December 5, 2024—I’m republishing this. People wrote to me personally to tell me they agreed with me. Since it seems that the pro-Zionist world is going deeper into fantasy, I’m republishing this and allowing comments.
I hesitated to push the publish button on this. But ultimately I decided on yes. Sometimes it’s right to pull punches. But it’s a bad habit when done reflexively. Criticizing the other side is easy. They’re a bunch of bad hombres, can’t change that. But your own side needs to rethink things and that’s what I’m doing here. It may sound angry but it’s constructive criticism offered out of love. Have you ever read Isaiah or Ezra? I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I am saying that reading hard truths about one’s own people’s behavior shouldn’t be restricted to the holy texts. When I think of the little boy with the gouged out eyes and the little girl who died of blood loss after the savages chopped off her hand, I think, “Go for it.”
Pre-post script: As I was writing this something was dancing in the back of my mind. I found it later.
If this were the US, the festival’s organizers would be buried in lawsuits.
I’m going to let loose with some long-repressed stuff about the Nova Festival.
It should go without saying that what happened there was an atrocity. But nothing goes without saying. I know from personal experience that people will read the sentence “the cat is orange” as “the dog is black.”
So:
What happened there was an atrocity. Inexcusable. A red line.
But many things about the Nova Festival have bothered me. I didn’t want to voice them because that would have put me on the side of Jew-haters who, as always, took the opportunity to pound in the devastation with heartless scorn:
“A music festival next to a concentration camp/open-air prison—what did they expect?”
So I kept my mouth shut, but the fact is I was thinking almost the same thing, but with a totally different motivation:
“Dropping acid and dancing right next to a psychotic apocalyptic death cult dedicated to their destruction—what did they expect?”
This was particularly true on X, where everything is an opportunity for mindless bickering.
I also kept my mouth shut about Shani Louk.
And again: What they did to her was a crime and an abomination.
But face facts: she was a sad soul, desperate for an identity, finding it in drug-taking and weird bodily modifications. Every photo of her shows someone who was vacuous and childish.
Louk was born on 7 February 2001 in Israel to an Israeli father and German mother, Ricarda Louk, who had lived in Ravensburg, Germany, and moved to Israel in the early 1990s.[ Louk and her family moved to Portland, Oregon, U.S., in the early 2000s, and she attended kindergarten at Portland Jewish Academy.[
Louk later became a resident of Tel Aviv, where she worked as a freelance tattoo artist, and also had a following as an Instagram influencer. According to Louk's aunt, she held pacifist views and obtained an exemption from military service in Israel, which she said was facilitated by her dual citizenship.
Let’s look at this in order.
“German-Israeli.” This is not unique to Shani but it certainly describes her fractured identity. I really wish people would stop this hyphenation garbage. One of the things that the Jew-haters and their allies are always accusing Israelis of is having a fake, fabricated LARPing identity. The use of a hyphenated identity validates this charge by grounding it in an objective fact. Shiri Bibas wasn’t abducted because she was born in Argentina. She was abducted because she was Israeli. And what about all the non-hyphenated Israelis — don’t they matter? Cut it out.
Tattoo “artist.” Working as a tattooer (I won’t call them artists) is one of shittiest occupations a human being can have. I’d respect her more if she’d had an Only Fans account. Tel Aviv is full of these creeps, a bad sign. In fact, although I haven’t been there in a while, my impression is that Tel Aviv isn’t so much Miami on the Mediterranean as it’s Portland on the Mediterranean, and if it weren’t for the crazy situation that exists outside of the bubble, which does filter through the membrane of the bubble, it would devolve completely into an even more extreme version of Portland. Articles about Tel Aviv as “the gayest city in the world,” may not be accurate, but they are cringe-inducing.
Open-air prisons, eh? This festival was an open-air disaster waiting to happen, exhibitionistic, fake, inauthentic, in sum, bullshit.1
Tattooing is against Jewish law, end of story and, yes, I know that in the Bronze Age Jews (or proto-Jews) probably tattooed, but now it’s a no-no.
