Terrorism is one of those things that as Americans, we have always thought of happening elsewhere. Even when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, it was by an American who many people made excuses for. It didn’t feel like real terrorist.
September 11, 2001, was supposed to have changed everything. Arab terrorists hijacked airplanes and flew two of them into the Twin Towers, one was crash landed in Shanksville, PA, and one crashed into the Pentagon. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered that day by terrorists. We felt what terrorism was like. We engaged in a war in Iraq and then Afghanistan that lasted for 20 years. But we were never hit again. Despite the concern that more attacks were coming, the United States has been spared a second terrorist attack after 9/11. And so, we have forgotten the horror of terrorism and terrorists. We have forgotten the evil.
Each September 11th, we remember in a lesser and lesser manner. It is not a national day of remembrance. It is not a sacred day. There isn’t a school assembly where all the names of the victims are read. Perhaps it’s the 20 years of war that came after that has us tired. Perhaps it is our lack of an attention span. Perhaps it is because we choose to get partisan and blame ‘the other party’ for either entering the war, not winning the war, or the way we finally exited the war. We paid a terrible price on September 11th and it’s a day that I will never forget. But as a country we remember it like we remember Pearl Harbor Day. “A day that will live in infamy” is no longer a recognizable quote to the millenial generation. I wonder if they would even recognize ‘Let’s Roll’ two decades after it was one of the most inspiring statements we heard.
Israel on the other hand, has had to deal with terrorist every day. I have spoken with IDF leaders who have told me what they stop every single day. And we see in the news what happens when a terrorist gets through. The first and second intifada along with rockets from Gaza and Lebanon, stabbings, shootings, kidnappings, and more.
I’ve been in Israel for Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Memorial Day and Israeli Independence Day) and they are days you won’t ever forget. The country shuts down on Yom HaZikaron. TV only shows stories of heroic soldiers. The sirens at 7 pm and then at 11 am are dramatic and unforgettable. The names of those lost are read in each community. It is a powerful experience. Yom Ha’atzmaut starts right at the end of Yom HaZikaron and the mood changes from sadness to joy in an instant. Freedom is celebrated, not sales on mattresses or appliances. You can literally join any party going on in the country whether you know the people there or not. Israel never forgets.
But even Israel never imagined the horrors of October 7, 2023. Nobody, other than Hamas and Iran could imagined that occurring. Having seen the 47-minute Hamas video from October 7th, it was horrifying. And I know there is far worse that Israel has video of that they refuse to put into the public domain because of just how horrifying it is. Rapes, murders of babies, women and the elderly. Burning of people alive. Cooking babies alive in the oven while their mother is forced to watch, sometimes while also being raped. Seeing what the IDF soldiers saw, in real time, when they came upon the Nova Music Festival was haunting. I’ll never forget the bodies strewn everywhere, the anxiety in the voices of the IDF soldiers as they hoped to find anybody alive and the disappointment each time they realized that nobody was left alive.
In the United States, it is as if 9/11 never happened. We blame Israel for it happening. We hold Israel responsible for the evil of Hamas, using children, women, and the elderly as human shields. We ignore the hostages, now taken over 160 days ago. We excuse UNRWA for their participation in the horrors of October 7th, in hiding hostages after their abduction, and for their theft of humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza and diverted to Hamas. When the people of Gaza riot because humanitarian aid is coming in and going to UNRWA to distribute and they know that means it goes to Hamas, we blame Israel. When Hamas fires on the people of Gaza trying to get the humanitarian aid before Hamas can steal it, we blame Israel. We continue to fail to hold Hamas responsible or recognize that they are pure evil.
We, and the world, have convinced ourselves, that this is between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We have convinced ourselves that this is about the need for a Palestinian state or about Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria. We fool ourselves into ignoring the influence of Iran and their goal of creating a new Caliphate, with the Iranians and radical Shiite Muslims in charge with everybody living under Sharia law. We forget that we are the infidel they rail against, thinking it’s just Israel, it’s just the Jews.
