A Different Kind Of Silence Of The Lambs

I saw a weasel hit on a woman at the Israel rally I attended last night and wondered what kind of dirt bag does that when the community is discussing the aftermath of a massacre.

I was told by various people today that barbaric and inhumane behavior against Israel is ok because the country deserves it.

The very same people who tell you 9/11 terrorists unfairly targeted and murdered their victims think Jewish blood is cheap.

Someone responded and said I was wrong to protest mistreatment because I support mistreatment of others. I thought about how lucky they were not to be face to face.

Last night I came very close to letting the weasel know how disgusting his behavior was in terms that couldn’t be misunderstood.

So there is no issue for me to do it online other than the question of is it a good use of my time. Am I changing hearts and minds or just urinating into a wind blowing my direction.

I am agnostic and somewhat ambivalent about that.

What I know for certain is I won’t tolerate being mistreated. There comes a time when I have no issue cutting the line.

Thought about it all because the silence of those who could reach out and say something is deafening. The silence of those who could make it clear that terrorism isn’t acceptable is so loud it hurts.

In the midst of this more than a few people who have no understanding of a complex issue, no education other than a few words on a picture, a tweet and or an Internet meme tell me I am lying about things that easily verified.

And if I post the proof they call it fake and so I shake my head because these are people who be offended to be labeled as no different than 45.

Unprecedented Times Against The Boredom Of My Youth

I have had multiple conversations with my children about how we are living in unprecedented times and offered whatever sage advice I have accumulated.

The crazy thing is I can’t count the number of times I have had these conversations or how many times I have thought that I was a kid and teenager during a golden age.

I am old enough to remember much of the crazy that came from the sixties even though I was born during the tail end of it.

The Kennedy brothers and MLK assassinations were fresh in the memories of our parents and school teachers. The stories we heard weren’t necessarily softened by time and age.

The Iranian hostage crisis and the conversations about whether Reagan really would drop the bomb or not aren’t hard to recall.

Nor is hiding under our desks, hands over our heads during earthquake drills that could also double as how to protect ourself from nuclear attacks are easy to recall too.

We didn’t have lock down drills or wonder if today was the day our school or university would be shot up. Never occurred to me that when I went to work I would have an active shooter drill training I would have to take each year.

I was aware of antisemitism and experienced a few things but it wasn’t something that I really worried about. That comes with having a detailed awareness of the Holocaust from the time I was seven years-old.

We rode our bikes everywhere and anywhere. Never had to deal with a pandemic or watched a criminal attack our democracy and lie about election fraud that didn’t happen.

There were plenty of bad things that happened but in many ways you could describe the boredom of my youth as a golden age.

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Today another Jew told me I needed to understand the full history of Israel and Palestine because if I did I would recognize that our parents and youth group leaders raised us wrong.

She said the fear they instilled in us about not having Israel blinded me to the pain ordinary Palestinians go through.

I told her you can’t screw an old head on young shoulders and suggested her youth made her incredibly naive.

Our history is littered with stories from the Holocaust about Jews who were not religious and thought of themselves as German or Polish but were still murdered by the Nazis.

Many were turned in by their neighbors and or severely mistreated…brutally.

You would think those stories are enough to convince people that when someone promises to kill you there is a reason to take it seriously.

You would think the stories of decapitated infants and soldiers, families slaughtered at point blank range would be enough to convince you that Hamas isn’t taking a survey to determine if they consider you a good Jew or not.

Had any one of us been in one of these encounters in Israel we would have had to fight or die. And let’s be real, fighting doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have died either.

The point is if you’re the frog that ferries the scorpion across the river you may very well die. The crocodile that doesn’t eat you on Saturday may not be hungry, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see you as a meal.

A Different Kind Of Silence Of The Lambs

I saw Silence of The Lambs in the theater on two different occasions. One time was a date and I was more than pleased that she wrapped herself against me and afterwards told me I couldn’t leave her apartment any time soon.

Went again with friends and for a while after we would ask each other if we woke up and heard the screaming of the lambs.

It was a joke and even all these years later I can still think of it and smile.

I have watched a number of videos online knowing they would be upsetting and that I might take some of it with me into my dreams.

Did it because I felt like I owed it to some of the victims to bear witness and in some way show some solidarity with them even if they would never know it.

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I won’t watch every video…it’s too much and I don’t need to be convinced that a terrorist attack took place. Don’t need to be convinced that Hamas wants to murder me and people I love dearly.

I’ll repeat again that I feel badly for the innocents who are going to die because of the terrorists. That doesn’t stop me from recognizing they did things to us we haven’t seen since the Holocaust.

That is not acceptable, never again is today.

If you stand with Hamas you stand with murderous thugs who have no interest in life. They have been given billions of dollars they could have used to build an infrastructure and a functional state.

They didn’t and well you already know the rest.

Remember when fighting gets really hard and you start hearing about disproportionate response and all that other garbage we won’t have to close our eyes to remember the silence of the lambs.

We won’t forget what was done and that will fuel all we need to protect ourselves because that is what this is- a fight for the future that we dare not lose.