The new US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, has just said that going forward, terrorist activity will be driven by the non-combatant death toll. This is part of a well-established theory in the West, for which the world is paying dearly, which holds that the violent are victims. Implicitly, the violent are in the right, and have a right, whereas those trying to defend themselves from the violent, like Israel, and the Jews, are in the wrong and are doing wrong.
In a related development, Jewish communities, and Jewish students, are living out a horror story, across the Western world, and do not understand how this could be happening – and to them. “Students and others supporting Hamas… did not happen overnight” reads a recent campus petition, bravely pointing out that students have been indoctrinated for years to delegitimize and demonize Israel (Jews) and to see terrorists as victims, creating “a generation that normalizes antisemitism”.
Indeed, if the world’s superpower’s top military official is publicly blaming future Palestinian terror activity on Israel’s war against Hamas, it is obvious that Jewish communities, and students, will be suffering more in future – not less. Here is an example (shortened) Brown statement: “The faster you stop hostilities, the less strife for civilians that turn into someone who wants to be Hamas”. In other words, Brown is openly saying that Hamas tomorrow is caused by Israel today, just like Hamas today, is, according to him, caused by Israel yesterday.
Brown, if challenged, will deny this is his messaging, and will say he is also denouncing Hamas. But people are expert in picking up double messaging. For more on double messaging, see below.
Brown also weakly said that Israel’s war aim of toppling Hamas was “a pretty large order”, and advocated targeting senior Hamas leadership only. It does not occur to Brown that Iran can and will replace one senior terrorism leader with another, the morning after. Brown also helplessly said, “I think the longer this goes, the harder it can become”. But his job description is to move things in precisely the opposite direction. He was not hired to be a commentator or a doom-sayer. Compare Brown’s state of mind to US Armed Forces doctrines such as, ‘The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer’.
Also, Brown does not really mean what he says. US officials acknowledge that Hamas leaders are hiding in the Al-Shifa Hospital Compound in Gaza City.
Hamas, backed by fiendish Iran and Qatar, has cleverly and barbarically ensured that targeting these massacre instigators will kill hundreds, even thousands, of Palestinian human shields. And, remember, US officials following Brown’s lead are warning – see above – that taking out the leaders (with their strategically placed human shields) will mean Israel is to blame for terrorism against the world’s Jews, from now on. Israel, and the Jews themselves.
To be fair, US behavior is light-years ahead of her European counterparts: Hamas barbarism is the brain-child of Iran, and Iranian ambassadors are welcomed in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – but not the USA.
Brown continued to blame Israel by saying Israel must explain its controversial conduct, say when bombing a Hamas stronghold which ended in 50 civilian deaths. Brown should not have told Israel to explain. Brown should have done the explaining himself, by accusing Iran and Qatar – not Israel. Their protégé Hamas located its stronghold in a civilian neighborhood (Jabaliya refugee camp, which is not really a refugee camp as the West thinks of it, but certainly is a slum), and also built the terror tunnels whose collapse, in the strike, was what brought down several buildings. “There’s room for improvement”, Brown said, and he is right – his own.
Brown needs to be careful because his words tailwind Hamas supporters and other anti-Semites who insist they merely seek justice. Columbia’s Students for Justice (!) in Palestine openly excuse Hamas barbarism as a ‘counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor’ – exactly what Brown is saying.
Frantic Westerners can take heart, however. While top military brass like Brown are stuttering, some civilians are coming through with flying colors.
Billionaire Henry Swieca just resigned from his position on the Board at Columbia, bravely acknowledging that Jews were “unwelcome” and “unsafe” at Columbia and blasting Columbia University’s “moral cowardice … beyond repair”. Swieca also warned about the future (“My resignation is an expression of my deep concern for the direction in which the university is heading”). Best of all, unlike Brown who indulges in double messaging, Swieca opened fire on double-messaging, saying Columbia’s statements against Hamas barbarism were ‘meaningless’ since in parallel, Columbia allows pro-Hamas students to operate there.
To again be fair to the United States, Brown’s behavior patterns have their parallels in the Israeli military top brass as well. No wonder the Israeli public, in an interesting recent survey, gave a 96% approval rating to the Israeli public – higher even than the 78% approval rating it gave Israel’s army.
My advice to Jewish students and other civilized persons, world-wide. Keep up your routine but do your bit. There is no person without influence. Find out how you, the human, can stand up for civilization, against Hamas and barbarism. You have a phone, voice, social networks, friends, family, neighbors, leaders you vote for, religious communities, organizations, media, your campus or alma mater, and even the mail service. Join the civilian army by defending civilization in any tiny ways you can devise.
