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Hamas’ orgy of rape, murder, and callous, indiscriminate cruelty such as mutilation, torture, burning alive, and beheadings that began last October 7 and is continuing almost a year later, marks an escalation extreme even by the standards of that blood-stained region. Morally horrific have been the “protests” on prestigious U.S. university campuses, abetted by simpatico, or cowardly, professors and administrators. These riotous displays also feature property damage, record-breaking assaults against Jews, and chants explicitly or implicitly calling for another Holocaust, and celebrating the Nazis’ Final Solution.
Yet another landmark of shame has been the covert and overt support for Hamas by European governments and the E.U., including America’s president who for electoral gain poisoned the materiel support given to Israel, and is still pressuring Israel’s government to come to an agreement with genocidal murderers, instead of destroying them and degrading their capacity to slaughter more innocent Israeli citizens.
What the West has done is to normalize unspeakable atrocities, and legitimize blatant antisemitism that in the postwar period used to be a hatred mainly typical of marginalized political freaks. How does that transformation––from a widely proscribed and condemned hatred, to one exuberantly flaunted during protests, and legitimize by government policies––happen? And what has to change to put such beliefs back into the realm of cranks and conspiracy mongers?
The first question has a general answer found in humanity’s universal practice of dehumanizing enemies. Historically, human beings’ default stance toward strangers and those different from one’s tribe is distrust and dislike, if not hatred. The idea of our elite’s “citizen of the world” cosmopolitanism arose in ancient Greece, but parochial loyalties and hatreds remained powerful in Greek poleis. The tendency to prefer those like ourselves, whether culturally, politically, ideologically, or ethnically, is particularly obvious today in political factions, and ideological identity politics. Like James Madison’s “factions,” this tendency is “sown in the nature of man.”
A byproduct of this sorting is some level of dehumanization. In a relatively peaceful society such as ours today, the “other” is typically identified linguistically by insulting or demeaning epithets, on the left many of them compounds sporting the suffix “-phobic.” Sometimes metaphors using animals or insects make the dehumanization explicit. All such insults, however, don’t necessarily lead to mass murder or other atrocities. Pace wannabe censors, words are not violence. But heinous actions by definition are, and such crimes invariably call on a catalogue of dehumanizing epithets.
The pro-Hamas protests and display of support, however, are extreme even by the standards of advocacy apparent during the antiwar protests in the Sixties or during the post 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, antiwar activists, many of them Marxists, did give aid and comfort to the enemy, lied about the actions of our troops, and worked to discredit the war in the minds of voters and Congressmen.
In the case of Vietnam, it worked. President Nixon’s bombing of the North’s attempted offensives, by 1973 had brought the North to the bargaining table. But snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and bullied by antiwar protests, our government abandoned our South Vietnam allies in a humiliating retreat from Saigon.
But all the violent protests and bombings against America’s war in Vietnam, costly as they were, never reached the level of moral idiocy we’ve seen among mostly affluent, privileged college students protesting U.S. support of Israel, despite Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and its atrocities committed against its people, including mass rapes, and willful targeting of children, infants, and the elderly.
The general dehumanization of an enemy during a conflict can’t account for enormity of this moral debasement of our universities. One factor, which the media and government tip-toe around ever since 9/11, is the large number of Muslim foreign students among the protestors, most from the Middle East.
As such, these likely devout students have a very different set of beliefs than American students, who are most likely unchurched. Even self-identified Christians are not as religiously observant as Muslims. As the late Bernard Lewis pointed out, “most Islamic countries are still profoundly Muslim, in a way and in a sense that most Christian countries are no longer Christian . . . in no Christian country at the present time can religious leaders count on the degree of belief and participation that remain normal in Muslim lands . . . Christian clergy do not exercise or even claim the kind of public authority that is still normal and acceptable in most Muslim countries.”
These Muslim protestors, then, likely view the Israeli-Arab conflict not in terms of geopolitics and secular nation-states, but of creed. This fact explains why the diplomatic magical thinking of the “two states living side-by-side in peace” solution has for decades failed serially to end the conflict. Rather, most Muslims understand the war in creedal terms, and particularly the 14 centuries of Islamic doctrines.
Over the nearly eight decades since the birth of Israel, moreover, traditionalist Muslims’ perceptions and understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict have been shaped by the Koran, the uncreated, immutable, infallible words of Allah; and by other Islamic writings, of which, I’d wager, most American students marching and chanting have little or no inkling.
