The weeks since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, in which the most Jews were slaughtered in a single day than at any time since World War II, have seen an astonishing rise in global Jew-hatred. One might have thought that the mass carnage and unspeakable barbarism of the Hamas Holocaust would instead galvanize a concerted pushback against Islamic jihadism, but it is the ancient scourge of antisemitism -- and not so-called Islamophobia -- that is once again the world's most politically correct and fashionable form of bigotry.
"In every generation, they rise up to destroy us," Jews read in the Haggadah text every Passover, "but the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands." Less than 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany, today's Nazis, an Islamist Reich hellbent anew on Jewish genocide, rose up to try to finish what Hitler could not. Like their brownshirt forebears, the jihadists will fail.
Our comfort in the Lord does not necessarily ameliorate the profound pain of the last few weeks, though. For many Jews, the appalling and disgusting mass demonstrations of support for the Hamas terrorists have been just as devastating as the Oct. 7 pogrom itself.
In Berlin -- yes, Berlin -- a synagogue was firebombed. In Vienna, a one-time hub of Nazism, a synagogue was attacked and vandalized. In Paris, a Jewish couple's apartment door was doused with gasoline and set on fire. In Los Angeles, a knife-wielding madman trespassed into a Jewish home, shouting, "Free Palestine." At George Washington University in the nation's capital, student jihadists projected "Glory To Our Martyrs" onto the side of a school library. At Cooper Union, Jewish students were locked in a library by pro-Hamas student demonstrators banging on the doors; the NYPD had to evacuate the students via an underground tunnel. In the heavily Muslim town of Dearborn, Michigan, Islamists thronged the streets while waving today's swastika, the so-called Palestinian flag, and shouting for the extermination of the Jews of Israel "from the river to the sea." Other examples abound.
There are many reasons for this dire state of affairs.
First, the chickens of once-fringe leftist ivory tower piffle, such as critical theory and intersectionality, have come home to roost in a very menacing way. The avant-garde leftism of a half-century ago has led many to justify now, or outright cheer on, the genocide perpetrated against the most genocided people in world history. As this column observed during the last major Israel-Hamas conflict, in May 2021: "The American Left and the media organs it controls are exporting their paroxysms of '1619 Project' rage onto a foreign stage, expiating their 'white guilt' sins and armchair-quarterbacking a foreign conflict on a cosplayed chess board." It's all just fun and games -- no matter how many "eggs" are broken to make the "omelet," to paraphrase Stalin-apologist New York Times bureau chief Walter Duranty.
But there is a second lesson from the past few weeks in addition to the harrowing real-world consequences of obscure leftist academic theories: mass migration's complete and total failure. For years, liberals and globalists have pushed for open-ended migration of people across borders, as if borders are entirely arbitrary (if not outright atavistic) and all cultures and ways of life are interchangeable. As the West grapples with the very radical Muslims it voluntarily imported, hundreds of thousands of whom march in the streets of metropolises such as London and Chicago calling for Jewish genocide and thousands of others of whom lead vile "Students for Justice in Palestine" statements praising the Hamas massacre as a "liberation" of "stolen land," it has become obvious that assimilation of huge numbers of non-Western immigrants into Western society is simply not working.
A shocking new poll found that 57.5% of American Muslims believe that the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 was at least "somewhat justified." That is simply disgusting. Jewish day schools are canceling classes due to fear; the security needed at synagogues is now unprecedented. Jews all across America and Europe have not been this terrified since World War II. And the open-borders dolts who have peddled the insane notion that "all cultures are equal" bear much of the blame.
Many leading Islamists, such as the infamous "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel-Rahman, long counseled immigration to the West as one of the most effective ways of spreading the global jihad. For decades, Western liberals have been all too eager to assist. Mass migration was always delusional; all cultures are obviously not equal, let alone interchangeable. Given the emboldened forces of jihadism the world over, it has never been more important to turn off the spigot. And for those subversive, fifth-column actors already here, deportation and denaturalization must be on the table as the law permits.
There are monsters in our midst. They must be dealt with accordingly.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.