Over time, we have confused statements and threats with real actions and outcomes.
I remember when I first began to understand that our leaders and those in positions of power have moved from actual action to performative outrage. In 2016, Boko Haram kidnapped 257 Christian girls in Nigeria. The Muslim terror group grabbed the school girls and made off with them. Michelle Obama, then the first lady of the United States, famously posed with a hashtag #Bring Back Our Girls. This was at the time considered some great moral move. But Mrs. Obama and the million other people two retweeted the hashtag did not bring back the girls. They actually did nothing but make themselves feel better.
Performative outrage is not new. Every missile fired by North Korea or land grab by Russia has been met by statements from the State Department, White House, and UN decrying such behavior—and that is all. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that if we say a few words or debank people who have no accounts in the US or throw sanctions on a few mullahs who don’t have any dealings in the West, then we have done our job. We find ourselves in the precarious world in which we live because while we have been so proud of our “We object...we reject...we forcefully condemn…” our enemies have actually been progressing in their ground game.
There are two things that I wish to make clear. I do not suggest that every action by an enemy of the United States demands some type of military response. Also, I firmly believe as a Jew that prayer and doing good deeds fall under the column of action rather than empty words. While we have three formal prayers every day, there are many times when I have turned to God for help in matters both big and small. In my book, prayer has value. Empty condemnations and threats do not.
Let’s look at the university meltdowns currently occurring not only at the Ivy League but on campuses throughout the US. The actions of the “protesters,” the Hamas wannabes, are having zero effect both at home and abroad. If the goal of the Columbia Jew hate festival was to make the university divest from companies that do business with Israel, then it has failed. The spineless president on Morningside Heights has said that the university will not divest. The keffiyeh and mask-covered cowards have not in any way helped Hamas in its fight to kill Jews or Palestinians in or out of the Gaza Strip. They have not made a food drive and if they have sent any money to Gaza, it is currently being laundered in Qatar. They have not influenced the policies of the Israeli government and they have not made Jews here or abroad think any differently about the existential wars being fought in the north and south of Israel. In short, the “protesters” have made an enormous amount of noise, they have attacked and harassed Jews who have no known connection to Israel or its government, and they have made a mess of formerly pretty college campuses. And while they may smugly be satisfied with the “direct action” and their demand to kill all Jews in another intifada, they have, in practice, accomplished nothing.
Think about the removal and replacement of American flags with Palestinian flags at Yale and Harvard. If you think about the Nazi banner being raised over Paris, that had meaning. There are still videos of Parisians crying at the sight of the German flag with the concomitant march of Wehrmacht troops through the city. The raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, while the intense fighting was still going on, raised the morale of a nation. Marines, with the loss of over 6,000 fighters, defeated an entrenched and highly motivated Japanese army to take a key island for the B-29 bomber raids over the Japanese home islands. Raising and lowering flags had meaning. “Capturing the flag” meant that we had defeated the enemy. What happened at two pampered, overpriced Ivy League schools was simply theater. When I was at Harvard, nobody stood guard over the flag near the John Harvard statue. So, some bored students, tired of the empty courses they are offered, simply took it down and put an ersatz Palestinian flag in its place. Has Harvard fallen? Was Harvard Yard now part of Gaza? No. I imagine that some janitor or police officer came a few hours later and switched the flags. Time to move on to the next act in our performative temper tantrum.
Israel does not have the liberty to do performative outrage. While Joe Biden told Israel to “take the win” and not respond to 350 Iranian projectiles, the Netanyahu government understood that no response would be an invitation for another salvo of rockets and drones. The government apparently abandoned a very large strike for a pinpoint attack to give the Iranians a message: we can attack anywhere in your country and with impunity. Now that is a message that the mullahs can understand. The lack of significant damage or casualties from the Iranian attack, which was a miracle, did not mean that it could be ignored. Israel had to give it right back to keep the balance of power in place.
The West for decades has mistaken statements of condemnation and outrage with real action against its enemies. The weakness is understood by the bad actors and an invasion of Ukraine or island-grabbing by China are the result. Weakness breeds contempt which leads to bold action against clear Western interests. The Iranians were shocked and devastated by President Trump’s hit on Suleimani. It did not fit the pattern of empty threats and meaningless sanctions. Stop with the performative theater. Answer threats with real consequences. Respect and fear are what the US needs from its enemies around the world; unfortunately, it has earned neither.