More consequential, antisemitism is a constant theme of Islamic scripture and jurisprudence. In one example from the Koran, Jews are cursed with “abasement and humiliation,” and are “deserving of Allah’s wrath” because they rejected Mohammed’s revelation. Jews are further characterized as corrupt, treacherous rebels and infidels whose destiny is to be the enemy of the true believers. In an illustration of the common use of animal metaphors in dehumanizing the enemy “other,” Jews are fated to be transformation into “apes” or “apes and swine.” These insults have remained current in Islamic writings, polemics and sermons to this day.
These 14 centuries of Islamic antisemitism no doubt explains its widespread expression in Muslim nations, regularly documented in opinion surveys. As Andrew G. Bostom, author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, recently wrote on Gatestone Institute, “Discussion of the most plausible and discernible explanation for this global surfeit of Muslim Jew-hatred is also shunned: relentless inculcation of antisemitic motifs from the Qur’an itself, and other core Islamic texts, by the pre-eminent authoritative religious teaching institutions in Islam, such as Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s putative “Vatican.’”
Moreover, a few hours after Hamas’s massacre of 1200 Israelis, Bostom writes, “Al-Azhar University’s current Papal equivalent Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb, and other Al-Azhar luminaries, celebrated (here; here; here; here) Hamas’ jihad carnage, on the University’s social media platforms. Less than 2-weeks later, Al-Azhar issued a fatwa declaring that all Israelis were legitimate targets of jihad terror: ‘the term “civilians” does not apply to the Zionist settlers of the occupied land,’ mirroring the Islamic jurisprudence of Al Azhar fatwas, or the resolutions of Al-Azhar Conference Proceedings, regarding Jews and Israel, put forth regularly, since the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.”
That reality about how radically different is the Islamic sensibility, is obviously unknown to pampered and privileged young Americans, who are slaves to political fads, dull clichés, and incontinent virtue-signaling and moral preening. Nor have they learned the facts of history that vaccinate people from those viruses of ignorance
For American “woke” students, Muslim students are just exotically dressed wokesters like themselves. And like most callow leftists, are reflexive haters of the U.S. and its proxy Israel. Their Muslim confreres are “victims” of American imperialist sins, and so are deserving of uncritical support and solidarity, no matter how inhuman their actions. Being ignorant of Islam’s illiberal tenets and record of conquest, occupation, “settler colonialism,” and the history of the region after World War I, they are easy prey of Islamic propagandists and apologists who no doubt regard them as “useful idiots.”
Yet most troubling about these protests is the moral idiocy of celebrating the sadism of the murderers, and of American politicians who are being leveraged by badly educated punks into compromising Israel’s self-defense against such dehumanizing atrocities. That’s the fact that tells us atrocities have been normalized.
sumsrent says
Nice to see the truth being brought to the forefront.
There is no such thing as a moderate muslim…
The Quran commands Muslims to smite the infidels at their necks. Anyone who will not confess Allah as their god and Muhammad as Allah’s Prophet is considered an infidel worthy of death. Any so called “moderate” Muslim is either NOT yet devout to the Quran or is being passive, waiting for the moment when their numbers and forces increase allowing them to move and implement Sharia compliant Islamic changes.
Islamic law, also known as Shariah law, guides the daily behavior and actions of Muslims while influencing the legal code of Islamic countries.
In Islam you have basically two choices… either submit or die.
Muhammad is clear in the Quran… Muslims are to be ruthless to the unbelievers of him and allah.
internalexile says
There is no moderate Islam. There is only Islam.
The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.
Roark says
We have allowed a cancer, a virulent Islamic cancer into our country. It will destroy us all.
Semaphore says
That’s the idea. Christianity teaches us to love our enemy, Islam teaches that killing the enemy of Allah sanctifies you. I still feel this is a kind of engineered chaos, or, if you will, a controlled implosion of our Judeo-Christian culture. Case in point – Dearborn MI.
Victor L. says
We haven’t allowed the cancer, we invitedit. when we allowed the mohammedan president Hussain Obama to fundamentally transform the country despite his open admission “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction”.
The “ugly direction” is of course resisting the Islamization of the USA.
THX 1138 says
You’re a horrible and SELFISH Christian! You know NOTHING about being a follower of Christ!