We also forget that they hate anybody who isn’t like them, even other muslims. On October 7th, Hamas didn’t care if you were Jewish, Muslim, Christian, American, or Thai. They hated everybody. That’s what happens with evil. And if you don’t destroy evil, evil wins.
Even the people of Gaza are now holding Hamas responsible. Now that they don’t have to fear for their lives because Hamas killed any opposition and are not in charge any longer, they are speaking out loudly. While some of the people were involved with October 7th and many more support the hatred, there are plenty who want to live in peace with their neighbor Israel. I found the same thing in Judea and Samaria when, in 2019, I went to meet with leaders of Palestinian civil society. Take away the corrupt government and the evil of terrorists and there is a possibility for peace.
We choose to blame the government of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, the far right fanatics in the government like Itamar Ben-Gvir, or the ultra-religious Jews in Israel for the hate coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. We choose to excuse barbaric behavior because it is against Jews. Remember #BringBackOurGirls from 2014 after 276 high school girls were abducted from a government school in Chibok, Nigeria? Remember the number of celebrities who stood out, loud and proud, that no woman or girl should be taken captive, raped and held against their will? That only counts if you aren’t Jewish.
Remember 1979 and the hostage crisis in Iran? It spawned the TV show Nightline to keep everybody up to date on a daily basis. Yet the hostages taken by Hamas – including Americans and Muslims – draw no attention. Kfir Bibas, stolen when he was 8 months old, celebrated his first birthday in captivity. His four-year-old brother Ariel was also kidnapped and remains in captivity. What type of barbarism is this and better yet, what type of human beings are we that allow this happen and aren’t marching in the streets of every country to free these babies?
Noa Argmani and Naama Levi, two beautiful young women were attending a music festival, like many of our young adults do. They were attacked by butchers who murdered young adults in cold blood, savagely raped them for the crime of being in Israel. Noa and Naama were taken hostage. Who knows what brutality they have faced since October 7th? We can all imagine the worst after what we saw these Hamas terrorists do to girls, women, and the elderly.
They aren’t the only young women taken hostage and being brutalized in the tunnels beneath Gaza. And if you think it’s only over there and only Jewish women so you are safe, look at the signs held by AMERICANS in NEW YORK CITY on Sunday. “Rape is resistance”. “Babies are occupiers too”. After the killing of George Floyd, we had resistance in major cities like Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis. Today these people would tell you that raping your wife, daughter, or mother would be acceptable because it’s ‘resistance’. I remember reading about how in Seattle people went to homes and told the owners that it wasn’t their house. That they were occupying land and had no right to live in the houses they purchased. These same people would say that kidnapping their children would be acceptable because they were ‘occupiers’. Don’t fool yourself that it is only there and only for Jews.
Jews have long been the ‘canary in the coal mine’. What happens to Jews happens to others afterward. Take a minute to do a search for “Jews canary in the coal mine”. You will see articles going back years documenting this. It’s not post-October 7th. It’s history. When we allow this to happen, we encourage it to happen to us.
Just last week, an illegal migrant from Lebanon was caught at border. He admitted that he is a Hezbollah terrorist and was hoping ‘to make a bomb’ and was headed for NY. Terrorism is in the United States. It’s just a matter of when and where the event happens. Or events happen. We are worried about planes that have issues with maintenance and construction while nobody has died in a major airline plane crash since 2009. How will we reconcile our priorities when people die in America at the hands of terrorists? Who will we blame? One thing we know for sure is that nobody will take responsibility.
Two weeks ago, a grenade was found in the back seat of an Uber in New York. As the bomb squad tried to get to the car to assess the situation, defuse the grenade, and save lives, Anti-Israel protesters blocked the police from reaching grenade in the Uber during a Times Square march. Luckily the grenade was inert and nobody was harmed by it. The hatred for Israel and Jews was more important than saving the lives of people in the area from a possible live grenade. We were lucky this time that it was inert. Next time?
