The arrival of coffins carrying the two red-haired cherubs forced me to once again ask what I asked after October 7. What motivates people to act with such brutality, with such ruthlessness?
The murders of brothers Ariel and Kfir reflect a pre-modern medieval behavior toward an enemy. Our modern conceptions cannot imagine the mindset that could facilitate and activate the kidnapping and then the coldblooded murder of infants.
Hamas and the others like them have been indoctrinated to believe that all Israelis and all Jews are sub-human. And as sub-human, Jews should be killed – much like vermin and other irritating animals.
Killing Jews is a path to solving a larger problem. We have seen this before – that is how the Nazis successfully trained their murderers to participate in the mass murder process.
To better dehumanize Jews, the Nazis shaved their heads and transformed them into living skeletons, what they derisively termed “muscle men” with dysentery and body lice. The Nazis created an environment where Jews could not clean themselves. Where Jews did not have toilet paper. It was all a part of their Final Solution.
In the eyes of the murderers, the Jews were not due even the smallest modicum of decency – that would have transformed them, once again, back into human beings. Similarly, Hamas and the others were able to brutally murder the Bibas children.
Still, the more vexing question is, how do Western educated students and faculty support such behavior? It boils down to one simple answer. There are, in this world, people – even among the educated elite – who hate Jews so much that they can justify any act, no matter how cruel or barbarous, against the Jew and Israel.
It is not that these Jew-haters who show their support for Hamas on university campuses across the United States and Europe are so pro-Palestinian – it is that they are so anti-Jew.
They justify their actions by explaining that Israel did X or didn’t do Y. They rationalize that there is no other option for the Palestinians – they live in a ghetto. They say they wish that they had the strength to do what Hamas is doing. They call it standing up against an oppressor.
In other words, they support killing Jews by any means.
JUST MURDER Jews; murder as many as possible. Murder them and then celebrate their murder. On US campuses, the piece d’resistance is the massive celebrations of the murders.
And that explains why there is such excitement, such enthusiasm in pro-Hamas rallies. It explains why, after October, 7 – there was glee that Jews were murdered. That is why students and faculty embraced Hamas and posted outlandish statements on their social media accounts. They were unabashed supporters; they felt no shame.
Many of those who celebrate Hamas are anti-Western. They are composed of two distinct ideological groups: modern-day Marxists who yearn for the fall of Western society and Islamists who want Islamic society to eradicate Western values and Western culture.
Israel represents everything that is abhorrent to these groups. They feel comfortable endorsing the murderers, their murder and the subjugation of Jews.
That is why, despite knowing full well that the average person living in the West is repulsed by the idea of kidnapping and murdering infants and children, these educated Marxists and Islamists are not the least bit embarrassed to embrace the ideology of the mass murder of innocents.
Hamas’s murder rampage on October 7, and the games they play with the kidnapped and their dead bodies, empowers their supporters across the world. The brutal terrorist group’s supporters in the US claim that their support for Hamas is freedom of speech.
Still, there are limits to freedom of speech, even in the United States of America. Among those limits – you may not give material support to a terrorist or a terrorist organization. Not even a single dollar.
So why the Jews?
It is what Jews and Israel represent. Jews represent life, success, happiness, and creativity. Israel represents a bright and exciting future, a rebuilding, and a renaissance. Hamas and others cannot tolerate that vision.
These haters of Jews have created a cult that celebrates all that Israel and Jews are not. They celebrate murder, kidnapping, destruction, darkness, and death. Ideologically, they cannot tolerate the Jew.
Hamas and their supporters will be defeated. Israel and the Jewish people will defeat the death cult – because hate, evil and destruction are no match for happiness, for life and for creativity.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS.