The death of a heavy metal powerhouse teaches everything one needs to know about today’s complete hatred of Israel.
Ozzy Osbourne is dead. I have to admit that in high school, a friend introduced me to Black Sabbath and their metal mayhem. It was around the time when Ozzy was launching his solo career, so I had an album of his at home. Somewhere there is a BC Calculus textbook with CRAZY TRAIN written in huge letters on it.
When I saw people writing about Osbourne’s passing, I noted some who cursed him. What was his sin? He performed in Israel and before he passed away he encouraged others to do the same. For Israel, major artists coming to perform is a big deal: it gives a sense of legitimacy and being like other nations of the world. Why would professional antisemites be bothered by a British rocker putting on a few hours of entertainment in Tel Aviv? The answer gives away the whole anti-Israel movement’s story.
Those who hate Israel and eventually come to hate Jews cannot allow for any legitimacy for a country founded via hard work and war. Before 1948, lands worked by Jews were purchased by the same and turned into productive farms and cities. The desert bloomed. After the war, Israel—like virtually every state that exists today—stood as the victor after a battle for existence. There is nothing unusual or illegal about the creation of Israel. It came into being like every country in the world. While the morons on the left are now into “land acknowledgments”, they would never protest a Taylor Swift concert in the illegal country of the United States. Israel fighting off attacking Arab armies and the locals is little different than the process by which many countries were formed. The USSR was recognized by every country in the world, though its leaders “stole” the country from the rightful Tsar and his family. Its existence came about through war, with large parts of the populace not wanting Lenin to take control of their country. Churchill and others landed forces at Vladivostok to fight alongside the White Russians but withdrew them in 1925. So the Soviet Union and Republican France came about through war, bloodshed, contested rule, and even international interference—yet nobody spits on the graves of musicians who performed in Moscow or Paris. Why is Israel treated differently?
Jew haters throughout the ages have never found anything redeeming about the Jewish people. It made no difference if Jews discovered drugs like penicillin to save lives or invented Intel microchips to make our lives easier: there can be no praise or good word for the Jew. That Ozzy came to Israel several times immediately made him enemies, something that would not have occurred had he gone to North Korea, Belfast, or Turkish-controlled Cyprus. No level of hate reaches that of antisemitism and no other place and its inhabitants cause those that hate them such angst and bile. A ship with Israelis tried to dock on a Greek island this week, and imported Hamas lovers prevented their arrival. Even if the ship had been made up of Jews who do not live in Israel and have expressed no particular views on Israel or the continuing war in Gaza, the outcome would have been the same. The crew on a Spanish fight with 50 young Jewish campers kicked them off for saying one word in Hebrew—witnesses say that the kids did nothing wrong, though their counselor was manhandled and arrested. I know of no case of a Jew harassed or attacked in the West who was interviewed as to his positions on Gaza and Palestinians. Jew = Zionist = Israeli = Nazi = Murderer. That’s the only equation that they teach at Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Princeton and online. That’s why people could rejoice in the death of a heavy metal pioneer: he had made the great sin of going to Israel and making music.
How can I prove my hypothesis? The answer is the Palestinians. None of these Jew haters gives a whit about the Palestinians. Sure, they scream “from the river to the sea” and put on Jordanian keffiyehs, thinking that they are so cool. But no country would take in a single Palestinian, other than a few hundred ill ones who eventually got out. Egypt was charging $5,000 a person to let Gazans out until Israel took over the border. The Palestinians are irrelevant and today serve as the justification for international Jew hatred. But in reality, those in the West don’t care if they live or die, get food or not. The hatred is of the Jew, and as in any fight, one uses any tool available to win. The Palestinians are a very convenient tool for hating Israel and Israelis. That Hamas kills Gazans by the truckload for taking American-provided food causes no condemnation or even mention. Who cares about the Palestinians? In the end, Israel provides more for them than the Jew haters around the world.
Because the hatred of Jews is so total, there could be no mourning for the women brutally raped and murdered during the October 7th attacks. That families were wiped out together, that people were burned alive, that babies were murdered in cold blood: for the Jew haters, it’s like telling them about different ways of killing mosquitoes. They see no humanity in the Jew and thus any suffering of the latter is both deserved and boring. Who cares if Hamas terrorists—as per eye witnesses—raped already dead women? Yawn. They were just Jewesses.
As I have written before, the war will eventually end but the Jew hatred whipped up by Qatar-funded protests and university-sponsored hate festivals will live on. Five years after the end of hostilities, one will still see people wearing shirts demanding Israel’s destruction. Jew hatred defies logic and allows for no dispensations. I remember when Ilan Rimon was on the doomed Space Shuttle flight. An Arab Knesset member was asked about the first Israeli in space—something that had been a source of great pride for the local citizenry. “It’s okay as long as he doesn’t try to colonize space for Israel.” Their hatred takes no breaks and oy to the non-Jewish actor or musician who decides to put on a performance in Israel. Some really big acts like the Stones and Elton John came and ignored the noise. Others booked and canceled when they became afraid of their shadows.
For those who hate Jews and Israel, there is no two-state solution, there is no acceptable condition of peace that does not include the destruction of the Jewish state and its inhabitants. You think that the Holocaust ended sometime around 1945? For the Qatar-funded loonies on the left, the last 80 years have been a break, not a conclusion.
Rock on, Ozzy, wherever you are. Maybe those visits to Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, acts of friendship in the face of hatred, won you a golden ticket to a place where most bettors would never expect that you could get in. Those who hate you for showing friendship could learn from your music:
“Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe, it’s not too late
To learn how to love, and forget how to hate”