lenny unencumbered

A photograph circulating online of a lone Black woman on a subway train surrounded by masked khaki-clad members of the White supremacist group Patriot Front is receiving a lot of attention. It was captured by Reuters photojournalist Cheney Orr on the morning of July 4th, this weekend.

The Patriot Front members were on their way to Washington, D.C., to participate in an unplanned march to celebrate America’s semiquincentennial this past weekend. It is not known whether the woman was headed to the same destination or to celebrate anything at all.

One would expect her to be afraid.

However, she appears fearless. Calm. Stoic. Regal even. Her presence in the midst of a bunch of menacing, khaki-clad cowards is bizarre. The juxtaposition is stark.

As far as I’m aware, she has not jumped on any social media bandwagon to express any fear or loathing. Hers is a story that she hasn’t yet told.

Now contrast the unnamed lady in the green t-shirt with the antics of Mayim Bialik, star of Big Bang Theory!

Mayim appeared recently on an episode of the Second Thought with Suzy Weiss and The Free Press podcast¹ and recalled being terrified of being approached by a man in a Zionism is racism t-shirt.

Mayim, of course, needs little introduction. She is famous for playing Blossom on the NBC sitcom before starring as Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, which I’m a huge fan of. Besides being an accomplished actress, Mayim is an intelligent woman who impressively holds a PhD in neuroscience. Suzi Weiss is the younger sister of Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, and is currently on an assignment from billionaire David Ellison to destroy CBS News.

Okay, I made that last part up, but that’s effectively what Bari Weiss is doing. It’s no secret that CBS has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, but also to Zionist interests. However, neither of the Weiss sisters is instrumental to Mayim’s preposterous tale of terror, beyond platforming it. Unfortunately, they have hitched their wagon to the dystopian cause of Zionism, one that apparently is also dear to Mayim’s heart.

Mayim Bialik is an outspoken apologist for Israel. She has often been criticised for her stance. In 2024, she promoted a children’s book, Under The Rockets’ Glow: Shira’s Journey to Courage, which exposed her indifference to the suffering of Palestinian children under Israel’s brutal occupation. Needless to say, she was excoriated for supporting a narrative that ignores the suffering of Palestinian children under constant Israeli bombardment, also known as “mowing the lawn,” while advancing the fears of Israeli children as somehow greater.

In the podcast, she claims that she was afraid of what her children (teenagers, apparently) were about to witness while being confronted by a man in a t-shirt with an anti-Zionist slogan. Yet again, she so callously forgets the horrors Palestinian children witness on an hourly basis under a depraved Israeli Zionist occupation. In the end, the “confrontation” did not result in her being physically harmed. I’m inclined to see why – a man wearing an anti-zionist t-shirt is surely less menacing than a khaki-clad, masked Patriot Front goon, and of considerably more moral character.

Bialik seems to have continued this tradition of false equivalence by embellishing a story about being confronted by a man wearing a t-shirt adorned with what is objectively a simple truth: Zionism is a racist, colonialist ideology that promotes the aspirations of one ethnic group at the devastating expense of another.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky was the militant leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement and a leading exponent for the creation of a Jewish homeland on both banks of the Jordan River. His writings confirm that Zionism is a colonising project. In 1923, he wrote the following essay titled Iron Wall:

A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.

Jabotinsky never became a leader of the broader Zionist movement, however, because of a falling-out. While his colonising ambitions were clear, it appears that he originally proposed according Palestinians citizen rights. It was later leaders from Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin to Yitzhak Rabin, who ensured that Zionism’s ethno-fascist, racist heritage was entrenched and enforced.

It is deeply troubling that since October 7th, 2023, anti-Zionism has become increasingly conflated with antisemitism. This is no doubt a defense mechanism instituted by the Israeli propaganda machinery, as Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine becomes increasingly tenuous and desperate.

In the encounter she is describing, Bialik was not terrified of the man or the t-shirt. She was terrified of the truth that the message on the t-shirt conveyed.

Hers is a bullshit story; one that is repeated by those who find themselves cornered by the rapidly unfolding truth of their obscenely crafted beliefs.

1. Link to full episode of podcast: https://youtu.be/VjN0w_iVzlI?si=Rr__xGYUpm80p_0E ↩︎