January 26, 2024 | www.baltimoresun.com/
Since the Oct.7 terrorist attack on Israel, justice has been turned on its head. The victims of the grisly Hamas terrorist attacks have been portrayed as the perpetrators.
Jews were burned alive in their homes, gang-raped, shot to death and beheaded. Infants were snatched from their cribs and found dead in ovens. Women were mutilated as they were raped, and summarily executed. Atrocities against Jews were taken to a level not witnessed since Hitler’s gas chambers.
Three months have elapsed. More than 100 people remain hostage in Gaza, held by Hamas terrorists. Israel has answered Oct. 7 with self-defense, as the United States did after 9/11. Terrorists cannot be defeated by the Sermon on the Mount.
Social media platforms overflow with vile antisemitism, including the baseless accusation of an Israeli genocide of Palestinians indistinguishable from the Holocaust. A companion defamation is that Israel is an apartheid state.
The social justice warriors who claim to champion Palestinian self-determination were silent when Syrian Dictator Bashar al Assad and his government, between 2011 and 2021, killed 307,000 civilians, torturing many. President Assad employed chemical weapons against women and children, and displaced millions.
The government of Sudan led by President Omar Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Darfur from 2003-2005. Yet the former president remains outside the ICC’s clutches in Sudan, while the world looks away. South Africa in particular permitted Bashir to escape during his 2015 visit there, notwithstanding an outstanding ICC criminal arrest warrant. South Africa has no moral standing to sue Israel for alleged genocide in the International Court of Justice.
Clamors for a cease-fire are misplaced. All experience teaches Hamas would use the intermission from war to replenish its arsenal supplied by Hezbollah and Iran. A cease-fire would risk a second edition of Oct.7. Has the United States declared a cease-fire against Al Qaida, ISIS or other international terrorist organizations since 9/11?
A video recently surfaced of four teenage girls in Gaza. They are terrified. Their faces are caked in dried blood and dirt. They cower in abject terror. They have been apparently tortured. The world is silent, as it was during the Holocaust.
Jews have underwritten the progress of civilization. Of the 965 Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2023, 214 — a staggering 22% — were Jewish. Only 0.2% of the world’s population is Jewish.
Take a stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nearly every hall features the names of MOMA’s benefactors. Many, if not most, are Jewish. Who knows? A persuasive argument can be made that Jews have contributed more to the world and more to the United States than any other minority ethnic group. And yet in their darkest hour and time of need, can they rely on the reciprocal goodwill of nearly every American? Absolutely not.
MeToo is fueled by accusations of sexual assault against celebrities of various races or heritages. Scores are eager to destroy the careers of such attackers, except when their victims are Jews and the assaulters Palestinian. Is this not antisemitism?
How can we continue to be idle when Jewish babies are held for ransom by Hamas terrorists who previously squandered billions of dollars in international aid? The diverted money was meant to build a brighter future for Palestinians. Instead, it was used to fortify Hamas’ proficiency in killing Jews.
The United Nations General Assembly offered Jews and Palestinians a two-state solution in 1948. Jews accepted despite getting less than they had hoped. Palestinians balked, and five Arab nations declared war on the new state of Israel. Who bears the lion’s share of responsibility for the post-1948 chronic convulsions in Palestine? Those who scorned the two-state solution in 1948.
“Jews don’t matter, they’re worth nothing.” That is the message the world is sending to the Jewish hostages in Gaza. It is wrong. It is repugnant. It is high time to step forward and call it out.
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun. This is the first in a series of weekly columns written from “The Owner’s Box.”