The Morning Rant

So…this was fun!

These anti-Israel/anti-Semitic marches are a regular occurrence in NYC, and I had the distinct displeasure of observing this one while waiting for a friend outside a restaurant on 42nd and Lexington around 6:30pm last night.

I took the time to observe the participants, and it was as one might expect…a scruffy confabulation of 20-somethings and 30-somethings chanting various poorly rhymed sayings, including of course their favorite: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Unsaid is just how they are going to achieve that thinly veiled revisiting of the Holocaust.

Because that is exactly what it is. Making Israel a Palestinian state means that there will be no Jews living there, and the only way to do that is to expel them or kill them, and that sounds like it aligns perfectly with the values of Nazi Germany circa 1938.

What I found interesting and depressing is that there weren’t large numbers of Arab-looking people. And Lots of minorities, although curiously not much of an Asian or black presence. The protesters also skewed young, at least based on my subjective count.

But it was clearly young New York City, which tells me that the long march through the educational institutions is complete. The rank stupidity and ignorance on display was disheartening. Signs and chants decrying Israeli “colonialism’ fly in the face of the facts. Charges of “genocide” fly in the face of the facts; spurious claims that Israel is purposefully targeting civilians fly in the face of the facts and the reality of Hamas and its wholesale use of civilian deaths as a tool.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter. We can complain about the lies; we can complain about the media manipulation; we can complain about selective criticism of Israel when much worse stuff has happened to Muslims across the world…perpetrated by their own people. Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq; they have all seen brutality and death hat dwarfs what Israel is forced to do because Hamas uses Gazans as shields, and actively pursues their deaths.

All that matters is that the government and the people of Israel begin to understand that facts and logic and rhetorical persuasion mean nothing in the face of virulent Jew hate. At this point, Israel must demonstrate the resolve to do the only thing that may change the paradigm of Gaza…and that is to destroy Hamas as a political and violent entity and install a compliant government that does only what is needed to restore civilian infrastructure. Then we can see whether Gazans are capable of civilized behavior.