Shalom Motherfu**er
Shalom Motherfu**er is Eitan Chitayat at his most unapologetic: a defiant response to antisemitism, hatred and the expectation that Jews should continually justify their right to exist, survive or defend themselves. The idea predates October 7 – Eitan first published a piece under the same title in 2014 for the Times of Israel Blog after ending a relationship with someone whose anti-Israel posts, in his view, had crossed into antisemitism. After October 7, the phrase took on renewed relevance as Jews around the world confronted broken friendships, public silence and overt hostility. The piece draws a clear line between people willing to engage with complexity and humanity, and those whose hostility toward Israel or Jews has crossed into hatred. Its message is not about winning over everyone; it is about knowing when preserving dignity and moral clarity matters more than continuing to apologize, explain or maintain a relationship.
Watch the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS4vQr5BZLg
Key takeaways
- Jews do not have to endlessly defend or justify their right to exist, survive or live safely.
- There is a difference between criticism, disagreement and rhetoric that crosses into antisemitism or dehumanization.
- Not every relationship must be preserved when the price is accepting hatred or contempt toward your identity and community.
- Setting boundaries can be an act of dignity rather than intolerance.
- Standing with Israel in the aftermath of terrorism does not require hostility toward Palestinians; Eitan frames the moral line around opposition to terrorism, hatred and dehumanization.
- The deliberately provocative title turns ‘shalom’ – hello, goodbye and peace – into a boundary-setting statement: sometimes goodbye is the appropriate response.
FAQs
What does Shalom Motherfu**er mean?
It is Eitan Chitayat’s deliberately provocative way of saying goodbye to people whose rhetoric toward Jews or Israel has crossed a moral line.
Is the piece about political disagreement?
Not primarily. Eitan distinguishes disagreement from rhetoric he sees as hateful, dehumanizing or antisemitic.
Where did the idea originate?
Eitan published an essay with the same title in 2014 on The Times of Israel Blog after severing a relationship with an acquaintance whose anti-Israel posts he believed had crossed into antisemitism.
What is the larger message?
Jewish people do not need to sacrifice dignity, safety or self-respect in order to maintain relationships with people who deny or demean their identity.
SCRIPT
I’ve unfriended a lot of people I know on social media over the past few weeks. To be honest, they weren’t really friends like the last time this kind of war happened. I never thought I would have to disconnect with so many again or explain why. But here we are. I didn’t unfriend them because they failed to check in or see how I’m doing in Israel or if me and my family were still alive as we were being bombed, I unfriended them because they crossed a line. I unfriended them because they started posting videos and images that wreak not of anti Israel bias, which is fair enough, but of Jew hatred and anti semitism.
For example, a video of Hamas supporters in Australia yelling gassed the Jews and the students at an Ivy League school in New York City, Columbia, yelling from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, which is a call for the removal of all Jews living in the State of Israel. Or another post admitting that what Hamas terrorists did with their rapes, beheadings, putting babies in ovens and burning families alive in front of other family members was vile, but then put it into the context of decades of occupation, a justification of sorts, they crossed the line after saying nothing, nothing about the constant bombardment of rockets intended to murder Israelis, no matter what age, gender, profession and even religion, because, hey, we have around 2 million Israeli Arabs living here within our borders as citizens with full, equal rights.
They cross the line when they talk, talk, talk about everything Israel is doing to defend itself, yet they turn it into accusations of mass killings, and say absolutely nothing about over 240 hostages that are in the hands of Hamas right now, they crossed the line when they noticed I unfriended them and got in touch to tell me how funny it is to be defended for posting a statement from an elected official, or informed me that as a Jew, you should realize that genocide is never justified. First of all, there is no genocide. In no way has Israel engaged in any action with the intent. And intent is everything here with the intent to exterminate in whole or in part, the Palestinian people. Secondly, I don’t need to be a Jew to realize that genocide is never a good thing. I just need to be a decent human being. And thirdly, I don’t give a damn if someone is an elected official, specifically when they represent the mouthpiece of Hamas, the Hamas narrative the Nazis also had elected officials.
Elected officials say preposterous, disgusting and false things all the time. My Country left. Gaza left it. My Country displaced around 8000 Jewish civilians in order to give the people of Gaza the independence that they wanted. And what did we get for that? Hamas and well over 20,000 rockets fired at innocent Jewish civilians since 2007 all over Israel. Israel is not a country indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian population. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, no matter what you read, even though in war, it’s unavoidable, the IDF are pretty much the only army in the world that literally reaches out to the other side when they’re about to attack, to warn civilians in the area to evacuate, to leave, to avoid death. My heart bleeds for every single innocent person killed, no matter what side they’re on, Palestinian or Israeli.
