The 1937 Game (Revisited)

(Essay)

The 1937 Game (Revisited)

I was a peculiar kid, no question about it. One of the stranger games I used to play in junior high was called The 1937 Game. The idea was simple. I’d look at my classmates, teachers, myself—and ask: If this were Germany, just before the war, who would we be?

There was Mr. Holmgren, the shop teacher. He had a certain scorn in his voice when speaking to Jewish kids—especially those who couldn’t tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. Which, in truth, was most of us. In the game, Mr. Holmgren wasn’t just indifferent. He was SS. Early recruit. Uniform pressed. Always ready.

There were the burnouts—Stuey Nyburg, Nelson Olson, Skip Lutz—who turned every hallway into a gauntlet, selectively punching Jews and hip-checking them into lockers. They had a particular gift: they were able to frighten, injure, and humiliate at the same time. In The 1937 Game, they were Brownshirts. They weren’t Nazis because they believed in ideology. They were Nazis because it gave them permission to hurt Jews.

And the Jews? We were in the game too. A few fought back—one wrote an eloquent but meaningless petition, I threw some punches and took some. But most of us tried to stay invisible. We mistook tolerance for safety. When someone said, “You’re actually pretty cool for a Jew,” some of us took it as a kindness. I didn’t. It wasn’t. The question is, who are we today—collectively and as individuals?

I still play The 1937 Game. But now, it’s not make-believe.

I look at the world—at politicians, writers, artists, musicians—and ask: Who would they have been back then?

Norman Finkelstein, once merely a critic of Israeli policy, has now veered into something grotesque. After October 7th, he wrote that the scenes of Gaza’s children smiling as Israelis were slaughtered “warmed every fiber of my soul.” He described Hamas’s rampage as “heroic.” In The 1937 Game, he’s the Jewish Julius Streicher with a PhD—a man who cloaks genocidal glee in ideological pseudo-sophistication. Like Streicher, Finkelstein doesn’t merely justify atrocity; he celebrates it, believing that certain people deserve their fate, so long as the narrative fits his brand.

Greta Thunberg, once held up as the global face of youth conscience (by no one intelligent), said nothing after Jews were raped, burned, and taken hostage. No names. No acknowledgment. Just a recycled plea for “ceasefire,” as if the slaughter of civilians were too insignificant for a climate change activist cum moralist to take note of. Her so-called morality has always been highly curated—laser-focused on the faults of democracies, strangely silent on dictatorships and fanatics. In The 1937 Game, she’s Leni Riefenstahl—not only because she made films to make Hitler and his Third Reich look dazzling, but because she used her “purity” as an auteur to shield herself from moral complexity—and in doing so, served evil while cloaked in false virtue.

Leo Varadkar (Prime Minister of Ireland), Pedro Sánchez (Prime Minister of Spain), and Anthony Albanese (Prime Minister of Australia)—each condemned Hamas for the record, then pivoted immediately to the demonization of Israel. They used terms like “revenge,” “genocide,” and “disproportionate force” before the bodies were even buried. In The 1937 Game, they are the European statesmen hosting peace conferences while refusing entry to Jewish refugees. Thoughtful. Articulate. Cowards.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran: he doesn't obfuscate. He says it plainly—Israel must be eradicated. He funds, arms, and trains Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. He is the theological and strategic author behind every massacre carried out in his name. In The 1937 Game, he is Heinrich Himmler—not just a believer in the genocide of Jews, but the logistical architect of it. Like Himmler, Khamenei does not need to pull a trigger himself. He builds the systems. He trains the killers. He signs the checks.

Roger Waters, once the lyrical conscience of Pink Floyd, now lends his voice to something darker. He performs at rallies where Palestinian politicians flags fly. He repeats conspiracy theories about Jews harvesting organs. He equates Zionism with genocide while draping himself in the banner of human rights. In The 1937 Game, he is Ezra Pound—the poetic genius who became fascism’s house bard. Pound broadcast from Mussolini’s Italy, praising Hitler as “a saint… a Joan of Arc, a martyr,” and urged the spread of the virulent hoax known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He called Jews “filth,” blamed them for both world wars, and used his stature to soften the edges of hate. Like Pound, Waters is proof that cultural greatness can coexist with moral collapse.

