.png)
I’m sitting at a stone picnic table, smoking a nasty vape shop cigar, looking across the road at a revival meeting. The dozen or so people sheltering in the shade in Reagan Park are professing their faith, thanking God, one by one.
They're speaking into a microphone. Snippets are fading in and out as the traffic between us goes by.
“Break down the walls of religion” a young man, presumably the pastor, urges the assembled semi-throng. “Heavenly Father, bring us together.”
Seven thousand miles away, the Israeli Defense Force is doing its level best to destroy the homicidal terrorists in another Palestine. Leveling great swathes of territory as they go.
And here I am, contemplating the irony of Americans chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
What they mean is, “restore the land occupied by Israel to the Palestinian people.” A plan requiring, indeed mandating the complete destruction of the Jewish homeland and all its people. At the very least, all its Jews.
Hamas makes no bones about reducing the Jews within Israel to bones. Most of the Americans chanting “from the river to the sea” are either ignorant or willfully ignorant thag Hamas is straight-up pro Jewish extermination.
A goal that’s aided and abetted by Americans protesting Israeli genocide. Alleged genocide.
Fact: If Israel wanted to kill all the residents of Gaza, they could do it. They have the necessary weapons of mass destruction.
Alternative fact: If Hamas wanted to limit civilian casualties, they could stop hiding weaponry and fighters in the middle in the civilian population and/or lay down their arms.
Israel wouldn’t massacre the Hamas combatants. Anyone who believes they would do so is seriously ignorant of Jewish culture, past, present or future.
If the Israelis laid down their arms, it would be the last thing they’d ever do. Leaving their compatriots to a horrifying fate – as demonstrated in graphic, inhuman detail last October 7.
You Don't Know What You Don't Know
To be fair, it’s hard for radicalized Americans to understand the reality of the Gaza War.
For one thing, our Commander-in-Chief has singularly, spectacularly failed to fully expose the evil that is Hamas - and the overwhelming support they enjoy amongst the Palestinian population.
For another, how can Americans understand hatred on the level of Hamas?
We don’t experience it in our daily lives. Like the believers assembled in front of me, we live in a country founded on and informed by Judeo-Christian values of peace, love and understanding. Tolerance. Freedom.
Yes, imperfectly realized. Improved step-by-step through an epic, ongoing struggle. On every level: personal, political, cultural, legal, economic and more.
A struggle for liberty, fraternity and equality that has metastasized into something that looks very much like its opposite.
Millions of Americans have been taught to see themselves and others through the lens of race and identity. To squander their admirable empathy in a pervasive, pernicious cult of victimology.
This does nothing to facilitate a nuanced perspective on the Gaza War, and much to blind social justice warriors to where “justice” lies.
We Are Not Hamas
Thankfully, the Americans supporting Hamas are not Hamas. They are not homicidal maniacs. Nor, I believe, will they fall prey to genocidal fury. Regardless of Gaza. Regardless of the results of the next Presidential election.
Americans are fully invested in maintaining their relatively peaceful co-existence, whether by dint of religious or moral values or simple commercial self-interest. And yet…
Despite 9/11, despite the suffering their ancestors suffered before immigrating to The Land of the Free, they lack a full understanding of the world outside our borders. How truly bad, how evil it is.
The revival has disbanded. The adherents have cleaned-up their trash, hugged each other, piled into their automobiles and left to apply their restored faith in "real life." Like hundreds of millions of American, they looked... happy. Comfortable.
The Ultimate Measure of a Man
Martin Luther King Jr. told us that "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
For better of worse, now is one of those times now. A time when a clear-eyed vision of America, the role of its friends and enemies, is desperately needed, and in desperately short supply.
I'm not a Christian, but I have faith. As long as We The People hold fast to those things that make us – for lack of a better term – great, we have a chance of redeeming ourselves both home and away.
But first we must see things as they really are, not how we want them to be. And that's the truth.
Click here to follow The Wandering Jews' progress on X
"From the river to the sea..." Is a popular "war cry" from some of the people that the Palestinians would happily throw off the nearest 4 story building. Additionally, when asked which river and which sea they are referring, a vast majority have no idea.
Really wish people wouldbeducate themselves just a little before making a sign....
Blame this on the educational system, Young people today are shielded from the fact as you quite accurately put it, if the defenders of Israel layed down their arms it would be the last thing they would do. Hamas is a murderous terriorist group and have no qualms about killing unarmed civilians, period. However the problem is all of Giza is nothing more then a crop field for raising the next generation of Hamas. The one solution to this was to glass the entire Gaza Strip on October 8th and by now the fake outrage would have subsided but unfortunately that road was not taken and an uneinnable situation persists.