But Palestinian innocents are dying because my army is trying to protect us from Savage thugs operating in those areas who, right now, right now, are launching rockets at populated cities, 9000 of them in the month since October 7. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t celebrate the death of innocent Palestinian lives in this war, but I cannot apologize for the loss of them, because if I did, I would be apologizing for surviving the rockets intended to kill me and my family and my fellow citizens. I would be apologizing for the Iron Dome, the shelters, the evacuation procedures and the government’s right left center, who supplied them so that we can be safe without Iron Dome that has intercepted almost 10,000 rockets, 1000s of us Israelis would be dead.
Should I apologize for that?
Because if so, I’d be apologizing for a culture that celebrates life and cherishes our children. Instead of sending them off to be radical Islamic martyrs and suicide bombers, I would be apologizing for wanting a normal and peaceful life, a peaceful life without the fear of being gunned down while drinking my morning coffee in my kitchen with my wife and kids like those in Kibbutz Barry on October 7,
I would be apologizing for existing and I won’t ever even though I want nothing more than to co exist quiet.
Currently with neighbors side by side who accept me here in my homeland for over 3000 years, innocent people will die, and it’s awful and it’s tragic and it’s ugly, and believe me, we’re already paying the price with the blood of our people or families who will never, ever sit together again, play together again, hold each other again, like many innocents on the Palestinian side, if Palestinian innocents are dying, it’s because jihadists and terrorists attacked my country brutally. Get that through your heads people out there in the world, they crossed the line when they didn’t even let a single day of mourning go by before finding excuses for the mass murder of Jewish men, women, children, babies, elderly, Holocaust survivors and entire families during the Simchat Torah holidays. Many of them, by the way, were enormous advocates for the Palestinian people. Many of them had friends in Gaza, and many of my brothers and sisters have now been forced into a war they did not want to fight, but are fighting to protect their families, their friends and country, and to protect me, a war that others will continue to fight because to not fight it means we will be slaughtered. Plain and simple. Hamas is trying to kill me, my family, my sons, all of us here, all of the Jews in the world. That is their purpose. The Jewish people remain silent in the 30s, look where it got us with the Nazis.
We hoped rational people would see sense and refused to believe that people were capable of evil. And where did that get us train rides straight to the gas chambers by real mass murderers, Nazi mass murderers, who stated proudly and openly that they wanted to see all Jews dead. Does that sound familiar today? Because since its founding, nearly 40 years ago, Hamas states proudly and openly how they want to see Israel wiped off the face of the earth and all Jews dead, not just in Israel worldwide. The reason why Hamas and their allies want to make Palestine free from the river to the sea is because they are Islamic jihadists like ISIS, and they hate Jews. It’s not because of stolen land.
No land is stolen, but because they’re brainwashed and misguided and they’re pitiful people, these terrorists who hate Jews and don’t give a damn about their people, because anyone, anyone who truly cares about their people, would try giving them a future and not use them as pawns in some sick game of death in 72 versions. So no, no, I won’t remain silent while lies are spread about me, my country, my people, my culture, my values.
If anyone doesn’t get it, if anyone I know is going to post anti Israel messages, borderline anti semitic, yet you remain silent while almost half a million Syrians were murdered by Assad if you aren’t posting and protesting, women being killed in Iran for not covering their hair, if you’re not out protesting with 4.5 million have been displaced in Yemen, and over 375,000 killed if you have criticism only for the State of Israel that is doing everything in its power to avoid civilian losses to Palestinians during a war, if you only speak up when it’s the Jewish state defending itself after being forced into a war, but you’re quiet about all the other catastrophes of human rights in the world, if you’re Going to do nothing but sit wherever you are just dishing out your anti Israel dirt while rockets are being aimed at my house daily, if you’re going to join and support the vile anti semitism and anti Israel demonstrations, the mobs Look at their eyes. Look at their hatred.
The mobs flaring up in the world like we’re seeing in France, in Turkey, Berlin, in some Arab states, and even in the US that have nothing to do with wanting peace in the Middle East, if you’re going to sit idly by as Jewish students on university campuses are terrified because they’re actively being verbally abused and attacked for simply being Jewish, if you’re going to stay quiet and just accept this as normal and okay, then go ahead, unfriend me now, because you’re no friend of mine, and know this, when someone tries to end my life, it is personal, and if you’re adding fuel to the fire by posting crap, then in some small way, will contribute to the demise of my Life and my people. Then again, unfriend me now, because you can have the hatred, you can have the twisted, the deranged, the illogical, the woke, the sick, you can have the evil, and you can be a part of that, or you can have me, but you can’t have both. So if you’re doing any of that shalom, motherfu**er.