Guy Ciarrocchi: Confronting the face of evil, one year later
Four Americans are still held hostage in Gaza. We hope and pray that they are alive. Edan Alexander. Sagui Dekel-Chen. Omer Neutra. Keith Siegel.
This is an aspect of the horrors of the butchery, savagery and bigoted, anti-Semitic hatred that has been all but forgotten. I don’t recall President Biden or Vice President Harris ever saying their names.
The White House almost never talks about them, even a year later. They do talk a lot about “ceasefires” and they talk to the press, both directly and through purposeful leaks. They want Israel to stand down, pause, or be restrained in defending its very existence.
There has been so much that has been so wrong in the last 365 days.
As an American, as someone who has traveled abroad, as a dad whose children have studied abroad, I am heartsick and outraged that our government never talks about why they were attacked and taken hostage.
As a person of faith, I am heartsick that in 2024 terrorists would butcher people because of their faith. As a student of history, I am in shock that anti-Semitic rhetoric, signs, marches, and butchery are taking place against Jews, while Holocaust survivors are still alive.
As someone who toured Auschwitz and Birkenau with my family in 2023 — less than two months before the terrorist attack on civilians in Israel — I am speechless at times. The memories of the piles of pots and pans, glasses and shoes — even baby booties — will never leave my mind. And they now come back to me so often, sometimes daily.
The unprovoked, wanton savagery is still almost incomprehensible. War is horrible. And, tragically, in wars there is the added tragedy of innocent people dying — sometimes by accident, sometimes as “collateral damage.”
But October 7, 2023 will be remembered because Hamas willfully, purposefully, and intentionally attacked civilians at a music festival. They stormed into residential communities on foot. They sought out women to rape them. They sought out babies to behead them. It was like a horror movie based in the Middle Ages, but this was 2023.
The goals were not merely to attack, but to purposefully seek out civilians. And, yes, to purposefully seek out women and babies — to disrupt and destroy, to advance their sick goal of eliminating the Jewish people from the planet.
As I began to comprehend the horror of what happened, and that Americans were killed and taken hostage, I almost immediately noticed that too many said nothing. Nothing.
This included politicians who post on social media and run like moths to a flame when they see a TV camera. This included university Presidents — especially at “Ivy” and so-called “elite” universities — who trip over themselves to issue statements about the latest “outrage,” “offense” or “cause.”
Nothing.
And, worse, too many took to the streets and our campuses to tell Israel to stand down, to explain why the attacks were understandable, to march with pro-Hamas signs; and at surprising speed and volume, to chant: “from the river to the sea.”
Like the fictional “Drummer Boy,” I felt helpless and could do nothing else, so I wrote. And I posted. I spoke out on the radio. And I wrote some more.
I write, again, because it’s one year later and still Americans and countless Israelis are still held captive. And still too many sit silently. Too many are rallying — now the rallies are even more bone-chilling. Why? The signs have gotten angrier, the flags have become the flags of terrorists — and, all too often, they burn American flags.
Anti-Semites. Anti-Judeo-Christian values. Anti-western culture. Anti-America.
We are witnessing the failure of education before our eyes. We are witnessing the soullessness and emptiness of our children—who so deeply want to belong to a cause, that it seems the cause doesn’t matter to many. Or, worse, their values and sense of mortality are so upside and backwards that they think the rapists and beheaders are the “good guys.”
What did we really mean when we preached, taught or wrote “Never Again?”
Too many students are not merely ignorant of history — history from just 80 years ago, not antiquity. Too many students have been subjected to years of being mis-taught misinformed and exaggerated definitions of right and wrong and hate and violence, that when confronted with actual hate, they don’t recognize it.
When it comes to LGBT rights, students have been taught that silence —and not promoting or displaying a rainbow flag — is violence, and that not “respecting” pronouns is hateful. Yet, they chant and wave flags and banners to support people who behead, rape, torture and castrate those in the LGBT community.
Too many think tolerance means listening to terrorists demands. It’s as if the Hamas hostage-holders should be invited to Penn to debate the merits and appropriateness of beheadings.
We have failed our children. Or, at best, we were so busy working so hard to give them so much and to raise their self-esteem that we didn’t notice that our schools were turning commonsense, timeless values upside-down.
Our children have almost no idea what the First Amendment means. Students think it’s “responsible” to block or shout down Riley Gaines, Alex Epstein, Ben Shapiro — heck even Ted Cruz. Yet, they think that there’s a “right” to build encampments on campuses, terrorize Jewish students from entering dorms or classrooms — and demand UberEats.
We must learn and do better. Our children, nation, and civilization need us.
Make no doubt about it; there are anti-Semites. There are communists. There are people who genuinely hate western civilization. And, yes, there are Americans who are ashamed of America, who want us to apologize and become radically transformed. That’s frightening and why we must be strong and ever-vigilant.
But, there are students — and adults — who have become caught up in our 21st-century word games and pseudo-morality who have tied their minds and souls into knots. They can’t grasp who’s right and who’s wrong — or they think their job is to see merit on all sides.
There are also people on visas in America — and on our campuses — who should be sent home. Immediately.
This has been a wake-up call.
One year later. Bring all hostages home. Fix our education system and stay vigilant. Keep America and our allies strong.
True freedom and true liberty must never perish from this earth. Americans have a unique duty to ensure this. Our children are watching.
Guy Ciarrocchi is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy @PaSuburbsGuy.
Nicely stated Guy. And it needs to be restated 100 times until the uneducated hear it.
Mike
“As someone who toured Auschwitz and Birkenau with my family in 2023 ” – You can never comprehend what happened in those camps until you hear from a family member what it was like and how reviled Jews were in Europe long before the Holocaust. Especially when you are not Jewish.
“Our children have almost no idea what the First Amendment means. Students think it’s “responsible” to block or shout down Riley Gaines, Alex Epstein, Ben Shapiro — heck even Ted Cruz.” The first Amendment only protects you from government interference. It does not protect you from other people using that same right to speak out against you.
The protests on college campuses as disturbing as they were and the failure of administrators to protect Jewish students is nothing compared to the actions of Donald Trump. While in office he hosted three known antisemites for a dinner at the White House, during his debate with Biden in 2020 he refused to condemn the Proud Boys, instead he used a word salad that galvanized White Supremacists in America. After all, how hard is it to say, I do not support the Proud Boys or any other group like them in any manner?
Candidate Trump is already setting the stage to blame American Jews if he fails to win with the following statements;
1. “I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish,” Trump said at an event Thursday night in Washington that was meant to highlight antisemitism. “I don’t know. Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election? And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40% that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”
2. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,”
3. “If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years,”
In 1920’s Germany many of the population blamed Jews and Communists, who were often viewed as one and the same for Germany’s defeat and The Treaty of Versailles for the economic collapse of Germany. Today we have a former President and blindly devoted followers like Mr. Ciarrocchi who are intent on doing the same.