Mis-directed Protests

                                           

 

In 2020 George Floyd, a career criminal, was killed by a policeman while resisting arrest for a minor offense. Almost immediately protests sprang up all over the country primarily in big cities. Parts of these cities were occupied by tent encampments, cars and building were set on fire, and gangs of protestors called for the immediate punishment of the offending police officer. Moreover, they attacked police in general and insisted that police departments be defunded. At the time no one suggested that the police officer's action be put into context.

Fast forward to the present where we find thousands of protestors occupying colleges and universities all over the country in response to the war in Gaza. What are they protesting? On October 7, 2023, a gang of heavily armed young men on motorized vehicles attacked a small town in Israel and murdered over 1200 civilians. Forget for the moment that the victims of this assault were Jewish and forget for a moment the anti-Semitism of the attackers since, more than anything else, this was a crime against humanity, a true hate crime if there ever was one. 

Actually, it was worse than a crime against humanity. The young men who attacked the Israeli civilians were worse than animals. They did not kill in self-defense. They did not kill because they were starving and needed food. It is obvious from their own videos that they killed not just out of hatred, but for the sheer fun of it. Before killing, they tortured their victims, and raped women.

However, at the time there were no protests against the killers or Hamas, their parent organization. Instead we heard voices claiming that the attack must be put into context, that one should consider the slaughter in the light of 80 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine. Even former President Obama joined in the chorus and suggested that in some way all of us were guilty.

I recall saying to my wife last October that we ought to leave the response to Israel, and not get involved in events thousands of miles away. I believed that the Israelis had the intelligence, the will, and the resources to deal with the terrorist attack. They are in close proximity to the attackers, they know their language, their tactics, and their capabilities. They would know best how to respond to this unprovoked attack. 

Sure enough, Israel decided that a military response was necessary not only to punish the attackers, but also to destroy Hamas completely. Incredibly, as the military response succeeded, protests began to grow in this country against Israel. The protests have been directed not at the killers but at the victims. The protests include Hamas flags and slogans like “Death to Israel,” and “From the river to the sea.”, slogans that apparently mean the slaughter of every Israeli civilian. Protestors bemoaning the fate of Palestinian civilians fail to mention that these same civilians have been brutalized and terrorized by Hamas gangs for decades. If Palestinians today live in terror and want, it is because of gun toting Hamas gangs. There is no freedom of speech in Palestine. Do Palestinian women have any rights? Aid shipments to Palestine are routinely taken by Hamas gangs for themselves.

Coincidentally, a furor has just erupted in this country over an admission by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem in her recent book that she had shot one of her dogs. True, it was a stupid thing to put in her book since the 98% of the population that has never lived on a farm or ranch would never understand. But Noem is an experienced animal handler. When someone gave her a dog that was hard to control, she tried to train it, but it was too late. The dog had become a vicious killer. It had plenty of food and was not in danger. Like the Hamas gunmen, it just attacked and killed for the fun of it. It had attacked other animals and Noem’s own children. Anyone experienced with animals would know that there was only one thing to do.

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Obama's Complicity

Former President Barack Obama recently called the October 7 massacre of over 1400 Israeli civilians by gun toting Hamas terrorists “inexcusable,” but then went on to offer an excuse by claiming that it could be only understood by considering years of history in the area. In his remarks he went even further and said that “all of us are complicit to some degree.” Just who was he referring to when he said that all of us are complicit?

 

Was he referring to himself? Was he referring to his own failure to solve the problems in the Middle East during his eight years as President. Was he finally assuming responsibility for the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, or for the rise of ISIS during his tenure? Was he referring to his own wife and daughters? To what degree were they complicit?

 

Was he referring to the current President. After all, didn’t Obama say of his own Vice-President, “If you want something f---ked up, give it to Joe.” To what degree is Biden and his administration complicit? Actually, the leading members of the Biden foreign policy team were all members of the Obama administration. What is their degree of complicity?

 

Maybe he means that the whole Democratic party is complicit, including progressive radicals like the so-called Squad, some of whose members have openly expressed their detestation of Israel? Can he mean that the protestors on college campuses are complicit? 

The answer to all these questions is No, No, No, No, No.  Of course, when Obama says that all are complicit, he is not referring to his own family or political friends and allies. He is referring to an abstraction. Politicians like him can never bring themselves to blame a real person who commits a crime. Whether it be a mugger, a looter, a rapist, or Hamas gangster, they cannot call them out but implore us to consider their actions in context, or in the light of history.  Some progressives even consider looting and shoplifting to be a form of reparations.

 

On the other hand, when protestors entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021, people like Obama never urged us to put the event in context or consider the historical background of that protest. The protestors were immediately branded as insurrectionists out to overthrow the government. Eventually, some were brought to trial, convicted, and given prison sentences unlike the left-wing protestors who attacked and burned Federal buildings in the previous summer. 

 

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Hoaxes

 

 

In case you haven’t heard the recent headline-making story about the Israeli bombing of a hospital in Gaza in response to the Hamas terrorist attack has turned out to be a hoax. Yes, a hoax devised by Hamas itself after one of their own rockets went astray and failed to reach Israel. Instead, it hit the hospital parking lot. The hospital is still standing, and we don’t know how many might have been killed. The initial report of 500 deaths that made headlines that prompted demonstrations all over the world was also made up by the terrorists. The death toll is now put as low as 50.

 

Incredibly, my wife and I had an argument the other night with our favorite waitress at our favorite restaurant about the Hamas attack. Over the years this young woman has become almost another daughter to us, and we often chat with her while dining. On this occasion, while waiting to take our order, she overheard us talking about the October 7 massacre of over 1400 civilians. For some reason she interjected and told us to consider that there are two sides to the question and that we should not be quick to render judgment. She pointed out that in America, we really know very little about what is going on over there, and that the Palestinian side is rarely presented in our media. When I replied that over 1400 people were brutally murdered, she told us that we have to put that in the context of years of history in that area. When I asked her if she believed that the Israeli Air Force had bombed the hospital in Gaza, and killed 500 patients, she unequivocally said yes. She could not believe the hospital story was a hoax.

 

We like this young woman so much that we just stopped there and ordered our dinner. The exchange was disturbing but we would never be angry with her or complain. She waited on us with her usual friendliness and vivacity, and we left our usual tip. I might mention that the waitress had no obvious stake in the game. She is neither Jewish nor Palestinian, and I don’t think she ever attended college. She was just deeply committed.

 

Later that night we watched on TV scenes of college students protesting against Israeli oppression and tearing down posters of hostages taken by Hamas terrorists from campus walls. To my surprise these protestors were using almost the exact same words used by our waitress. In just two weeks they, and she, and editors of major media outlets had also been led to downplay the brutal massacre, and fall for the hoax of the Israeli hospital bombing.

 

What is it about left-wingers that makes them so susceptible to hoaxes. Why, for example, did 51 former Federal government officials jointly sign an open letter during the 2020 Presidential campaign claiming that the New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer was a product of Russian disinformation? Why do many so-called Progressives still believe that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia to steal the 2016 election even though the exhaustive Mueller Report found no evidence, and the Durham Report proved that the “Steele dossier” was not only a hoax, but also that it’s source could be found in the inner circles of Trump’s Democratic political opponents?

 

I suspect that when the evidence of our own two eyes does not comport with our own worldview, our political immune system goes into action to ignore it, or suppress it, or “put it into context.”  On the other hand, when stories fit our worldview, we will blindly accept them without real proof or verification, whether we be members of Congress, newspaper editors, celebrities, college students, or waitresses.  

 

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