Oct.7, 2023. It’s as important a date as 9/11, or 12/7/41, or 11/22/63. It is a date that will go down in infamy. But it is already being distorted in this upside down world of ours. Already what happened on that day in Israel is being redrawn as an event that wasn’t done to Israel by Hamas Palestinians of Gaza but that was done to the Palestinians of Gaza by Israel. And thousands in the West and the Middle East are marching and demonstrating in the streets with that view in mind. This is of extreme concern to me as it relates to what Donald Trump has tried to do after the presidential election of 2020 had him obviously losing by a large margin to Joe Biden. He tried to take a fact and twist it to convince people that the election was stolen from him by the Democrats. The same was true of 1/6/21 when all of us saw the facts as they unfolded on TV of an attack on the U.S. Capital by out of control rioters beating, injuring, and trampling upon Capitol police, breaking windows, and causing such fear among the legislators inside that they had to flee and hide for their very lives. We all saw that, as sure as I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV in 1963. No one then disputed that as some Republican lawmakers today assert that these violent insurrectionists were just on a tour of the Capitol. Or that these hooligans were actually patriots trying to prevent the Congress, along with the Vice President, from doing their Constitutionally-ordained job that day.
Now, as we approach the third anniversary of that infamous day, Donald Trump, his allies, and still most of his Republican Party, including the now Speaker of the House, still believe the election was stolen from Trump. This is much more psychotic thinking and behavior than the many psychotic folks I counseled in my 35 years as a masters level mental health practitioner.
Likewise, the people now who are demonstrating for the Palestinians even after what Hamas did to Israelis on 10/7 are also as psychotic as America’s MAGA cult. But what is really upside down is that many of these demonstrators are progressive Democrats who are shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians who do not believe Israel and its Jews should exist. That’s what Hitler believed. So, the far left and the fascists have, for all intents and purposes, joined hands.
That’s crazy, and that’s of tremendous concern to me. Do you follow what I’m saying? That leaves a Democratic Party so split, that again Donald Trump can take advantage of that to get elected again in ’24. Why? Because in ’16, I know for a fact that many Democratic progressives decided not to vote for Hillary because their guy, Bernie Sanders, was not nominated. They, therefore, were a major factor in Trump’s win. So these progressives taught, they thought, Hillary and the Democratic Party a lesson while paving the way for at least four years of a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, misogynistic, blowhard would-be dictator. And now history may repeat itself if progressive Democrats again decide not to vote since Biden is giving full support to Israel at the expense of Palestinians who, I might add, continue to hold hostages if,…if…if those hostages are still alive. And if they are alive, you can bet, based on previous verified Hamas tactics, they are holding those hostages in places where the Israelis are bombing or near other civilians where bombs may fall. That’s how Hamas has operated in the past by placing missile sites near civilian centers.
Now those same progressives are celebrating the monsters and barbarians of Gaza over democratic Israelis. While Hamas still holds some 240 hostages, some of whom are Americans, they are calling for a suspension of military aid to Israel because Israel, not Hamas, is violating human rights. That’s crazy. That upside down. Is Israel perfect? Are we perfect, or any government? No, of course not. Israel defends itself when attacked, just as any country would defend itself when attacked. So why does Israel get blamed and vilified for defending itself so forcefully after an attack such as the one perpetrated against it on 10/7?
There is only one reason. Israel is the homeland of Jews. And ever since Judas ratted on Jesus for a bag of silver, Christians have had no difficulty blaming whatever on the Jews, and have been up to this very day. What they don’t seem to recognize is that Judas was a Jew, but so was Jesus and all of his disciples. After Jesus died, his followers invented another religion called Christianity and vilified Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as their savior. Have I lost you? After that conspiracy theory was introduced, it followed that Jews were the reason for all the world’s ills. And so fast forward to now, and all Jews, apparently equal to all Israelis, are accused of war crimes for defending themselves while the Palestinians get a pass and even cheered by left wing progressives for constantly throwing missiles at Southern Israel and butchering men, women, and children (did I mention they shot and burned Jewish babies as well! Has Israel ever done that to Palestinians?) on Oct. 7, still holding, hopefully still alive, some 240 hostages.
I grew up in supposedly liberal Philadelphia hearing Jewish slurs, jokes, and derisive comments. As a kid, it scared me, it intimidated me, and I kept my mouth shut. But now as a Jewish elder, it’s time to shout out not shut up. The Jewish battle cry now is Never Again, which is absolutely appropriate given the way we have been treated throughout recorded history. Some of you may not know what that refers to. In fact non-Jews too easily disconnect from the way Jews are treated because they themselves are not treated that way. The Holocaust. Some actually say it never happened. But it did and that fact can be proved in court which is how we verify that something is a fact. And indeed the court at Nurenberg after the war did prove that the Holocaust actually happened and put to death some of the Nazi perpretrators. But the Nazis were unable to wipe out, to commit total genocide, on the entire Jewish people. After the Holocaust, Never Again.