Maimonides clearly sees the origin of this prohibition as an act of idolatry. He includes it in his section concerning idolatry and then explicitly states: “This was a custom among the pagans who marked themselves for idolatry….” But, [Maimonides] concludes that regardless of intent, the act of tattooing is prohibited (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry 12:11).
The Tel Aviv hipsters do it not despite, but because, it’s against Jewish law. That makes it cool. What next? Incest? I’m 100% convinced that if and when incest becomes cool in the West, they’ll do that. I’m not exaggerating. They are Nimrods.
Instagram influencer. No comment needed.
She dodged the draft, didn’t even do the alternative, Sherut Leumi.
Another clue as to what a mess Shani was:
Every year, the pair would visit Ravensburg in southern Germany, where Mrs Louk grew up, so they could spend time with Shani’s grandparents and stay in touch with their German heritage.
Welp…
Once and finally, I am sorry for Shani Louk and everyone else at that rave who was killed or injured or traumatized.
But I can’t put them in the same category as old folks waiting for a bus, or people driving to work, or the soldiers who were overwhelmed on understaffed military bases, or the kibbutniks who ran out of ammo, or the Bedouin woman who took 40 bullets from Hamas thugs. These people were going about their business as normal human beings. Their government failed them.
Which brings us to the rave itself. Whether from repression or naivete, I didn’t explicitly think of the druggie aspect until a few weeks ago, when I saw a YT video about the massacre. I can’t locate the link now so you’ll have to go by my memory.
At the beginning of the video, I said to myself, “these guys were on drugs.” Yeah, I was shocked. Of course I should not have been but I was.
Looking for confirmation, I found this: 2
Around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, as the sky turned pink and many revelers were beginning the most intense part of their trips, rockets from Gaza suddenly streaked through the sky. Air-raid sirens and loud explosions cut through the music.
….
One Israeli said that being high on LSD during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 prompted a spiritual revelation that helped him escape the carnage at a desert rave. Another is certain the drug MDMA made him more decisive and gave him the strength to carry his girlfriend as they fled the scene. A third said that experiencing the assault during a psychedelic trip has helped him more fully process the trauma.
Well…maybe if they hadn’t been on drugs they’d have realized more quickly what was happening and could have responded more quickly and intelligently.
Witnesses said that for many attendees, drug use appeared to hamper their ability to flee for safety. Some ravers were too zoned out on psychedelics to realize what was happening and escape. The researchers said that those experiences were also important to their findings.
This, plus they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.3
The researchers surveyed more than 650 Nova survivors. Roughly 23 percent said they took hallucinogens like LSD, also known as acid, and about 27 percent used MDMA, a stimulant and psychedelic commonly called molly or ecstasy. Many attendees used more than one substance.
I’m not saying that every Israeli kid is a hallucinogenic consuming waster. But I’ve read lots of stuff about the normalization, almost valorization, of leaving Israel after military service, going to India, South America, etc. What do you think they’re doing in India? Taking drugs. Then there’s draft-dodging, or evading, as in the aforementioned alternative service. I can’t get my hands on figures but I’ve read that as much as 50% of Israel’s youth evades military service. The image of the Spartan country where boys fight to serve in elite units, and all Israeli units are always described as “the elite”) is a massive exaggeration.
When a non-trivial percentage of your kids prefers to live like this, it’s bad. When going to India or South America to zone out on drugs is a prestige behavior, it’s bad. And let me not digress about the one-way ticket to hell that is “LGBTQ.”4
What brought on this outburst? This interview with one of the festival’s organizers, Ofir Amir, who is in NYC to promote The Nova Exhibit.
I sensed immediately that I was in the presence of a guy who would sell me his kid’s soiled diapers if he felt he could make a buck off of them.
Watch the whole thing. It’s delusion on parade.
“We were just attending a music festival. Hating people like us is crazy.” (Is it OK to hate people who aren’t like you?)
“Did the denial and hate for music-lovers surprise you?”
“Yes, yes it surprises me. A dance floor is supposed to be the safest place on earth.”
