The attacks last week in Israel were barbaric and shameless in their brutality against civilians. But the mass protests in the West in favor of Hamas may signal something very insidious for the future of western democracies.
Kristallnacht was a bellwether event in the progression of Nazi Germany into a mass-murder machine. Mein Kampf and Hitler’s speeches seemed like empty rhetoric, but then came the Nuremberg laws that effectively sidelined Jews from Nazi society. Even top-flight professors and engineers found themselves unemployed for the singular crime of being Jewish. My dad recalled everyone being certain that Hitler’s rule would be brief—he was so crazy and his policies were so extreme, he surely could not last very long. Then came Kristallnacht. Around 100 Jews were killed, over 9,000 synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed, while 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps, including my grandfather. And the world yawned. Yes, there were protests, but no country lifted a finger to fight for the Jews, who in addition to the physical harm and humiliation were ordered to pay one billion marks to cover the damage. Most scholars believe that the lack of any significant international response to the death and destruction was a sign to the Nazis that nobody would do anything to save the Jews from the Nazi’s program.
The murders and destruction that occurred in Israel last Saturday have been described in painful detail, with much supporting evidence by way of videos and pictures. Stories of wholesale slaughter, families completely wiped out, loved ones dragged off to Gaza abound, as do stories of great courage, personal sacrifice and people saved by miracles and extraordinary personal bravery. Being a Jew living here in Jerusalem, I could not be unmoved by the horror stories coming out of Gaza. Unfortunately, as I was wounded with my son in a suicide bombing 20 years ago, the behavior of the Hamas barbarians was no surprise. From their ruthless brutality towards unarmed civilians to their stealing household items and credit cards, everything they did fit their M.O. Israel must wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth. Anything less is like leaving some cancerous cells behind to grow and cause problems in the future.
I want to focus for a moment on what has happened in the western democracies immediately after the attack. Large demonstrations in favor of Hamas have taken place in the US, Europe and Australia. Thousands or even tens of thousands have come out to show support for people who slit babies’ throats, raped women, killed children in front of their parents and vice versa, and took old and young back to Gaza as prisoners. In order to justify these barbaric murderers, our Western liberals claim that the Hamas murderers were resisting. What were they resisting? They never explain that part. They always use resistance when nobody is doing anything to them that requires an actual act of resistance. Next they will say that it’s the occupation. But anyone who has a few firing neurons knows that Israel left Gaza for good in 2005 and is not occupying anybody. Yes, it controls border crossings, but so does Egypt. Finally, they’ll say that it’s the settlers! But the site of the worst massacre of Jews since 1945 occurred in a space that has been part of Israel since its inception in 1948. This was not land taken in 1967 but rather Israel proper. Do they mean that all of Israel is a settlement? Are they implying that there is no part of Israel that should continue to exist as a Jewish state? Yes, they are saying as much when they sing in the streets of London, New York and Sydney “from the river to the sea.”
But what concerns me about the mass protests and the craven behavior of universities and TV talking heads is that this ultimately is not solely about Israel. We know that Jews have been harassed, and businesses in England and elsewhere have had windows smashed or graffiti painted on their property. The hatred of Israel translates easily to hatred of the Jew, and not necessarily only towards those who live in the Holy Land. Their celebrating of Jews being slaughtered would be the same if the event had occurred in Manchester or New York or Melbourne. They would whip up some excuse of the Jews being too rich or owning too much of the local property or supporting Israel as justification for the murders. But their joy at Jews being slaughtered outside of Israel would be no less. We have known the psyche of antisemites for millennia. They hate any Jew, including those whom they do not know, those who have never wronged them and even those who might have helped them in some way. Their hatred is visceral, and one sees their pleasure in Jews being beheaded, raped, burned alive, and dragged off to captivity. They are happy with any Jewish misfortune—anywhere.
But my additional concern is that ultimately these primarily Muslim crowds and their left-leaning useful idiots ultimately want the destruction of the western democracies themselves. Just as Hitler used a parliamentary system to gain total, absolute power for himself and his party, Islamic supremacists in the West and their fellow travelers use the freedoms guaranteed in democratic countries to push first for the destruction of Israel, then the Jew, and finally the decadent and morally decayed societies in which they live. They live in contempt of places where women have equal rights, homosexuals can marry and anyone can say whatever he pleases. They long for London to become Islamabad, Paris a future Kabul. They would love to run the countries that took them in just as the Taliban runs Afghanistan, with brutality and no tolerance for anything not sanctioned by Koranic law. When the time is right, they will turn on the gay, trans, and other groups who blindly walk with them today in these marches but ultimately are an affront to Islam and their hardline views. If 1,400 Europeans were slaughtered by jihadists with thousands more wounded, wouldn’t they march with the same joy? Whereas after 9/11, everyone mourned the loss and destruction, today, such an event would be greeted by singing and the distribution of sweets not only in Islamabad and Ramallah, but also in Liverpool.
What we saw in Israel was a barbaric attack by depraved terrorists. What we saw immediately afterwards in the West is a movement that wants Israel, the Jews, and the values of the western democracies to vanish and be replaced by an Islamic theocracy. The West does not appreciate the evil in the marches in the major cities throughout the world. This is not just a march against Israel or even the Jews; rather, it is a march against the good and right embodied in western democracies and their prized freedoms. Western leaders are too clueless to realize that the marchers want to use the very system that the West offers in order to defeat it and take over. The West needs to save itself; ending uncontrolled immigration would be a good first step. The next step is to forcefully integrate all immigrants into the local culture and society. Language, custom, holidays—they will be part of the local culture or there are flights back to their home countries.