Peaceful protests have a long tradition in America, and they are protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The hundreds who assembled Thursday evening to chant and protest in the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station were within their rights, until they started blocking commuters from where they wanted to go. That was an infringement on their rights. That’s a no-no, and also counterproductive.
When protestors piss off passersby, they lose the fight to convert people to their cause. When protesters block highways and stop motorists from getting to their destination — same thing.
One “nice” aspect of the protest was that it was interfaith — Muslims, Christians and Jews — organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, which is accused of anti-Semitic actions by Philadelphia’s traditional Jewish organizations. It’s heart-warming that they all came together to sing Kumbaya over the corpses of 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans.
The protest was also sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates suicide for Israeli Jews.
No, of course they don’t say that, but when they demand “cease fire now” and “free Palestine” — those would be suicidal moves for Israel.
And those who demand the U.S. not help fund Israel’s military — while “death to America” Iran funds Hamas — they are the Death Wish Jews.
I have reported on these misguided souls before, along with allied groups such as Grandmas for Peace, as they demonstrated outside the Israeli consulate that used to be located on JFK.
I am willing to accept their sincerity, but not their sanity. They are the very personification of what Lenin called “useful idiots.”
A “cease fire” sounds attractive because it would stop the killing.
But it would stop the killing only so long as it would take Hamas to regroup and to rearm, and then the killing would resume. The killing of Jews, and the extermination of Israel, are in its 1988 charter, in these words, in the second paragraph:
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
If the peace at any price groups have ever demanded Hamas drop the genocidal language from its charter, I haven’t heard it. No, the burden is always on the Jews.
As to “free Palestine,” the Arabs had their opportunities — as far back as 1947 — and they have all been squandered. Numerous Israeli peace offers over the decades have been rejected. Gaza is already free — Israel having left in 2005 and received in return unending rocket attacks. Israel usually brushed off those attacks as pin pricks, with minor response.
With the massacre of Oct. 7, Hamas — not Israel — took the battle to another level, a barbaric, satanic attack that Israel could not ignore. It pledged to destroy Hamas, and that is what it is doing now.
Israel talks of killing Hamas — not Palestinians.
Hamas talks of killing Jews — not Israelis.
Did you read of the one Hamas terrorist who, after killing a family in their living room, used a cell phone to call his parents to exult that he had just killed ten Jews with his own hands? Jews — not Israelis. Jews.
Is this too complicated for the Jewish Voice for Peace to understand? That the side they are supporting is the only side that endorses genocide? And that cease fire before victory gives a “win” to terror? And writes a check for more terror to be paid for in Jewish blood.
Israel has the same right to pursue victory over terror as the U.S. did over Germany and Japan. And in that war, there were millions of civilian casualties. It is one of the horrors of war.
In Gaza, there are tragic civilian casualties, many of them children.
Israel has asked civilians to retreat from the battlefield. Some did, others could not, some would not.
The difference between Israel and Hamas is that Israel does not revel in civilian deaths, while Hamas makes joyful telephone calls to brag about them.
It is very sad some American Jews are too wrapped up in their warped morality to see the distinction.
They are the Death Wish Jews.
Stu Bykofsky’s work is published at StuBykofsky.com.
Stu- thanks.
1 thing I would request, from reader to author is more explanation as to how the state of Israel came to be. Anti Israel activists and pro palestinian/ hamas propagandists like to say it was stolen land.
It wasn’t. At all. There is a lot to unpack. But it’s not THAT much history to explain how the Palestinian people have frequently been on the wrong side of history against non Muslims and on the losing end of a war. Yet, they aren’t obliterated by some evil force. They are given an olive branch over and over.
The land was purchased from Arabs and ottoman empire. Palestinians fought with nazis in ww2. When it came time to send Jews back to their homeland of – however many – millennia, the Palestinians had no support or rationale for why they shouldn’t.
Apparently everyone is too lazy to look past the last 10 years. We cannot comprehend this is a war – although manipulated by opportunist terrorists for power- that has been going for longer than the last century.
I need to learn more. People need to learn more.
Israel isn’t perfect. I’m sure there are terrible things that have been done. But, to restate your observation, only one side is calling for genocide and celebrating the slaughter of civilians.
I hope the Palestinian people rise up and push back on Hamas, Iran, et al. I don’t know how this ends otherwise.
Dung, I have given the history in the past, but an effective column is a rifle, not a shotgun.
Even a brief history would take several hundred words. Thanks for the thought.
You can review my past work at Stubykofsky.com
My suggestion is to get one or two good histories of the Middle East in the periods Pre and Immediate post WWI. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Balfour Declaration set today in motion. The Brits, ever mindful of their lifeline to India (the Suez Canal) created today’s countries: Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.) out of the various tribes and ethnic groups living under the Ottoman Turks. Since the Jews had lived in what is geographically Palestine for 3,000 some years, the Brits gave the Jews a seat at the table, Thay panicked the Muslims in the area. T. E. Laurence where are you when we need you?
It is amazing to me that educated adults that have lived during the past four years (years that brought us “Missouri v. Biden” with the crossroads of politics, censorship and free speech mixed in with Covid mandates requiring one to wear a mask until they sit down at a table to then remove said mask) are so confident in historical “truth.”
Life is hard. Be harder.
Another point that I have yet to see discussed is the fact that Hamas got control of Gaza after elections in 2006 and a civil war between it and the Palestinian Authority, and has not held an election among the people living in Gaza since. This is not an organization interested in democracy or individual freedom.
Frank, I mention that in other columns you can see at Stubykofsky.com
Here’s another factoid: PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is in the 19th year of his 4-year term.
Israel is NOT dealing with democracies.
Stu,
I’ve read your articles since 1991 when I was 15 years old. I’m not Jewish. And Irish people would laugh at me if I said I was Irish. I’m a commercial real estate agent and I think Inga Saffron was wrong most of the time.
Fact: The ACLU asked the US Supreme Court to overturn requirements that US government contractors pledge loyalty to Israel by not supporting the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign. The ACLU, which is not what it once was, seems to think requirements of a loyalty pledge is not only a violation of the First Amendment, but it also contradicts the court’s own ruling 40 years ago that popular boycotts have a long tradition in American history and are protected speech under that constitutional amendment.
Ordinary normal people, who do not like being bossed around, got wise during Covid mRNA mandates.
God is in everyone’s heart. That is why you should treat people the way you want to be treated. The Judeo Christian
path worked. This Communist stuff is godless and full of death.