Peloni: In any battle, it really does come down to understanding that those who have the greatest sense of investment and commitment will be best prepared to persevere in the end. Damages will be done, of course, and casualties will accrue on each side, but in any contest, one side has a sense of moral and personal commitment which out matches, and ultimately defeats, the other. I am reminded of something Meir Kahane wrote when he cautioned that those who don’t have the sense of victory in what they are doing should actually stay home, or to expand on Joan’s brilliant metaphor, they should simply sit out this game.
February 25, 2026
Photo by Benjamin Istanbuli on Unsplash
Did you ever go to Yankee Stadium? I’ve been there dozens of times and have always felt thrilled and celebratory when they’ve won, especially in the years when Mariano Rivera was closing and Jorge Posada was catching. I even wore my Posada jersey when I knew he would be in the lineup.
There are 46,537 seats in the stadium, and it is always packed. But what fascinated me the most was when the Yankees lost, and I witnessed the reaction of die-hard fans as they exited the ballpark. Many had fire in their eyes — pure rage. Others took to expletives. Still others shook their heads in disbelief or anger, many cursing the referees for what they said were bad calls or even blaming the owner of the team, George Steinbrenner, for this or that decision, which they considered key to the loss.
Even when they knew that the Yankees would be playing a double-header the next night and might win both games, they couldn’t let go of their outrage.
But why did they care so much? I asked myself. What made the loss of a simple baseball game so emotionally charged, so devastating? Why did these fans spend so much time calling in to radio shows and TV sports programs for days on end after the loss?
Because they were invested!
What Does Invested Mean?
On a superficial level, it could mean they lost bigly when their own considerable “donations” to the many betting sites that flourish off sports fans worldwide failed to pay off. But more likely, it means that the loss of this game was a negative reflection of their very beings — their own personal choice, their intelligence, their taste, their very considered judgement, and of course their trust and faith in the players they counted on to make them feel like winners…and who now have made them feel like losers.
In plain English, when any person gets deeply emotionally invested in not only baseball, but in all sports and all issues, including particularly politics, and then his “heroes” let him down, that investment tells him that his very sense of identity, nothing less than his ego — usually quite fragile — has been threatened and sometimes shattered.
The relevance to the pandemic of Jew- and Israel-hatred is obvious. People and pundits and politicians and even countries worldwide have revealed to the entire world how invested emotionally they are in the historically incurable — 5,000 years, anyone? — hatred of Jews and, since 1948, of Israel.
To some degree, the pandemic of antisemitism we are now witnessing can be attributed to the bandwagon effect, the phenomenon in which people adopt attitudes or behaviors because everyone else seems to be doing it, like fad diets or fashion trends.
Of course, the avalanche of attacks, both physical and verbal, on Jews and Israel is quite different, as it is fueled exclusively by hate — burning hate, maniacal hate, including murderous hate.
Even more interesting is that most people who hate Jews and Israel have never met a Jew or been to Israel. Let’s not forget that in a world of eight billion people, tiny Israel is home to about seven and a half million Jews, with approximately the same number in the U.S. — population 340 million — and about another million around the world.
Who Backs This Hatred?
Where did these jaw-droppingly uninformed protesters get their information from? Look no farther than the countless colleges and universities to which naïve parents send their children every year for the privilege of maleducating them to the tune of $75,000 a year.
In 2025 alone, according to the U.S. Department of Education, these academic institutions received $1.1 billion from Qatar and $285 million from Saudi Arabia. That’s a lot of endowed chairs, a lot of dictating the curriculum, a lot of anti-American and especially antisemitic propaganda. A lot of bought-and-paid-for protesters acting out their paymasters’ political agenda.
You have to wonder, especially when you see former ardent Israel-supporters like French president Emmanuel Macron and many others turn into sworn enemies of the Jewish state, how many of them
- had their mortgages paid in full.
- had all their children put through college.
- had threats of sexual affairs or criminal accusations disappear.
- had their pockets lined.
Or are Macron & Co. really idealogues, opting to throw their support to Hamas because they fervently believe that Hamas did the right thing on October 7, 2023? If this is true, then they would back Hamas even if it were their own daughters who were raped, who had infants removed from their arms and placed in ovens to roast to death, whose breasts were cut off to cheering witnesses, who spent over two years starving in filthy tunnels while continuing to be on the receiving end of the sexual appetites of their captors.
The Malevolent Media
This is not to omit the media. What are the media? They are a group of massive conglomerates owned by billionaire businessmen — globalists all — who fervently believe that they, the self-appointed Masters of the Universe, should be running the world, and not the morons who continue to procreate; take up valuable space; drive gasoline-fueled cars; and waste fortunes of money on antiquated concepts like religion, the belief in two-parent families, the value of the First and Second Amendment rights of free speech and gun ownership, and so on.
Today, only six organizations are responsible for 90 percent or more of all the “news” we read, watch, and listen to! They include
- GE (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, et al.).
- NewsCorp (Fox News, Wall St. Journal, N.Y. Post, et al.).
- Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, Marvel Studios, et al.).
- Viacom (MTV, Nick Jr., BET, CMT, Paramount Pictures, et al.).
- Time Warner (CNN, HBO, TIME, Warner Bros., et al.).
- CBS (Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes, et al.).
The business moguls who run these companies are always on the side of the weak, the needy, the dependent, the perceived victim, because the immense power of players like America and Israel are major threats to their lofty ambitions.
And they operate the way all successful businesses operate: The boss calls the shots.
That is why the self-importance of this or that anchor, news reader, opinion maker, show host is so preposterous. All they demonstrate every day is that they are obedient conveyers of their bosses’ desires and opinions and dictates. Otherwise, they are totally dispensable!
Yet Again, Follow the Money
We know that these colossally ignorant protesters are handsomely paid. In fact, it was recently revealed that in California, Craigslist now advertises for protesters, offering $6,500–12,500 a week, depending on one’s level of chaos. Common sense tells us that this is certainly not limited to the Golden State. And just recently, as reported by Pamela Geller, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) held hearings to determine who funded the riots in Minnesota.
Surprise, surprise! “At least $60 million in so-called ‘dark money’ has flowed into Minnesota protests [and] the funds are believed to be linked to 14 organizations, including groups described as part of the Soros network.”
In that same meeting, Sen. Hawley asked Haywood Talcove, CEO of Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions, “You testified that about a trillion dollars, you think, is lost in fraud every year. Where’s this money going?”
“It goes to terrorism,” Talcove responded. “It goes to child-trafficking, it goes to drugs … and then it’s used to purchase luxury items, cars, purses, homes. That’s all funded by people like me that pay taxes … $115 million an hour.”
Senator Hawley followed up: “How do they get their hands on it?”
“They go into programs that they know elected and appointed officials won’t touch, and they can steal at scale,” Talcove answered, “and what happened really was during the pandemic. … They learned a valuable lesson: The government never runs out of money, and the probability of getting caught is virtually zero.”
A Toxic Combo
There you have it: a combination of forces — ranging from the malicious to the ignorant to the greedy to the money-lusting. From the bandwagon effect to the bought-and-paid-for protesters to the massive infiltration of money and propaganda into our country’s campuses to good old-fashioned payoffs to a shamefully biased media to “dark money” networks run by billionaire anarchists — all of them fulminating with burning hatred and devoted day, night, and weekends to vilifying, undermining, sabotaging and ultimately destroying America’s closest ally, the State of Israel.
Look no farther than history itself to know how all this will turn out. Guaranteed, the investment of the haters will not yield the return they hope for. Just like the Yankees fan after a losing game, they will have to find other ways to comfort their oh, so fragile egos.
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author. Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.
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