Getting it wrong

So October 7th, the anniversary of the worst single day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, came and went with some minor mention.   A mixed bag.  There were stories of subdued remembrance in Israel. Other stories mixing up the mess of October 7th against Israel's genocide against Gaza.  Still others mentioned that some governments or government leaders took a dim view of protests siding with Hamas.  And, of course, Hamas went full blown celebration two years later. I haven't found if the US Bishops or Pope Leo said anything only addressing the massacre itself. 

To that end, I saw this story, by journalist Matthew Syed, going to a pro-Palestinian rally in England.  His point is that just asking if Hamas could be partly to blame for what has happened opened up a withering broadside of rage and accusations from those present.  After recounting some of his discussions with people there, he wrote this: 

with two exceptions (including a lovely black guy from North London who conversed intelligently and politely), the motivation for being here was obvious, potent and implacable. The hatred of Jews

No.  Not really.  Not that Jews aren't hated like any other group.  And I have bad news for the poets and dreamers and well meaning Christians in the world: There are Jews who hate Christianity and Christians just the same.  Hatred of others goes back to the beginning.  Just ask Abel. 

But what we're seeing here aimed at a normally protected group, is not the sudden hatred of Jews.  It's the hatred of the West.  It's accepting the Muslim/Palestinian version of history as Israel being the colonizing, imperialist oppressive extension of the Christian Western tradition that swept in and took what was always the Palestinians' part of the world.  That is what has set the hatred of these particular Jews into full swing.  Not hatred because they are Jews per se.  But they are linked to Israel.  Which in turn is linked to the West. 

The boilerplate defense is that you can condemn Israel and not hate Jews.  Perhaps that is true.  I think it is.  But that doesn't mean therefore that everyone who condemns Israel doesn't hate the Jews in question.  And while some have always hated Jews (like those on the Left who have always hated blacks, Hispanics, Asians and others and merely found new ways to live out this bigotry), most do so now because of the view that Israel is a Nazi State, like all of the West since the history of the West.

My oldest son, back when he was an undergraduate, made an interesting observation.  When I was growing up, the two dollar parlor debate was how the German people allowed that to happen.  How did they allow the Nazis to rise to power?  How the Holocaust? What the hell?  

My son said, at least in the view of not a few of his classmates and even professors, the answer was right in front of us all along.  It was because the Germans were Europeans.  It's what Europeans do.  And in the last few generations, many young people believe that Nazi Germany was merely one iteration of the typical history that has always defined all of Europe and the United States.  And that includes anything to do with the West, as in Israel. 

It's the reason why serious and continued support for the murder of Charlie Kirk is not going away. In fact, defending the right to want people like Charlie Kirk murdered has become the basis for the media's sudden obsession with free speech again.  Which speaks volumes.  It's because Kirk is defending, in the view of an ever consolidating movement, the broader Nazi reality of everything West that the Left seeks to undo. 

Remember, to the Left, the West is the enemy.  Like the Bolsheviks tearing down the memory of Tsarist Russia, the Left would throw down as much of the West, its heritage, history, values, religion, and identity as possible.  That includes such tools of oppression and injustice as forgiveness, freedom of speech, religious liberty, equality, and sometimes even democracy itself.  We won't even discuss the long ago discarded idea of the sanctity of human life. 

To that end, the Left allies with anything on the planet to aid in this endeavor.  And that includes the Muslim world.  I mean, we didn't think after almost a millennium of attempting to sweep into Europe and subjugate Europe to Islamic rule, the Muslim world just gave up because, for a couple centuries, Europe and the West got the upper hand, do we?  And this reality is either not known to Western progressives, or well known by them, and hence the alliance.  

No, what we're seeing is not just hatred of Jews.  It's hatred of the West, and that includes Jews that get swept up in identifying with anything to do with the West.  It includes Jews, Asians, Hispanics, women, blacks, and any group that doesn't properly join the cause of the West's eradication.  If we can't see that by now, I doubt even a dead man raised from the dead and telling us will do the trick.