As I mentioned in Part 1 of this dissertation, “one positive aspect of the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas is that the atrocities, and Israel’s rational response to them, have caused many masks to drop to the ground. The true nature of many groups and individuals is suddenly on public display.”

In Part 1 we covered three of them: 1. Hamas; 2. Colleges and Universities; and 3. Unlimited Immigration Advocates. Let’s keep going.

4. Islamists

It’s hard to believe but the 9/11 attacks were more than 22 years ago. Which means we have roughly 44 million voting-age citizens who have no meaningful memory of the events that introduced us to the term “Islamo-Fascism.” That’s millions who haven’t read the research and histories that show the affinity many modern Islamic thinkers have for Nazi ideology and will therefore be puzzled by the term. That’s millions who don’t understand that in many quarters, Islam has metastasized into something very dark and malevolent.

What’s more, the more recent ISIS atrocities in Iraq and Syria are seemingly now forgotten. I can tell you who does remember them: The Yazidi women of Iraq and Syria. So do the Christian girls of northern Nigeria abducted by Boko Haram (a.k.a. the Nigerian Taliban).

What many of these should remember, but clearly don’t, is what ISIS and its Islamic imitators around the world think of them and their pet causes such as female empowerment and sexual libertinism. Ask the girls of Afghanistan who just lost the right to an education (again). Or these girls . . .

For us old guys, the “both sides” arguments sounds depressingly familiar. Only us gray-hairs remember the “moral-equivalence” arguments of the Cold War era. Apologists for the Soviet Union’s brutal repression of freedoms and human rights at home and around the world invariably tried to paint the West as equally cruel, even as millions behind “the Iron Curtain” risked their lives to escape.

The apologists for Communist oppression and Soviet expansion invariably found reasons to blame the West, especially the U.S., for Soviet atrocities. Their crimes were always somehow our fault. If we didn’t insist on maintaining a strong military deterrent, we were told, the Soviets wouldn’t be trying to replace democracies all over Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia with Marxist dictatorships loyal to Moscow.

For American and European Progressives, at best, the Soviet Bloc and Western democracies were moral equals. At worst, the West was the bad guy and the Communists held the moral high ground. Today’s corollary are those who shrug and apply “both sides” arguments to the current conflict. They see . . .

• Hamas: enters Israel and intentionally (and gleefully) targets civilians, including the elderly, children, and infants; then retreats to hide behind Palestinian civilians, including the elderly, children, and infants. They do this knowing that any Israeli reprisals, no matter how careful, will create civilian casualties; and confident that Western media outlets will do their propaganda work for them.
• Israel: Uses intelligence and technology to precisely target Hamas fighters and leaders and minimize collateral damage. It drops leaflets and broadcasts messages throughout Gaza directing civilians to safe zones.

Many view these contrasting approaches and, at best, see no moral high ground for either side. But most see Israel as the monster here. Why? Because Isarel is of one culture (Western). And Palestinians are largely of another (Islamic).

Note those wringing their hands about the causulty count in Gaza and see if you can find any of them ever uttering even a word of concern when Muslims kill other Muslims by the hundereds of thousands.

See if you can find a word of distress or dismay about Assad’s Sunni body count in Syria that is estimated at 700,000 deaths. (Assad was and is backed by Iran. We’ll deal with Iran in a moment.)

See if you can find any alarm from those claiming Israel is bent on “genocide” in Gaza about the 377,000+ deaths in Yemen over the last ten years or so. Search for expressions of outrage over the 85,000 children who have died in Yemen as Muslim religious factions fight there.

Find, if you can, condemnations of China’s authentically genocidal oppresion of the Muslim Uyghurs. You’ll likely search in vain.

It is a related phenomenon to the complecency about the weekly body count in Chicago. Those deaths seemingly don’t matter because the killers aren’t the right group to fit the narrative.

