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With one exception, nothing about Oct. 7 surprised me.
The one exception was Israel’s unpreparedness. That also surprised nearly every Israeli. My guess is that a combination of Iranian technology and Israeli complacency and incompetence led to the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Nothing else surprised me. Not the butchery; not the sadism; not the Jew-hatred; not the theology that made the slaughter possible; not the support, even glee, in Gaza and among an untold number of Muslims around the world; not the reactions in our universities; and not the support of the Left (not of liberals).
THE MIDDLE EAST DISPUTE
Since the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at the Middle East Institute of Columbia’s School of International Affairs, I knew what the Middle East conflict was about: Muslim rejection of a Jewish state in the middle of the Muslim world. To the best of my recollection, my professors — most of them fluent in Arabic and all experts on the Middle East — had it wrong. Being secular themselves and usually having a sympathetic view of the Arab world, they believed and taught that the issue was about land.
They were wrong. It was always about Muslim rejection of a Jewish state in their midst and a religious desire to destroy it.
In 2014, I presented a video for PragerU titled “The Middle East Problem.” It explains the Middle East problem in five minutes.
This is how It begins:
“When I did my graduate studies at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University… semester after semester, we studied the Middle East conflict as if it was the most complex conflict in the world when, in fact, it is probably the easiest conflict in the world to explain. It may be the hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain.
“In a nutshell, it’s this: One side wants the other side dead.”
Fifty years ago, I knew it. Muslims know it. Israel’s Jews know it. And now, unless you are a leftist, you know it.
I ended the video with another truism:
“Finally, think about these two questions: If, tomorrow, Israel laid down its arms and announced, ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen? And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced, ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen?
“In the first case, there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and the mass murder of its Jewish population. In the second case, there would be peace the next day.”
As of Oct. 7, you know that too.
WHY JEWS ARE HATED
There is no hatred like Jew-hatred. It is the longest ongoing hatred in history. It is the most universal. And it is the one exterminationist hatred: Those who hate the Jews want them destroyed. There is a Hebrew statement that is probably two thousand years old, and which is recited during the Passover Seder service: “In every generation, they arise to annihilate us.”
Note that the sentence does not say “to persecute us” or “to enslave us,” but “to annihilate us.”
The question is why?
I wrote an entire book — “Why the Jews?” — 40 years ago explaining antisemitism. But I can sum it up in a few sentences: Jew-hatred is largely a result of the Jews being The Chosen People. You can laugh at the idea if you are secular and inclined to do so. But those who hate the Jews have not laughed at the idea; they have hated the Jews because of it — because they believed it and/or because it is true.
The Jews introduced to humanity the God in which most of the world believes; brought into existence the Bible that is the basis of the New Testament and the Quran; gave the Christian world its Messiah; and gave much of the world its morality through the Torah, the Prophets, and the Ten Commandments. Those who hate that moral code hate the Jews. The two groups who have tried to exterminate the Jews in the last hundred years, the Nazis and the Islamists (not all Muslims), hate that moral code. And they hate the Jews for embodying it — compared to the Nazis and compared to Islamic regime of Iran, Hezbollah, ISIS and Hamas, Israel is composed of saints.
So, when I read about the horrors inflicted by Hamas on young Jews, old Jews and Jewish babies, I was horrified, but not at all surprised. That is what the most evil of any generation do to Jews. And that is why non-Jews who dismiss Iran, Hamas, or Hezbollah as the Jews’ problem are fools. Tens of millions of non-Jews were killed because most people dismissed Hitler and the Nazis as the Jews’ problem.
In fact, aside from increased loathing of Hamas and their Muslim and left-wing supporters, the only effect the events of Oct. 7 had on me was to reinforce my faith in the chosenness of the Jews.
It is a deadly problem of believing and acting upon it.
Believing that a 7th century psychopath was honored by a god he fabricated.
Believing that his mandates are to be carried out, most specifically in Chapter 9 of his book which canceled out all previous peace verses and contains all the hate and and evil atrocities that Mr. Prager is not surprised about.
Prager is spot on, I also was not surprised except by the poor Israeli security failure; and now we have the beginning of the War that most informed people have long seen coming; and the only acceptable outcome is complete decisive Victory for Israel 🇮🇱🕎🇮🇱
The poor Israeli preparedness is now being used to vilify the Jews again. They have the security border, they have the best intelligence capabilities, they have the highest level of defence, they must have known.
