One of the old jokes on ultra-Orthodox street tells of a book salesman, who, as was customary in the past, knocks on the door of an apartment and offers to the person who opens it to buy the books "Hafetz Chaim" and "Shimirat Hashon" on sale, which focus on the prohibitions of slander, gossip and bad reputation .
"Thank you," the owner of the house tells him, "there is no need. We are careful and never say bad things about others."
Then he leans over to him, and while pointing to the neighbors' door he whispers to him: "Go to them, it really suits them. They are constantly talking slander."
Well, so which hate report did you read this year? The one that puts the left as the number one recipient of hate, or the one that thinks that the Arabs are in the first place?
One thing is certain that did not happen: you did not come across any document that crowns the right and its leaders as recipients of hatred.
"Hate" reports are actually another alternative word for "inciter and divisive", "poison and incitement machine" and other profanity, and Tisha B'av has become a holiday for those who accuse of hatred and beat "for sin" on the chest of the other.
How do you determine what hate is?
How do you monitor hate comments?
"You corrupt people are fed up" is this hate?
"We can"?
"to you"?
It's very elusive, isn't it?
It makes much more sense to assume this unclear word and interpret venomous comments online as "rage", because that's what they are.
By the way, the difference between hate and rage, usually, is that the rage is loud.
Very loud.
Hate is usually silent.
But if we check a rage index, it won't do anyone any good.
Rage is a friendly word because it inevitably describes a reaction to something.
Hatred, on the other hand, is cold and cruel and comes from home.
Therefore, it is much more convenient to accuse the right of hatred rather than rage.
I will give an example: in a radio interview with Rami Hood of the Berel Katznelson Foundation, which published the hate report for Tisha B'Av, I tried to confront him with this question. I gave him as an example an issue that managed to drive me crazy: the hate report published by his organization devotes an extensive chapter to monitoring reactions Hatred towards the Balfour protesters in 2020 to 2021.
I argued to him that this is an illegitimate chapter, because it begins with chapter B, the reaction chapter, and does not even take into account chapter A, that is, the Balfour demonstrations themselves, which in my eyes were a shocking display of gratuitous hatred.
I was not surprised when Rami completely disagreed with me, and claimed that the Balfour demonstrations were a legitimate protest and the counter-reactions were a sin of hatred.
To his credit, it was evident that he believed every word he said, something that finally convinced me that the argument was futile and so we moved on to the next topic.
After all, for many years preachers and pundits have been wondering about the question of what "gratuitous hatred" is.
This year I thought it might be the turn of this interesting definition: the unnecessary and distorted use of the term "hate" for nothing - is probably the most blatant expression of hatred.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us