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
[39] But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
[40] And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
[41] And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
[42] Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
[43] Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
[44] But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
[45] That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
[46] For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
[47] And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
[48] Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Spurwing Plover says
Is this the results of Open Borders and the Globalists(UN)Plans for America? With the Haitians and the invasion we need to totally evict the UN/Globalists from America Period
Allan Goldstein says
One of the insults tossed at American soldiers by anti-war protesters in the 60s and 70s was “baby burner”.
How bitterly ironic the today’s anti-Semitic protesters really ARE baby burners…
David Ray says
Exceptional point.
I’d add that the endless protests were a bouy to the Vietcong and even remarked on as such by a North Vietnamese general years later.
The infantile protests convinced the North☭ to hang on.
Once the U.S. pulled out, a slaughter and mass incarceration throughout Vietnam followed.
Most liberals just shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
Kathy S says
Very succinct article.
The useful idiots have fallen prey to one of Satan’s oldest tricks of all time: thirst for revenge. Roman’s 12:19 says revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord. As a practicing Christian, I live this daily, with extended family who are selfish, ignorant, and petty. As the mother of a career Army son and a grandson in training, I know there is a huge difference between the alleged revenge that Israel is taking, and the defense against a nation who wants nothing more than to see me dead. It’s a fine line, but when your very survival is at stake, hard choices must be made by leaders. Israel has done more AND UNFAIRLY been held to higher standards than in their wars against the enemy any other nation on earth.
Enough is enough. Hamas MUST BE ENDED.
Jim Long says
As an Army retiree from the 60’s, I am mightily encouraged and admiring of your clear, unhesitating stand. God bless you and your family! Hoo ah! (Do they still say that?)
Hardball1Alpha says
Speaking of Bernard Lewis, in one of his writings, he described Islam’s early imperial invasion attempts to colonize India, and went into great detail about how when Hindu temples were captured, the Muslim fighters would stack up bodies of the slaughtered on either side of the temple’s entry threshold.
This was was done so all Muslims who entered this new temple-turned-mosque would be forced to grind their enemy into the dirt.
Imagine stories of American history with such grewsome imagery, codified over 1400 years, ….. centuries crammed with countless other more-heinous actions.
Steve Chavez says
FROM THE SIXTIES PEACENI☭S, who aided and abetted the Vietcong, to the EIGHTIES when the CPUSA and KGB teamed up AGAIN to take over Central America and the beginning of the takeover of our universities, to TODAY’S NEXT GENERATION OF COMMUNI☭TS, all associating with the DEMOC☭ATS, aiding and abetting TERRORIST GROUPS… AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT!
There was a program on Dearborn’s Muslim Community on the History channel. Patriotic Muslims and Imams criticizing Islamic terrorists that do not speak for them. (I was playing my violin while listening to the Imams.)
PATRIOTIC MUSLIMS… OKAY… WHEN, NOT IF, Jihad and the Sleeper Cell awaken, WHOSE SIDE WILL THEY BE ON when the shooting, beheadings, start? Whose side will this next generation of TRAITORS, be on?
WHERE’S THE FBI AND DOJ and their investigations into Domestic Terrorist and HATE groups? Where’s the Dean of Students, the DEI czars, the Presidents, standing there with their own Code of Conduct Rules? YOU SEE, THEY WERE THE SIXTIES/EIGHTING CPUSA AND KGB RECRUITS AND THEY’RE SO PROUD OF THIS NEW GENERATION! “OH… THE GOOD ‘OLE DAYS!”
Hardball1Alpha says
Gotta go, gotta go…
MuggsSpongedice says
evil is more seductive to humans than YHVH (GOD of the Bible) Love and Power
RS says
They normalize atrocities as an every day occurrence, telling innocent people are supposed to accept tyranny as the norm. This is the fall of civilization and will bring misery and hardship. Why vote for anyone who doesn’t believe that man should be governed by God and his principles, not man , who has been sliding into darkness, and lawlessness, and taking the wrong path.
Jonathan S. says
As I’ve mentioned time and time again, proof of concept that this is all due to Islam is to play the let’s pretend game. Let’s pretend Muhammad never existed and the Arabs remained tribal with each having their own idol in the Kaaba. Would Arabs have invaded The Holy Land, most likely no. Would there have been an Arab Syria, most likely no. Would Mesopotamia been ethnically cleansed by Arabs, most likey no. Would Persia still have had its national culture and its unique religious identity, most likely yes. Would India have had internal religious wars and been divided, most likely no. Would North Africa still be inhabited by Africans instead of Arabs, most likely yes.