But it did happen again…on Oct. 7, 2023. One of Hamas’s leaders is saying now that Hamas did not kill civilians on that day. He lies but that is what dictators do. They make up history. They distort. They put false ideas into the heads of not only their immediate followers but the heads of sympathetic and gullible heads throughout the world, such as many of progressive Democrats in America. And they latch on to the lies and pass them on to others until the masses start doubting, start questioning, start believing what the liars are saying. We see that today with the followers of Donald Trump in America. Historians report that that is what happened in Germany during the Hitler years.
The fact is that some 1400 innocent Israelis were murdered in a surprise attack that morning by heavily armed Hamas terrorists on motorbikes and trucks who blocked off roads of escape and fired at anyone–anyone–they could find. Many were people attending an outdoor music festival during a Jewish holiday. Many were living on peaceful kibbutzim whose liberal inhabitants actually supported and aided the people of Gaza in the recent past. What these terrorists did to these Israeli was arguably worse than bloody Russian pogroms against its Jewish citizen at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and, though on a smaller scale, Hitler’s treatment of European Jews between the late 30s and mid 1940s. It was a more devastating bloodbath than Attila the Hun could have devised hundreds of years before. This was Jewish hatred, extreme anti-semitism, brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Two thousand years of hatred of the Jews, culminating in a one day massacre of rape, torture, butchery, and wanton murder in the land where wise Kings David and Solomon once ruled.
What dictators and totalitarian regimes like Hamas also do is take and hold their power through fear. Fear of torture. Fear of retribution. Fear of imprisonment. Fear of death via death threats, as we’ve seen from Trump’s MAGA hordes. In Gaza, people knew what Hamas was planning but they daren’t say a word or even a whisper. Informants were everywhere. People disappeared regularly. Innocent people died when Israel retaliated against missile strikes on buildings where the weapons were purposefully made and placed in buildings where innocent Gazan families lived. Any complaints were noted and families were punished. This is how Hamas held control over the Palestinian society in Gaza, that American progressive demonstrators in the streets of Manhattan are supporting.
Will this hatred of the Jews never end? Will evangelical Christians ever drop this delusion of end times where Jesus returns to Jerusalem taking believers back with him to heaven while the non believers, the Jews, will go to hell? This is just as delusional and insane as the bizarre hallucinations I heard my clients utter. And yet in this upside down world, the evangelical is sane and respected while the Jew is dirty and damned.
Israel is not perfect. No country is. The extreme right wing West Bank Israeli settlers who, out of greed, harass and persecute Palestinians there, are just wrong. I abhor those people and wish they be removed, by force if necessary. Whether Jews or not, they have no right to treat peaceful Palestinians with derision, violence, and injustice. These extreme right wing bullies need to be stopped, removed, and the land allowed to remain in Palestinian hands. But for the most part, the Israel government and military have enabled them to act as they wish.
Over the years Israel has been an extremely positive force in this world, accounting for many scientific, agricultural, archeological, and medical discoveries. The only effective democracy in the Middle East, it has brought life to an arid desert. And it has brought hope to Jews around the world who felt they have finally a homeland and are welcome to return to Zion, the promised land, the place where a Jew can be a Jew without fear of being spit upon, vilified, discriminated against, banished, even murdered.
To those misguided people in the West who now protest against Israel, and in doing so, celebrate what Hamas has just done, you are protesting the wrong people. Your protest should be directed to the dictators Hamas. To do otherwise is delusional. Gaza must remain in Palestinian hands, yes, but without the cruel reign of the Hamas regime.
What else is delusional, detestable, and unconscionable is thousands of people parading the streets of cities worldwide screaming for the elimination not only of Israel but of all Jews everywhere. It’s what the Nazis wanted. The Final Solution they called it. Genocide. Another Holocaust. And on Oct.7, 2023, the Hamas Palestinians from Gaza showed how it was to be done. Through rape, murder, butchery, inhumanity, and barbarism. Authentic human beings do not contemplate doing such things to other human beings. And human beings who do such horrid things to other human beings as they did on Oct. 7th are not true human beings. They are demonic monsters and should not under any circumstances be celebrated as they have been throughout the world. Nor should they be controlling Gaza with the kind of fear and terror they use there. Isis and Hamas are no different.
I am a Jew. My parents and grandparents were Jewish. Many non-Jews have a different relationship to Oct.7th. They are considerably more removed emotionally. They can quickly and figuratively change the channel and wipe it from their minds like they would any event that didn’t affect them personally or their families or their immediate communities. But a Jew like myself, no matter how religious or where we live, cannot so easily turn away from barbarous treatment of a 22 year old German Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was kidnapped by Hamas demons from a music festival in Southern Israel and experienced horrors as she was tortured and paraded around Gaza City while ordinary Gazans cheered and celebrated. Shani Louk was then murdered, her body desecrated and discarded, later to be found by retaliating Israeli soldiers. She was later verified as dead only from DNA taken from a skull fragment found in her remains.
So, to the Western mobs drooling and snarling, Nazi-like, for Jewish blood, I say Never Again. We Jews will not go quietly. We are a good and peaceful people. But if we are attacked, as was Israel on October 7th, we will fight back with all the strength, will, determination, and grit that we’ve got, as every other country and its people on Earth would do.
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