Oh Mother of God what will reach these people? Hamas is a Muslim apocalyptic death cult dedicated to jihad. Not to mention numerous “secular” revolutionary cells and groups in Gaza and the West Bank. Each is as bad as the other. They want one thing: Israel gone, Jews either dead or broken.
What about this is so tough to understand?
“This exhibition has nothing to do with religion or politics.”
Denying that is what got Israel where it is. Everything in Israel is related to religion and politics.
But what sent me into orbit came at 04:38. The interviewer asked about the lack of support from the rest of the trance community.
“I wish I could answer this.” With a smile. That’s a screen shot of his face when he said this. I wanted to punch him.
What a liar. I can’t go on. OK, I’ll go on.
The interviewer asked him, over footage of protests against the exhibition, what accounted for this.
He thought it was a “lack of education.”
“They don’t even know where Israel is.”
Let me interject something here. There are a lot of stupid Jews commenting nowadays and stupid friends of Jews who practice a mutually self-enforcing game called enabling. One of the lowest forms of this enabling is that anti-Zionists are ignorant. They don’t know the history. If they did, they’d drop the hate.
Yes, I know that some anti-Zionists really are ignorant and don’t know where Israel is or know the name of the river or the sea. These videos are all over X and YouTube. If you think that all anti-Zionists are like this, you are wrong.
I have known and tangled with many of them. They are formidably informed (if crazy) and could crush most pro-Israel Jews. Imagine going up against a Norman Finkelstein or Max Blumenthal acolyte.
I distinctly remember watching a Phil Donohue show from many years ago. His guest was Christopher Hitchens in his radical left, pro-Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine phase. Maybe it’s on YouTube. Go look it up. I cannot bear to. He jousted with some Hadassah lady in the audience and coolly eviscerated her. It was painful to watch and painful to remember.
I argued with an anti-Zionist who knew about the Lavon Affair. Anything that puts Israel in a bad light they will be experts about. And more.
I knew an anti-Zionist who could tell you the Jaffa orange export numbers from the mid-19th century.
Do not suppose that most of these mobs are made up of ignorant people. Mindless and hate-filled, yes. Stupid, not so much. That’s a dodge. It’s a deflection.
OK, back to the video.
And then this fraud said something that sent me from orbit into outer space:
“We approached them. Come and listen. Come and look for yourself. Look inside what you’re protesting against. It breaks my heart that there is so much hate.”
I think what annoyed me the most was the soft, almost hectoring, teasing tone. It the most bizarre form of insincerity which I cannot quite characterize. Does he believe this? I can’t tell.
All I can say is: If Israel keeps producing men like this, it might as well close up shop. I have a theory about what, culturally, has happened to Israel since Pax Americana, but I’ll leave it to another time. Briefly, being American, or what they perceive as American (a totally different thing) has become the ideal for empty-headed, empty-souled Nimrods.
Israelis like him are more injurious to their society than his American counterparts. America can afford a thousand iterations and still survive. Israel cannot.
You can’t outlaw people like this but you can as a society shower them with contempt, and I shower this con-artist/grifter with all the contempt I can muster.
I do not care if anyone thinks I’m being hard. I think of the little boy whose eye was gouged out, and the little girl who died a lonely death, her hand chopped off, and I can’t stand it.
I don’t care about anyone’s feelings. We have to face the truth.
The only proper thing that Ofir Amir can do is apologize for holding a rave near Gaza. Stop self-promoting. Start facing reality. Otherwise I don’t want to hear from him and his kind.
If Israel doesn’t expunge The Tribe of Nova from its soul, it will die.
Afterword
I’m not against psychedelic drugs per se any more than I’m against drinking alcohol. They’re medicine. But medicine needs to be administered in the right dose.
I’m familiar with the Native American tribes around Tucson, whose traditional religious practices include drinking mild alcoholic beverages brewed from indigenous plants in communal vomiting sessions. This isn’t an escape — it’s a journey, done under certain circumstances, as a group.