So all the above would have been a different scenario for mankind had Muhammad never existed. Let that sink in and tell all these useful idiot Hamas supporters just that, proving all the current problems in the Middle East are 100% due to Islam!
Alix Brit says
Harris support for Hamas is open as is her contempt for Jews. She tries to “Jew-wash” herself by hiding behind her Jew in Name Only husband, whose daughter raises money for Hamas.
Steve Kardas says
I look at this differently. These miscreants have no cause other than the rush of getting away with being bullies publicly, screaming at people, vandalism, disrupting of everyone else, violence etc….. When they are allowed to get away with , they escalate their behavior next time. Many could not find Israel and the West Bank on a map. They have pathetic empty, rudderless lives so they latch on to some current , popular ”thing” to be part of a group to give meaning to their pathetic empty, rudderless lives.
AZCOWBOY says
Remember, one of Joe Biden’s first policies upon becoming a US Senator back in 1973 was to stab South Viernam in the back and advocate, as he is doing with Israel now, a curtailment of promised US aid to the South Vietnamese. TRAITORS NEVER CHANGE.
Walter Sieruk says
It’s sad and even tragic that those naïve and brainwashed young college and university students non–Muslims Americans, who are taking part in this Red/Green alliance, throughout the United States, who are protesting against the State of Israel and who likewise greatly favor Hamas are people who are ,rightly , described ,as the “useful idiots” of the leaders of Hamas and their jihadist members who are dedicated to the cause of conquest for the cause of Islam.
Those Americans who aren’t Muslims the stooges of those Hamas chefs and the other Muslim terrorist, For those of Hamas view all people who are not Muslims as inferior creatures to them and refer to them .
Behind their backs as , “Kafirs,” which is the Islamic derogatory term for “disbelievers.”
It’s tragic that those non-Muslims pro-Hamas America protesters against Israel are so very deluded by Hamas that this Islamic terror / murder organization so easily manipulates and uses them as their tools.
Those poor young people are ,truly, their useful idiots.
Kasandra says
I think many of the non-Muslim “protesters” are not so much “useful idiots” as “willing accomplices.”. The Left and Islam are united only in their desire to destroy Western civilization. So the Leftists, who are the majorities in these protests, are involved as allies of their Muslim pals for this reason, exploiting the cause as a way to fracture the West. Most probably could not find Gaza on a map and will be on to some other destructive cause as soon as the war ends.
Walter Sieruk says
Iran’s top Muslim cleric leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,is ,without doubt ,is very happy and glad those in high positions in institutions of “higher education” brainwashed and manipulated those poor naive and misinformed college young people to be his useful idiots to attempt to fulfill that Islamic goal of destroying the State of Israel and then replacing her with an Islamic “state.”
Another terrible harsh and tragic reality is that Khamenei,couldn’t care less about those American college people who he only uses as his stooges. that Ayatollah ,because of his religion shiite Islam even dislikes those non-Muslim youth who are his tools and he even hate those Sunni Muslims who are also they his tools.
Those college young people who have been led astray deceived and are now being used should not be scorned but instead they should be pitied.
Walter Sieruk says
Many of those poor misled university and college ”student protesters” against the nation that is the Jewish State of Israel who how up those signs that read “Free Palestine” don’t know or understand that history reveals that the ancient Philistines recorded in the Bible and history reveals the people who came from the Greek Islands and some parts of the mainland Greece. They have no connection, at all, the to the Arab /Muslim of modern times who called themselves the “Palestinians.”
From those ancient people, the Philistines, the word “Palestine” .came into being.
There is no genuine ethic group or race who are the “Palestinians.”
Early in the last century a anyone living in that land, Arab or Jew, who lived in that land was called a ”Palestinian.”
Only after 1964 did the Arab/Muslims start to refer to themselves , exclusively , by the word “Palestinian.”
The reason for that is that they felt that by giving themselves that title they would appear to have some kind of valid claim on that land.
Indeed , there never was a “Palestinian state.”
Walter Sieruk says
A Newsmax reporter walked over to one of those “student protesters” who was holding a sign that read “From the River to the Sea” and asked her “What river ?” and she replied “I don’t know.” Then the reporter asked her “Which sea ?” To that question, she answered “I don’t know.”
