Brian Victoria’s essay “On the Prospect of Buddhist Complicity in Genocide” (December 30, 2024), uses the word “genocide” ten times (including in the title). It prominently features a picture of and a quote from Aaron Bushnell, the mentally ill antisemite who committed suicide by self-immolation in February, 2024, while screaming “Free Palestine”! Bushnell is held up by Victoria as a positive example of members of the US armed forces (Bushnell was in the Air Force) who are “wrestling with their consciousnesses over the supportive actions they have been ordered to undertake on behalf of Israel.”

Victoria mentions Israel by name 16 times in the same essay, including in this extraordinary passage:

In this author’s opinion, Iran has attacked, and threatens to attack, Israel, for one main reason: to end Israel’s dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people as epitomized in its allegedly genocidal policies in Gaza and beyond. Thus, the reality is that the Navy’s “defense” of Israel, when combined with US supplied bombs and other weaponry, actually serves to enable Israel to continue its alleged genocide.

Amazingly, nowhere in Victoria’s essay does he mention the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. Hamas is mentioned only once, in the caption of a picture: “Smoke billows in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.” But, to repeat myself, Victoria never bothers to address how the “ongoing conflict” actually started!

Sadly, Brian Victoria’s most recent essay was not a one-off. In the wake of October 7, 2023, he wrote two bizarre articles in which he argued that “animism” lies at the root of what Victoria fastidiously refers to as “the current conflict in Gaza and Israel between Palestinians and Israelis”. In neither article did Victoria once refer to the murders, rapes, and kidnapping perpetrated by Palestinians on October 7. You can read both of these peculiar articles here: The Animism of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and “The Battle for the Soul of Judaism: Tribalism, Amalek and the Axial Age Universalism of Isaiah“.

In addition to Brian Victoria, since October 7, 2023, a small (but loud and aggressive) handful of Western Buddhists have engaged in a very public and, thankfully so far, largely futile campaign to encourage other Buddhists to join them in their open hatred for Israel. The public statements that have been made by these Buddhists over the last 462 days (since October 7, 2023) clearly and unambiguously meet any reasonable set of criteria for antisemitism, including, especially, the International Holocaust Remembranc Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism. The two others most worth mentioning (in addition to Victoria) have already received attention in this blog: Mary Thanissara and Bhikkhu Bodhi.