In honor of all the concern and indignation about the Israeli “occupation” we’ve seen from the Hamas apologists, I posted the following on Facebook recently.

• Me: While I’m doing “History Jeopardy” here, I’ll take “Conquests and Occupations for 1000, Alex.”
• Alex: “The Jeopardy answer is: It stands as the most massive conquest, occupation, and colonization since Alexander the Great.”
• Me: “Alex, what is the Arab-Muslim conquest of AD622 to AD750, wherein Arab armies overran and subjegated hundreds of ethnicities, forced their converstion to Islam, and settled the areas with ethnic Arabs as a ruling class. With the exception of Spain and Portugal, these colonizations and occupations remain until this day. Compared to this, the British Empire and Ghengis Khan’s Khaganate were mere flashes in the pan in terms of longevity.”
• Alex: “Correct! The board is yours.”

North Africa was for several centuries one of the most Christian places on earth. Today Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are dotted with the crumbling, forgotten remnants of once-flourishing churches.

Ironically, for many in the Middle East, the root offense of Israel’s existance is that it represents a tiny piece of “de-colonization.” A sliver of 1300-year-old Islamic occupation and colonization has been rolled back.

5. Iran

Speaking of illumination and clarity . . . If it wasn’t already clear, the nature of game Iran is playing is now on full display. With the backing and encouragement of Russia, Iran funded, supplied, and trained the October 7 attackers. They have smuggled an astonishing quantity of rockets and arms into Gaza, which, by the way, is supposed to be some sort of impenetrable Escape from New York-style prison according to the Israel critics.

For several decades, Iran has been at the center of a larger drama playing out in the Middle East. Islam’s version of Catholics vs. Protestants is Sunnis vs. Shiites. It’s an ancient, bitter rift in Islam that goes back to the earliest years of the religion–immiedately after the death of Mohammed (if he really existed.) Catholics and Protestants stopped killing each other 500 years ago (except in Northern Ireland).

Today, Saudi Arabia leads the Sunni faction in the Middle East. And Iran is the champion of the region’s Shiites. The Saudis and other Sunni kingdoms have decided to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and play nice (see Abraham Accords). The Iranians remain vocally and unapologetically committed to seeing Israel wiped from the map.

Iran’s proxies in the Middle East are some of the worst groups on the planet. Death and misery are all they produce.

All of this has been evident to anyone with a functioning set of eyes. The real mystery is why the regimes of both Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden clearly favor “Death-to-America” Iran and the Shiites in this ancient conflict–even as the Sunni kingdoms have taking huge risks in normalizing relations with Israel. And why both left-leaning administrations repeatedly undermined the sanctions regime by releasing billions of dollars to an Iranian regime that hates us and is training and arming some of the worst terrorist factions on the planet. Oh, and has relentnlessly pursued access to nuclear weapons. I have a theory about that but I’ll save it for another blog post.

Let it suffice to say, the actions of Hamas (in Gaza) and Hezbollah (in Lebanon) reveal, again, the true nature of Iran. October 7 has also made clear why Israel, or the U.S. for that matter, cannot allow Iran to achieve its nuclear weapons goal.

Summary:

As I pointed out in a previous post, much of this makes no sense . . . UNLESS . . . unless you the understand the invisible, 2000-year-old spiritual conflict between the Kingdom of Jesus the Christ and the retreating, increasingly desperate “anti-Christ” forces.

Understand that, and you’ll understand why the same groups, institutions, and individuals that hate the United States, hate Israel, and hate everything associated with Western Civilization. It’s why eco-terrorist target our great works of art. It’s why 36 years ago Jesse Jackson led 500 marchers down the main square of Stanford chanting “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

Leviathan is a “fleeing serpent.” (Isaiah 27:1) But a fleeing serpert is the most frantic, angry, violent kind.

As I said in the opening of Part 1 . . . “It’s a good thing to know the truth.”

Above. An Israeli mother’s final message to the world.

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