This wave of rampant, blatant anti-semitism and the rage against Palestinian people has to stop. Both are fanning the flames of dangerous social divisions and bitter antagonisms that could fuel a wider war – or worse.
It’s bad enough to hear anti-semitic slurs from loud-mouth “celebrities” like Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But now we are hearing and seeing at some American universities many students protesting in inflammatory ways against Israel and the Jewish people. Many Jewish students now feel unwelcome and even threatened because of those demonstrations, taunts and verbal assaults. A 6-year-old American-Palestinian boy in the United States was stabbed to death by a landlord deranged by propaganda. That’s just one heartbreaking example of hate aimed at good people.
Other groups, including student groups, are demonstrating against Palestinians as if it is somehow their fault that Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7. They perpetrated horrifying sadistic attacks on Jewish residents – shooting, bombing, burning, decapitating, raping. The estimated 1,300 victims included women and children. Then the killers rounded up more than 200 hostages, many of them women and children, and hustled them off to a hellish limbo of captivity in Gaza. Some have been released. About 75 have not, at least not yet.
Since 1948, the founding of the nation of Israel, tensions have simmered and erupted in violence many times between Israel and the Palestinians who live on Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands, such as the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The only solution even approaching a lasting peace is an agreement for a two-nation state, but sad to say that option seems to be unlikely, now more than ever before.
Meantime, the Israeli military continues its battle to crush Hamas, and the news reports are filled daily with horrendous, heartbreaking images of children sobbing for dead parents and people looking for some safe place to move to after being told to move, move and move again to “safer” places. There are no “safe” places in Gaza these days.
We keep hearing accusations that Jews are evil, that Palestinians are all terrorists. Those stupid, inflammatory generalizations do no one any good.
The fact is Hamas began this bloodbath. Hamas is an acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement,” founded in 1987 in Gaza. Besides hating Israel, it espouses and enforces similar suppression of women and human rights that is common in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, to name just two.
Hamas terrorists have committed atrocities in Israel for many years, including suicide bombings. Israel, throughout the years, has continued to construct Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, mainly in the West Bank, and Israeli forces have killed Palestinians. Thus the hatreds increase on both sides.
Hamas claims to represent the Palestinians in Gaza, but in fact most Gazans do not recognize Hamas as a legitimate “governing” force. They are helpless victims trapped helplessly, hopelessly between two warring factions.
To blame Israeli residents or Gazan residents for these unspeakable acts of violence is wrong. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to continue with massive bombing can and should certainly be questioned.
But the nasty blame game of spouting hate-filled anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian toxicity will only make this already dangerous world all the more dangerous.
Let’s hope people will wake up soon and stop the senseless blame game. Let’s speak up against it every chance we get.
