A few months ago, a secular Jewish friend went to a Friends of the IDF banquet and was given a green cloth yarmulke with “FIDF” on it. My friend doesn’t wear a yarmulke so he gave it to me. I started wearing it every day.
Then a few months ago, I hung out with some nationalists and when we were headed to a gathering, a leader in the movement asked me about my “FIDF” yarmulke. I explained what it stood for. He said, “That might not go over well with some people tonight.”
I was stunned. It had never occurred to me that wearing a little hat boosting the military of a foreign power might not be a good thing to do. I was so ethno-centric as an Orthodox Jew that I was blind.
So then I asked myself, “How would I feel if someone in the United States wore a cap to work boasting he was a friend of Putin’s nuclear forces or a friend of China’s military or a friend of Mexico’s military?” I quickly saw that I wouldn’t like it.
In America today, you don’t lose the approval of the ruling class by being too Jewish or too black or too Chinese. You only lose it by being too white.
I’ve stopped wearing this yarmulke. Never again.
