- The big lie still works: The most generous explanation is that these people have been duped. Decades of relentless lying have born abundant fruit for the Jihadi side as they have successfully managed to invert the perception of good and bad. They freely tell enormous lies such as PA President's recent assertion that Israel was committing "genocide" in Gaza. Genocide is generally defined as killing a large number of people for ethnic reasons. I very much doubt that the 400 people killed (most of whom Israel wished not to kill but who were in the wrong place at the wrong time) on their side would fall under the category of genocide but if it did then the 1137 Israelis killed by Palestinians in the Second Intifada was three times the "genocide" - and done on purpose. Somehow I doubt that this crowd was overly concerned with that particular "genocide." So given the power of the big lie and how readily it's lapped up by various media outlets it's not hard to see how someone could walk away utterly misinformed.
- Morality itself has collapsed: Dennis Prager wrote an important piece a while back called "A Response to Richard Dawkins" in which he demonstrates that in the absence of a belief in God, morality shrivels up and dies on the vine leaving us with nothing more than subjective preferences in place of a true moral code. Could it be that large swaths of humanity simply lacks the template by which to successfully adjudicate between right and wrong? Judging by the endless stream of unhinged tweets, governmental condemnations and violent street protests it would seem so. If someone is incapable of distinguishing between accidental deaths and those committed with intent then that person has no moral compass. The tallies that are so often bandied about are irrelevant and even if the number of accidental deaths were extremely high and the number of purposeful deaths very low it would not vindicate the purposeful killers. They can't even be compared. It's evil apples vs non-evil oranges.
- The supporters are evil too: Israel, in all likelihood, is in the process of fighting the most morally conducted campaign in the history of warfare. No army drops thousands of leaflets, or places cell phone calls or does "roof-knocking" to warn civilians before they attack. No army continues to provide water, supplies and electricity to the enemy while they are in the process of attacking them. Few armies place their own soldiers at grave risk by going door to door in search of weapons caches, terror tunnels and rocket launchers when they could just carpet bomb, shut off the electricity and water or both and be done with it. Conflicts like this one bring to a head who people really are and what they stand for. Sides must be chosen. One has to suspect that a good many people out there have chosen to align themselves with the forces of darkness and death. Even if they are generally perceived as "religious" practitioners, in truth they are nihilists - people who have wholesale given up on life and who gleefully desire to take out as many as they can with them. Their lives are without meaning and as such they have no use for them. Anyone drawn after such people and who offer them succor or support in any fashion are of the same ilk and should be regarded as the amoral beings that they truly are.
"If antisemitism is a form of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in quite a different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive."
Paul Johnson
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