Yesterday, a mob of anti-Israel protesters stormed the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. CNN might describe this altercation as “mostly peaceful,” but the video images I watched showed protesters battling with police.
Who are
these anti-Israel agitators? Why this explosion of anti-Semitism? Do these
fools know anything about the history of Israel? Have they forgotten about the
Holocaust? Have they no sympathy for the Israelis who were murdered and raped
by Hamas terrorists on October 7th?
Yesterday’s
attack on the DNC headquarters reminded me of a passage from 1984, George
Orwell’s dystopian novel. Orwell described a daily “Two Minutes of Hate” exercise,
which the bureaucrats of fictional Oceana were required to attend.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. . . . A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
Curiously,
Orwell continued, the hatred that the bureaucrats expressed was impersonal. “[T]he
rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched
from one object to another like the flame of a blow lamp.”
Likewise, there is an abstract quality to the recent outbursts of anti-Semitism; the racial hatred is not directed at any particular person. And yet,
there is an element of cunning in these explosive, racist rants against Israel.
The rioters seem to know that it is now acceptable to hate Jews.
Anti-Semitism has suddenly become the new orthodoxy—almost overnight. Even
the universities have signaled that they will tolerate their students’ open
hostility toward Jews and Israel.
“Orthodoxy,”
Orwell reminds us, “means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness.” Indeed, there is a thoughtlessness that permeates the new orthodoxy—much
like the thoughtlessness of the German people as the Nazis came to power. Non-Jewish Germans tolerated the persecution of Jews because they believed the Nazis would direct their bestiality only toward Jews.
Later, Germans
learned that Nazi brutality knew no bounds. Anyone who opposed Hitler's
murderous agenda would be liquidated.
I say again that
anti-Semitism is intolerable in the United States. The District of Columbia should prosecute the
rioters who attacked the DNC headquarters as vigorously as they prosecuted the
January 6th rioters. The universities should expel students who publicly
espouse anti-Semitism, and they should fire the professors who spout racist
propaganda in their classrooms.
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| "Mostly peaceful" Photo credit: The Mirror |