Furthermore, it’s very obvious that those insidious stealth jihadists gaining power and influence of those high positions institutions of “higher education” must, obviously , be accepting “gifts”, bribes, from persons from foreign oil rich countries.
Many universities and colleges across the United States and in the United Kingdom have been thoroughly infiltrated and influenced by the insidious stealth jihadists.
There may be little doubt that those stealth jihadists are backed and funded by Qatar as well as oil rich Saudi Arabia.
Walter Sieruk says
There is obviously something terribly wrong with a those young people on campus who aren’t Muslim who nevertheless admire and support that vicious dangerous and deadly jihad entity ,Hamas. It might be that they had been deceived, as in lead astray by misinformation by the propagandists for Islam. ?
They, sadly, are confused or outright ignorant or both on the subject of Israel and the religion of Islam with its Muslim terrorist organizations.
Those people must not be aware of the wicked dangers of that demonic jihad entity, Hamas, with is jihadists, have no limits, at all, to its cruel heinous and vile horrendously horrific Islamic evils that it so maliciously and murderously commit.
Roark says
Let’s be blunt: All these terrorists on campus are capable of committing the SAME atrocities when called on.
Charley says
The Muslim hatred of Jews and Israel needs no explanation; it is fundamental to their religion. More puzzling is the hatred among non-Muslim Americans and Europeans. Europe, of course, has a history of antisemitism which has never gone away, despite the horror of the Holocaust. For Americans and younger Europeans, I think the answer is that they are anti-America, anti-capitalism, and anti-civilization. Some environmentalists have openly called for the extermination of the human species (“peacefully,” of course, by universal birth control, but others would presumably be open to more forceful means).
Gabrielle says
Normalizing evil is mankind’s ever-advancing desire to be god. To have the reins of life and death and be accountable to no one. To pursue the accolades of self over the knowledge of G-d Almighty by destroying everything that would identify our clearly-evident limitations. In choosing to normalize evil by obliterating ANY moral codes that form the foundation for building a life-affirming, responsible society predicated on the intrinsic value of individual life and the right management of ethics and justice for all people within society mankind has chosen, by their efforts to stake it’s claim upon man as god.
We, the ancient Hebrews, brought out of horrendous enslavement in Egypt, stood among a rescued, mixed multitude at the foot of Mt. Sinai as the monotheistic, G-d of Creation, spoke to 3 million of us giving us His 10 edicts known as the 10 Commandments. We have been the people who have striven from that day to imperfectly follow our G-d. Yet, having said Hineni, Hebrew meaning “Here I am”, to G-d at the foot of Mt. Sinai, we became the bearers of His word and proclaimers of His Torah. We have been at odds with the world since that day!
When mankind seeks to become gods thus nullifying, in their own eyes, G-d’s sublime existence, there are no limits externally placed upon them; they are “freed” from adhering to ANY moral codes and life devolves into exactly where we are today. To annihilate ALL Jewish people, is for mankind among us, worshipping both self and man-made gods, to be forever freed from any constraints. Rather than acknowledging our existence as physical-spiritual beings created by G-d, imbued with the ability to choose, unlike anything else in G-d’s creation, humanity seeks to permanently destroy the Jewish people thereby assuming a manmade authority they prefer. The entire Jewish, worldwide population is .02% of a global population of 8 billion plus people. The generational desires of humanity to destroy ALL Jews is illogical, demonstrating the baseless hatred repeatedly promulgated against us throughout history, THE FACE OF EVIL is mankind’s war against G-d Almighty and the bearers of His Word. Now, however, unlike previous points in time, technological advances and social media platforms are allowing for the exponential transfer of this war against the Jewish people throughout the world heralding mankind’s willing submission to moral depravity and rejection of G-d Almighty.
Coco says
Conservatives are too soft, Play by the enemies rules you dumb ass’s.. When these protesters celebrating murder gather in large groups kill them ALL, then celebrate by handing out candy like they do
Ron says
It may be cliche, but Islam is a cancer on humanity, and needs to be excised. UN metrics state that 250 million Muslims are radical extremists.
By capitulating to the thugs on US campuses, we are allowing them to spew their venom to naive, young Americans.
If we don’t start “pushing back,” we’ve lost our country.
Hardball1Alpha says
Hey… that Que Mala chick convinced me to become a Marxist too…
Thomas E. Warwick says
Wake up! The world you were born into….NO LONGER EXISTS.