Therefore it, like 9/11 was an inside job!!!
That’s the current narrative, proving Dennis’ theory.
As a matter of fact most people believe 9-11 was an inside job. Can you blame them? Nobody but an idiot can believe anything the authorities say because they are proven liars with a long history of lying and propaganda dissemination.
Don;t know your associates, but every person I know believes that radical Islamic jihadists, all Saudi’s,. committed 9/11.
I don’t trust the government and never have. But to say 9/11 was an inside job is extremely silly. However I am suspicious about building 7.
Nailed it, Mr. Prager. “One side wants the other side dead”. Truer words
were never spoken.
Every time I look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the concept of
“land” – I come up short. When I examine the ‘Right to Return’ or
‘Stolen land’ or ‘Occupied territory’ angles – these flimsy reasons for
hatred of Israelis easily fall apart. Yet Hamas’ sadistic butchery of the
Jews and the screeches of pro-Palestinian protestors across the world
calling for the annihilation of Israel are propped up by these counterfeit
catchphrases.
Islam is the real reason Hamas is slaughtering Jews. Any other reason
is superfluous.
The government and societal response to Covid changed my thinking about everything. There are fascists in America who closed our small businesses in favor of large corporations, forced masks on our children, limited our freedom of movement, strong armed us into taking experimental vaccines, drove us from society, ability to work if we chose not to and would have done much worse if they could get away with it. I never in a million years would have believed my government and fellow citizens would turn against me so rabidly. Ironically, the majority of Jews in America are Democrats and supported these measures. I am not saying Jews deserve a special portion of the blame-Dr. Zelenko was my hero during that time. I’m just pointing out the irony of it. Leftists have made such a horrific mess of everything to the point of existential threat, not just to Israel but all of us. What’s it going to take for people to wake up?
Giving people with good intentions power is what happened, it happened throughout history. I’m sure you realise that you are not alone in being changed by what you experienced during the lockdown hysteria.
I really doubt the good intentions. I dont believe they were ever there for anything more than a stump to preach from.
I believe idiots bought into the idea of those good intentions, and were able to make the purchase despite there eyes clearly showing them different.
No, not one person who stays in government work has good intentions. Ive know a few that went into government with good intentions, and then made very short careers of it.
Giving them the benefit of good intentions, gives them the ”out” when the outcome goes as predicted.
As Burke said of the bloodthirsty leftists running the French Revolution: In the abject failure of their policies, they wish to be judged on their intentions.
Pragers correct that the Jews are hated because they are the chosen people.
This is a spiritual battle!
God vs Satan (Gods wins btw)
Ishmael vs Isaac (Biblical)
Christians will be next (again-becuz Christians love the God of the Bible)
Spiritual battle!
I agree with everything you have said, but Christians have always been targets of persecution. Only in the U.S. have we been able to live relatively free of it. Everywhere else – not so much.
What’s happening now is an abomination! How anyone can side with Hamas is unreal. Any POS that threatens any Jew here in the US on college campus, or anywhere needs to be dealt with immediately.
That being said let’s not pretend the Jews of Europe who have been there for thousands of years and are indigenous to that continent are from the Middle East. That’s absurd and a joke. The Jews fled Europe because of unending antisemitism; not because of some longing for their “homeland”, and many Jews left for Argentina and Brooklyn, NY.
Instead of presenting the irreverent argument that there is no such thing as Palestinians, you can refer to them whatever you like, they are still people who have religious, historical and cultural ties to the holy land.
If we want peace, and I don’t know if that’s achievable, both sides have to agree that the other exists.
I’m not a fan of Zionism, but the created Israel is here and is an ally to the US. I do know Hamas needs to be eliminated!
The Fakeastinians moved to the region mostly in the last 120 years . . . they came from the surrounding arab countries for work.
There has never been a country called Palestine, never been a people or a flag . . . till 1967 when it was expedient for the arabs and Egyptian Arafat to use them as Political Pawns.
If you called someone a Palestinian in the first half of the 20th century, you would be referring to a Jew . . .
One could almost think that Islam was made in order to create factions between peoples and tribes.
And once the bs got started, it could not be stopped.