They also create what we call psychedelic drugs obtained from other plants. These aren’t commercial, fake, electronic experiences. They are ancient, communal journeys into the unknown performed in nature. The alcohol and drugs are mild, not the powerful mind-blowing/altering substances the Israeli ravers were taking. I personally believe most of the mind-altering effects of the Native American ceremonies arises from the ritualized and communal nature of the ceremonies, not the drugs/alcohol.
It’s hard to compare it to anything in our society but I’ll try: Imagine a Passover Seder in which you drink eight glasses of wine, and communally vibe to that as you finish the Seder. Or drinking eight glasses of wine at a Mass. The point is to alter your mind, but according to ritual.
What nowadays is called “performative,” a word I hate because it was popularized by Judith Butler groupies and because there are numerous other synonyms in the English language which work perfectly well. I just used them.
The druggie aspect seems to have been more honestly covered in the Israeli media. Not in the US.
In the first days after the massacre, the NY Post allowed honest comments on its site. One person compared Israelis who lived in the Gaza Envelope without weapons to the crazy guy who lived near the grizzly bears and ended up in their guts. The comment was removed.
Message to Israel: Americans are beginning to get disgusted with the whole thing. Maybe that will give you the courage to tell Pride to go take a hike
Very informative. I've always, from the day the news broke, been astounded at where the event was, about what the event was like (and I was not there so I really don't know, but I've imagined it, based on some of what I've read about the event), and about the military response. I've commented on your posts about the military's response.
I have a couple nephews, low thirties, who have been to Israel, to Tel Aviv. Their father is Jewish, mother is Christian. They came back with stories about how liberal TelAviv, how gay too. I never knew that. I like your description, Portland on the Med. Maybe Portland, 1969, on the Med.
Please don't take this as blaming the victims, but to me, holding this Woodstock type event a dozen miles from a redoubt of troglodyte stone-age true believers, shows the anti-realist mind-set of the promoters and the attendees. Let me explore the 'anti-realist' mind set part. These fair-goers sound like modern democrats who regularly suspend reality while blithely 'de-funding the police, opening the borders, not enforcing the laws, etx.
Putting this event next to the Troglodytes' lands is like holding a picnic inside the 'big cat' section of the zoo.
And having served in 'Nam, where I first got high, in a bunker high up on a firebase, in NVA territory, where ground attacks sometimes happened... my mind boggles. Yeah, when you're in enemy territory, or damn close, you don't want to get too high. Talk about letting your guard down... Why didn't they have it in 'Portland by the Med' in a city park? The event sounds like something akin to Woodstock or Burning Man.
Anyway, I am appalled at what happened, and I do feel for the victims. I believe that many Americans have been dumbed down by the culture, and I guess the same has happened to many young Israelis. I believe that some other, older cultures, like China, Hamas, look on these people as prey--young, dumb, and easily dealt with.
I think that Israel, and to a lesser extent... because we don't face the same threat, America, will not survive if they/we don't wake up and smell the cordite.
Anyway, hope I didn't offend anybody. This is a serious subject and emotions are high.
Bravo to you for talking about it.
The reporting about the Israeli trend of traveling out of country upon finishing service in military reminded me of an incident in 1969, I’m Amsterdam. I and a group of hippies hung out in Dam Square and we met an America boy who had just left his kibbutz upon completion of his work there. He’d never traveled out of USA except to go to Israel. He was supposed to be on a plane home to Brooklyn in a week. In the meantime he’d bought a moped and was exploring life. He wanted to take acid, but he was afraid to trip alone so one of our group, a seasoned American acid-head took one of the pair the boy had purchased.
Some decided we should go eat, and he wanted to accompany us but had his moped. He would follow us to our hostel and park his bike.
Before we left he positioned his bike directly behind my Renault station wagon, and I knocked him over as I backed up. I jumped out and apologized, and then to make him less disturbed, I rode his bike and he road in the Renault.
We went into the hostel, and grabbed what we needed for going to some Indonesian restaurant and it began to rain heavily, the kind of rain that is so thick it was hard to see across the canal.
Before we could even get all of us in the car the New York boy went off on his moped thinking we had already left. We raced after him, but lost him in the rain. We never saw him again.
I’m sure he made it back to Brooklyn, right?