But The 1937 Game includes heroes, too.

Douglas Murray, a British writer who refuses to lie to himself or his audience. He calls Hamas evil. He calls the global response to Israel cowardly and disgusting. He’s been physically threatened, politically slandered, and still doesn’t flinch. In The 1937 Game, he’s George Orwell—the man outside every camp, unloved by ideologues, feared by propagandists, absolutely necessary for anyone who still wants the truth.

Einat Wilf, a former peace activist and Knesset member from the Israeli left, is one of the few willing to say aloud what many know but have been afraid to admit: the failure of peace doesn’t lie in Israeli policy, but in decades of Palestinian rejectionism. In The 1937 Game, she’s Ze’ev Jabotinsky—a prophet of Zionism scorned in his time, denounced by the establishment for refusing to flatter popular illusions. He warned European Jewry of the catastrophe to come, urging them to flee while there was still time. He foresaw that Arab leaders would never accept a Jewish state, no matter how compromised or small. Like him, Wilf bears the burden of moral clarity: castigated by her peers, not for being wrong, but for being right at just the right time.

Haviv Rettig Gur, senior analyst at The Times of Israel, doesn’t do slogans. He writes with clarity and restraint, pulling history into the present without ever distorting it. In The 1937 Game, he’s Victor Klemperer—the diarist who documented how language mutates into weaponry long before bullets fly.

John Spencer, urban warfare scholar and former U.S. Army major, has risked his career by defending Israel’s conduct in war—not blindly, but factually, from the ground up. In The 1937 Game, he’s Churchill in uniform, not yet iconic—the voice in the wilderness warning of the Nazi threat while others clung to illusions of peace. He understood that moral clarity was not a luxury but a necessity, especially when evil announced itself without shame. Like Churchill, Spencer speaks before it’s popular to do so—when truth still costs something.

Coleman Hughes, principled, intellectually precise, and allergic to hypocrisy. He doesn’t shift with the winds of approval. In The 1937 Game, he’s Jan Karski—the Polish resistance courier who entered the Warsaw Ghetto, snuck into a Nazi extermination camp, and hand-delivered the truth to Roosevelt. The world didn’t believe him. He didn’t stop speaking.

Michael Kosta, a comedian on The Daily Show, broke the late-night silence after October 7th—calling out the horror for what it was, refusing to dress it as a nuanced conflict. He didn’t mince words; he named it barbarism and rejected the moral gray-washing that followed. In The 1937 Game, he’s Charlie Chaplin—using satire to hold up a mirror before the crowd dared to look, mocking fascism while Hollywood still trembled.

Thom Yorke, frontman of Radiohead, refused to join the cultural boycott of Israel. He played Tel Aviv when others wouldn’t and made clear he wouldn’t stop performing in democracies—rejecting the moral posturing that often disguises ideological coercion. In The 1937 Game, he’s Arturo Toscanini—the legendary conductor who defied Mussolini by refusing to perform Giovinezza, the Fascist anthem, and was physically assaulted by Blackshirts for it. He later rejected invitations to perform in Hitler’s Germany and traveled instead to Tel Aviv in 1936 to conduct the first concert of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. That night, before a crowd of 3,000, he led works by Rossini, Brahms, Schubert, and Mendelssohn—many of whose music had already been banned by the Nazis. Like Toscanini, Yorke used his art not to flatter power but to challenge it.

The 1937 Game isn’t trivia. It’s a test. It demands an answer.

Why, on October 8th, 2023, didn’t the world direct its outrage where it belonged—at Hamas? Why didn’t millions cry out: Release the hostages now?

What an abject failure. A moral blunder of the worst kind.

There is still time to raise our voices—with a single, unambiguous cry:
Hamas must surrender. The Hostages must be freed —the living and the dead.