I think that many educated muslims know Islam is bs, but what can they do about it now? Say it out loud, and get themselves and their families dead? No, they cant do that. The only options are for them to stay as far away from it as possible, or jump to the front of the train and lead.
Sadom Hussain, and Momar Gadofy, the Saud family(excuse the spelling) these types where born into an effedup world, made note of it, and then made the best of it.
If Mohammed ever existed, and if he were reincarnated today, I wonder if even he would look at this mess and ask wtf happened here?
I think Islam was created because Mohammed was a self-centered thug. When his acolytes raided a town on the Sabbath, he was initially ticked off until a revelation reminded him that he got a big cut of the loot. When he took a fancy to a young girl, a revelation told him the prophet could have extra wives. When you personal gain coincides with your religious revelations, that’s serendipity!
Accounts of the life and deeds of Mohammed indicate a psychopathic killer; like a seventh century Charles Manson
No, muhammed would look at the Middle East today and say from the river to the sea. muhammed had a Jewish man beheaded so he could kidnap and marry his wife.
Prager, sadly and infuriatingly, pulls his punches. He, like so many others, created a false distinction between “,Islamists” and ordinary Muslims, Who, I ask, are the “,Islamists,” and how do they differ from the presumably more moderate, far more numerous, war-averse, non-annihilatory and non- irredentist Muslims? Prager doesn’t say.
Doubtless, there are tepid Muslims who are uncomfortable with or even opposed to Islam’s virulent Jew-hatred and jihad imperative…but their numbers can be inferred to be small indeed. Why do I say this? Well, for example, Muslim reformer M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, an organization which is pro-American and anti-Sharia, admitted a few years ago that its national membership comprised roughly 200 Muslims or fewer, and was not increasing despite yeoman recruitment efforts. And we wait in vain for imams across America and the world to condemn Hamas’s atrocities. Nor do we see even one demonstration – anywhere in the world – by sympathetic, outraged Muslims protesting against Hamas. So these tepid Muslims, while they do exist, do not matter. They have no voice, and no influence over their more pious, religiously observant co-religionists, and apparently prefer to be voiceless, probably for their own safety. But again, they matter not. It’s the “Islamists” who do. They alone.
The person who called Islam the Religion of Peace needs to have their head examined
Bush. The same person that 1st said the word Insurrection on Jan 6th.
That’s Skull and Bones for you.
I’ve never known a normal Yalie.
Yes, he said it, but he didn’t invent it. The phrase was in the US vernacular since as long ago as the 1930s. Islam means “peace” in the sense that when the whole world has been conquered for Allah, there will be peace.
Kinda like how cowboys called the Colt 45 the “peacemaker”.
I do not believe that the Jews want all moslems dead. I DO agree, however, that these Jews are observant, intelligent, and able to remember enough to realise that until islam either ceases to exist or, by some Act of God Himself, have a sudden change of heart toward Jews, this madness will continue.
For most of my life I have observed the cat and mouse game between these two groups. Every time Israel seems to relax even a little, the moslems make another move toward annihilation of the Jews.
For those Jews who want to abrogate the 2d Amendment I have one word — Hamas.
Rabbi Meir Kahane of blessed memory said, “A .22 for every Jew.” He agreed that something with more stopping power would be more useful, but the .22 is a start, and it’s a whole lot better than being disarmed.
Jews are hated because as a group they are smart, successful, happy, and apparently love life. Stick a group like this in the Middle East and they stand out like the sore thumb. Oh, but they are evil because they have a history of cutting off people’s heads who refuse to accept Jehovah as the Deity and Moses as the Prophet.
Israel has launched what appears to be the first phase of a massive ground incursion into Gaza, vowing that Hamas must be eliminated or somehow rendered irrelevant, even at the expense of smashing Gaza to pieces.
But what then? Israeli officials have reportedly told the Biden administration that they haven’t engaged in any serious postconflict planning. That’s probably because none of their options is good and, despite a plethora of fantastical proposals, nobody is going to step in to bear the burden of Israel’s impossible dilemma or, put more simply, clean up its mess.
GOOD IDEA: Install Donald Trump as Governor of New Gaza
Better idea: Install Donald Trump behind the Resolute Desk, where he belongs.
The god of izzzlam is in no way connected to the God of Abraham & the Jews . . . if satan created a religion it would look just like izzzlam!