Bill Tallen

Things may not have changed on Oct. 7, 2023, but they certainly intensified. In the aftermath of the savage Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians that day, we have seen a highly organized global propaganda effort on behalf of Hamas and their cause.  

The uninformed responded like sheep, with condemnation of Israel’s response — indeed, of Israel’s existence, because that is the clear and indisputable issue here. There will be no “two-state solution” because Palestinian and allied terrorists (Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Iran, the Houthis of Yemen, and their sympathizers and supporters) have rejected every offer of such a solution for decades. Let’s be clear on this: The only outcome they will accept is the destruction of Israel and Israelis, “from the river to the sea” as they say. Most American fellow travelers cannot name the river, or the sea, or find them on a map, but that doesn’t stop their toxic idiocy.

In November of that year, folks of that sort in Wyoming and elsewhere postured in virtue-signaling protests that called for an immediate cease fire to end the retaliatory war launched by Israel. In response, I wrote a letter to the Cody Enterprise that said: “Israel is at war with a group sworn to its destruction and extermination. Hamas is based in Gaza, where the population under their control celebrates their actions, and spits on their victims' bodies in the street. Hamas diverts humanitarian aid from those people to build military infrastructure in and under schools, hospitals, and mosques and then whines to the international community when inevitable collateral damage — the death of their human shields — results. This war will end in victory for one side or the other, and no one with a moral compass should be confused. One side in this war intentionally targets infants, children, women and the elderly for kidnapping, rape and slaughter — and then retreats behind their own civilian population to escape retaliation.” Nothing has changed, except that the nearly completed defeat and destruction of Hamas, suspended by Israel’s acquiescence to a Gaza ceasefire short of their necessary and justified goal, has left the job undone. 

In the meantime, across the western world, the condemnation of Israel has metastasized into a wave of antisemitism — a euphemism for Jew-hatred — that hasn’t been seen since the heyday of Nazism. We’ve watched the protests in Europe — most of which, aside from the realists of Eastern Europe who know the face of evil when they see it — is farther down the slippery slope of abject surrender to Islam than the United States — and on American college campuses and in the streets of our cities that can muster sufficient clueless sympathizers behind the Islamist fundamentalists who have settled among us.

Yes, fundamentalists, not radicals. What sets those people apart from the excesses of Christians a thousand and more years ago is that the worst of the Inquisition and other episodes of intolerance in Christian history were enacted in defiance of the core teachings of Christianity. The excesses of Islam then and now are in precise accord with the example of their founder and the core teachings of their faith. If you don’t understand that, read their books, and read translations of what their leaders say to their own people in Arabic and Farsi, not the pablum they feed to gullible Westerners.

Feeding, encouraging and capitalizing on “sympathy for the underdog” among the fair-minded and uninformed — as if the Islamic world did not outweigh Israel by orders of magnitude in every measure of power aside from productivity, freedom, tolerance and civilization — are Jew-haters on the fringes of our own society, who misremember and identify with Nazis and others who our fathers and grandfathers thought they had defeated. And it’s even here in Wyoming.

Overnight on Oct. 31, pumpkins carved with Nazi SS lightning flashes, swastikas and hate speech were placed on a lawn outside the Student Union at the University of Wyoming. Trustworthy eyewitnesses who saw the whole display early that morning before it was cleaned up have reported that there was more of it than the university has so far acknowledged, including messages that “Hitler was right” and “All Jews should die.” According to university governing bodies and the university police, an investigation was conducted, and the actions “held no malicious intent.” A death wish for all adherents of a major religion sounds malicious to me, but opinions will differ.

The authorities have identified groups and individuals responsible but have not, as yet, publicly identified them. It is one thing to defend free speech, but speech can incite action and cause harm, and cannot always be free of consequences. People who spew such garbage anonymously and then hide in the shadows should be identified and held accountable. Mercy to the guilty can be cruelty to the innocent.