Back when DC Comics ruled, we young Troy boys loved reading Superman (actually Action Comics) – especially when the back featured another Bizarro episode.
Bizarro was Superman’s mirror image – ugly and evil, crude and bumbling. Superman yelled “Up, up, and... away” – Bizarro yelled “Up, up, and... down.” Superman defended truth, justice, and the American Way – Bizarro barked: “Me... no like good! Me like... bad.” Superman epitomized virtue – Bizarro scoffed: “You my worst enemy... because you so... good!”
Who knew our universe would turn topsy-turvy, with Palestinians’ global amen chorus romanticizing Hamas mass murderers, while trying to demonize and criminalize Israel’s heroic soldiers.
In today’s Bizarro world, our four children have been “outed” on the “Find IDF Soldiers” website, listing Canadians who served in Israel’s army. They’re 4.75% of the list, one friend noted. I shouldn’t be writing about this, of course. I should be dismayed, worried, ashamed, as should my kids.
But, we all feel honored, even honoured – using the Canadian spelling.
The timing is comic: this twisted initiative appeared as Jews welcome the Hebrew month of Adar, preparing to celebrate Purim. This nahafoch hu holiday features reversals, cross-dressing, and “ad de’lo yada,” when drunkards cannot distinguish Mordecai’s goodness from Haman’s wickedness.
Laughing in the face of persecution
In the holiday’s spirit, as Hamas’s Hamans set the moral tone on campus and on social media, my oldest, now renamed “War Criminal No. 1,” boasted that her profile “is quite complimentary,” even while noting that this database of only 85 people makes it look “fake.” She chuckled: “They don’t seem competent.”
War Criminal No. 4-in-law noted that War Criminal No. 2 was the first one quoted in the article accompanying the list. According to the article, WC No. 2 said in 2019: “I always dreamed of serving as an officer.”
He responded: “Cool!”
War Criminal No. 1 added that the website included “nice quotes about us from Dad’s articles. Looks like someone is a fan of Professor Troy.”
War Criminal No. 2 responded, “Yeah, they seem really sweet actually.” He then posted on the site: “Thank you for adding me to your ridiculous website.”
He explained: “I really am proud of who I am and what I’ve done. Happy to fight for my country and defend against barbaric terrorists like Hamas who rape, pillage, and murder innocent men, women, children, and babies.
“Happy to be added to your database of heroes willing to risk their lives for innocents and fight evil in all the ways it manifests.
“Our fight is for truth and justice. Hoping that one day every country in the Middle East is as democratic, diverse, open to LGBTQ+, feminist, modern and woke as Israel!”
Admittedly, it’s the only time my son has boasted about Israel being “woke.” But we Troys don’t mind in-your-face sarcasm, when it’s so well-deserved.
WC No. 2 is absolutely right about the noble company my kids are keeping. I scrolled through the list of 85 role models. I will only mention the dead. Some living Canadian-Israelis may not be as comfortable as we Troys are mocking these haters.
My kids are proud to be listed with:
• Ben Dunkelman, a Toronto boy who, two decades before Israel became a state, traveled to Palestine. There, he served as a shomer, watchman, to keep his kibbutz “free of marauders and thieves.” In 1947, Dunkelman returned to Palestine after 15 years back in Canada. He was there to fight in Mahal, with both Christians and Jews, against the vicious attempt by six Arab armies and Palestinian Arab irregulars to wipe out the new Jewish state after it was declared in May 1948. This hero “was instrumental in the breaking of the siege of Jerusalem” while also defending Israel in the North.
• Ben Mizrahi, our close friend, reported as “dead at 22” – actually, murdered while trying to help others at the Supernova music festival. The website kindly showcased a beautiful tribute to Ben UJA Federation of Greater Toronto made, and quoted his extraordinary mother, saying “Ben was so proud of who he was.... He was proud to be a Jew, he was proud to be an Israeli.” The mom described Ben’s determination to go to a pre-army mechina program – where he met War Criminal No. 3 – “to prepare him for the IDF. He couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else.” And Ben’s high school eulogized him, by posting: “Ben was a friend to everyone and was so proud of his service in the IDF.”
• Yisroel Eliyahu Suissa also died too young, at 21, in a motorcycle accident, while on break from serving in Gaza. This young hero served 150 consecutive days after October 7, as a machine gunner in the Paratroopers special unit.
IT’S FASCINATING how much time one person invested in assembling this website. That’s a defining characteristic of Jew-haters for millennia: so consumed by Jew-hatred, they obsess about the Jews, the Jewish people, and now the Jewish state.
This maple-flavored enemies list reflects the dark trend of targeting Israeli soldiers, cold-shouldering Israeli academics, silently boycotting books like mine that are pro-Israel or have the Z-word in its title – it even got me banned from TikTok for violating community standards by saying that the academic intifada is a threat to American values, too.
Still, my kids have long heard me quote Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wisdom: “Judge me by the enemies I make.” They know that when obsessive nutbars attack on social media, first laugh, then turn your darned iPhone off.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath, were just published.