 years earlier. To eradicated the idea, all four major powers- America, Russia, Britain, and France- agreed to a plan of denazification. They would hold the supporters of the Nazi government accoutable for their crimes, eradicate Nazi regalia, and present the country with the scope of Nazi crime.

The West- aside from Germany itself- was not responsible for the rise of Nazism. And the West- including, especially, Germany- has done whatever it could to prevent a similar situation from arising.

It's not entirely clear what Vigeland means by Jews being put "on the front line of hatred in a failed attempt for reparations for the Holocaust."  Presumably, she does not mean the Jews of the USA, who played a prominent role in the civil rights movement at a time, particularly, when such activism was controversial and often dangerous.  Vigeland probably is referring to the Jews of Israel, who live side-by-side with Arabs, who enjoy more rights than in any other country of the Middle East. 

And as Vigeland others on the extreme left conveniently disregard, the establishment of the State of Israel was not a response merely to the Holocaust. (President Obama fell victim to the same myth when in Cairo in June, 2009 when he implied that the people of "the Holy Quran" have always liked Jews.)  Discrimination against, sometimes persecution of, Jews has been taking place in the Arab world for nearly a millenium.

Many of the Jews whom Vigeland believes are such haters include individuals who knew persons who were slaughtered in the October 7, 2023 attack launched by Islamic terrorists with the purpose of killing as many Jews as possible. It was a devastating and, in the short-term, successful operation in which

the attacks by Hamas—the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement—killed more than 1,300 Israelis and third-country nationals, including at least 29 Americans, in a country whose population is less than 10 million. In America, that would be equivalent to killing nearly 40,000—13 times more than the number of Al Qaeda victims on 9/11.

Jews took offense, about which the anti-Israel (supposedly progressive) far left takes offense. Some Israelis even conflated Hamas with Palestinians, including them in their hatred of Hamas. But Muslim (Arab and Persian) governments and people of their region also are hostile toward Palestinians, which the far left are unconcerned with. 

That is an obstacle in the search for a two-state solution, which few prominent politicians appear interested in nowadays. (Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emanuel, and Josh Shapiro appear to be outliers; a pattern, perhaps.)

And, of course, race. Vigeland aargues we must be taught "about what "Zionism is really about as a white supremacist ideology." However, Zionism is not a "white supremacist ideology." It is not a supremacist ideology and not race-based but rather a 

Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland o fthe Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, "the Land of Israel"). Though Zionism originated in easteren and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine. According to Judaism, Zion, one of the hills of ancinet Jerusalem, is the place where God dwells.

Zionism, like it or not, pertains to a Jewish homeland.  Judaism is not a race, but a religion.  Or as God has written

Breaking news from Mt. Sinai: Judaism is a religon. The millions of allusions to me in every single text and commentary and ritual of the past 3,000 years probably should have been a giveaway.

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