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Once upon a time I was living in Arlington, Virginia. I was studying and working in Washington, D.C. One Sunday morning I woke up to the sounds of bullhorns and what sounded like marching troops. I looked out my window and there was the American Nazi party parading down the street in their brown uniforms and red armbands, proudly displaying their swastika. I decided at that moment to move out of Arlington, which I did.
The attempt by fundamentalist Muslims to murder every Jew, and ultimately every Christian, is nothing more than a continuation of the Holocaust. This should not be surprising to anyone who knows the history of the Arab relationship with the Nazi regime. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Adolf Hitler, may both of their names be erased, and planned genocide of the Jews in the Middle East once the Nazis won the war.
In the years since, Middle Eastern Arabs have been in the forefront of Holocaust denial. Likewise, fundamentalist Muslim leaders and leaders of major nations such as Iran have not only denied the Holocaust, but at the same time they have praised it.
The question is why there are Americans on college campuses not only praising genocide of the Jews, but also denying Hamas war crimes? How is it that the left-wing anti-Vietnam war mentality has morphed into the very incarnation of bigotry? Where have we gone wrong?
There are some who claim that calls for murder of the Jews today, and denial of the war crimes of Hamas, are related to the liberal ivory tower left which has come to dominate the college environment. That is an observation, not an answer to the difficult question as to why so-called "liberals" are anything but.
The answer lies in the fact that those with the most horrendous, outrageous, and untruthful views are not confronted by the rest of us. We, as a nation, seem to be intimidated and cowed by those with the loudest voices and the most extreme behaviors.
In Central Africa, today and for the last 15 years, Muslims from the north of that continent have been committing genocide against African Blacks who are Christians, Animists, and "yes" even Jews. The world has largely remained silent to that and when I remind others of what is going on in Africa, most people just glaze over. I tell them to look it up on the internet. Almost no one ever gets back to me about what they have read.
Yet, there is no one in the streets of America celebrating the genocide of fundamentalist Islam against the non-Muslim Black inhabitants of Central Africa. There are no people with bullhorns, marching about blaming Central Black Africans for the fact that they are being murdered by Arabs from the north who hate them. These are the same Arabs who were the slave traders of the 16th through the 18th Century. It was the Barbary states in North African, run by a variety of Islamic regimes, who sold Black Africans into slavery throughout Africa itself, Europe, and the Americas. No protests about that have been seen anywhere that we know of.
Therefore, we must ask ourselves why there are people in this country today not only supporting organizations like Hamas, but denying that they have committed any atrocities against the Jewish people or anyone else. We must ask ourselves why that is? A deeper question is what motivates Jihadists to desecrate human life so blatantly, and then to receive support for their behavior from so-called liberal Americans?
As one of my children explained to me, it is about desecration and humiliation. What Hamas and similarly situated groups are after is to deny to the Jewish people their most precious things; their children, women, and their families. Hamas went into the small farming communities with the explicit desire to murder the most innocent people they could find. They were too cowardly to face an army. They are people, the Hamas fighters, who have forfeited their right to live with other human beings. Not only Hamas, but their supporters, cannot be and must not be accepted as legitimate by civilized people.
Part of our own awakening in America must be to consider who we are letting into our country, why, and whether their views are consistent with America's future. Are we xenophobic or Islamophobic for saying that we do not want a nation with residents or citizens who will support, parade for, and encourage extermination of other people, while blatantly lying about the facts on the ground? We must answer that question resoundingly with a "No!"
We are, whether we like it or not, citizens of the world. The United States, the most powerful nation the globe has ever known, must be more proactive in working with other democracies to strengthen our homeland, build a robust coordinated military, and nip in the bud organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and others who seek worldwide disorder and destruction.
It is difficult to find words for those who behave like Hamas, or support them in the United States, but even if we cannot find the right words, we can educate one another and our children. Two highly respected Americans were being interviewed by Savannah Guthrie one morning. They pushed back very eloquently against the interviewer's questions about "equivalency." They pointed out to her that there is no equivalence between the necessity of Israel having to cut off the head of the monster and the terror that Israelis have to face. More importantly, it appears that there are those in Washington, thank the good Lord, who appreciate that this is not a fight for Israel alone, but rather a referendum on the future of whether the world can be a safe place.
Clifford A. Rieders is a board-certified trial advocate in Williamsport.