Last night was the ZOA gala in Hollywood, Florida. Peopel who support the existance of a Jewish homeland gathering together to celebrate it. We have many nation states in the world for people of all backgrounds, faiths, cultures, etc. There is only one Jewish state and that’s what Zionism is – the belief that we should have. Zionism is not colonialism as there is no desire to expand beyond our historical homeland. There is no aparthaid. The declaration of independence speaks clearly about being a home for all peoples. Zionism isn’t about Bibi Netanyahu, merely the most recent elected Prime Minister. His time will end and there will be a new Prime Minister. And a new one after that. And so on and so on. At this wonderful event last night, in order to ‘help Palestinians’, people assaulted a Jewish person with an Israeli flag. How does that help Palestinians? How does that help the people of Gaza? We know they don’t care about the hostages because they are Jewish. Instead of listening to the people of Gaza about Hamas and working to create a place where Palestinians can live peacefully with their neighbor Israel, instead of building a country with hospitals that are not armories, schools that teach math and science, not hate, these people merely want to hate. Watch th video and see hatred, see evil. If they really wanted to help the Palestinians and the people of Gaza they would listen to them and push for an end to Hamas.
Last week, I heard Senator Chuck Schumer speak passionately about Israel and Israel’s right, as a sovereign nation, to defend herself. He spoke about the evil of Hamas and how they must be defeated. He spoke about the special relationship between the United States and Israel. He was animated. He was passionate. Three days later, he completely backtracked, calling for early elections in a sovereign country. He let partisan politics overtake his moral, ethics, and values. I was disgusted. Not just disappointed, not just angry, but disgusted. Here is one of our elected leaders, in one of the most high ranking positions in our government, a self identified Jew, talking out of both sides of his mouth without integrity. This isn’t about likeing or not liking Bibi. This isn’t about thinking he is the problem or the solution. This is a democratic country that has free elections and has a process for them. Unlike the Palestinian Authority, where Mahmoud Abbas is now in year 19 of his 4 year team. Let that sink in for a minute. No calls for elections in year 19 of his 4 year term. I’m not sure Senator Schumer can regain my trust. Our leaders continue to lose our trust based on their lack of integrity, lack of morals and values. When our leaders don’t have them, how much longer can we exist as a democracy (or a republic for those who want to be critical).
A TikTok trend in 2023 asked women to ask men how often they think about the Roman Empire. Women were shocked that men think about the Roman empire so often. I think men think about it so often because it was an amazing, powerful empire. It gave the world so much. When we look back on it, we don’t understand how it ever fell. It was so powerful. It covered all aspects of life. It was on the cutting edge of everything. It was simply the best of the best. How did it every disappear? How did the Roman Empire fall?
I think we are seeing it firsthand now in both Europe and the United States. We are so full of ourselves that we have lost all common sense. Instead of striving to look at people as people, to find our similarities and focus on them instead of our differences, we now highlight our differences and minimize our similarities. We fill ourselves with hatred towards those that are different. We allow babies to be hostages. We allow women to be raped if it supports a cause. There is no right and wrong any longer. In the words of the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard, ‘it depends on the context’. It never depends on the context. Evil is bad. Period. You cannot justify evil. There is good and evil and there is a difference. The world is now attempting to justify evil. The world is ignoring the definitions of words like genocide and apartheid to make them into catch phrases that sound powerful and allows people who use them incorrectly to feel superior.
Rome fell for many reasons. The three most common reasons cited are corruption, the division of the empire, and invasion by Germanic tribes. We are filled with corruption in our world today and in our country. We are as divided as we have been since the civil war. All that is missing is the invasion. As we saw last week when a Hezbollah terrorist was caught with the intention to set off a bomb in NY, the invasion has begun.
Can the fall of the United States be that far away? Will future generations study us and the Roman empire and see the pattern and do better? Do we have a chance to save our country and our world? I don’t know but I get less optimistic each day as we sink further and further into the abyss of hate, divisiveness, and stupidity.
May the hostages come home safely and soon. May the war in Gaza end soon with the surrender of Hamas. May we wake up from this bizzaro world and return to one of sanity where, in the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Right now, our nation and the world is getting a failing grade on the content of our character. And I fear for our future.
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