ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE NEW “KRISTALLNACHTS”:

David Barnhizer

I was raised as a Presbyterian, and as a boy was taught the beliefs and creeds of that Protestant denomination although even at the age of 14 I didn’t finish Confirmation because the doctrines of Predestination and Predetermination didn’t make sense to me and the Minister really wasn’t able to explain them in any way that made sense to me. But I still believe in a deity that bears remarkable resemblance to what I learned when young and in many of the moral and social teachings a good religion offers. I admit to having recited the Lord’s Prayer thousands of times, went to Sunday School, etc.

Growing up, the only people of the Jewish faith I ever dealt with were Mr. And Mrs. Schwartz who had a small grocery store in my little town of Poland, Ohio—a close in suburb of Youngstown—and their two children Dick and Ellen. Mr. And Mrs Schwartz were kind people and every week or so Mom would give me a list and a tote bag and send me down the two blocks down Main Street to get groceries. Mrs. Schwartz would handle the cash register and we would play a game when she was ringing up the prices of what I was buying. The game was that as she would quickly put in the prices, I would calculate the prices in my head in an effort to beat her to the total. When I succeeded, and that was maybe half the time, she would give me a candy bar which was a pretty good incentive for a nine or ten year old boy to concentrate on addition.

On October 27–29, 1938, German authorities rounded up and deported more than 17,000 Jewish people, many of whom were born in Germany. This was the first mass deportation of Jews from Nazi Germany. Two weeks later, Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, took place on November 9 and 10 with more than 90 murdered victims and many other injuries and atrocities. Kristallnacht was a violent and nation-wide pogrom against the Jews of Germany carried out by the Nazi Party which by then had consolidated power. The perpetrators included Nazi Party officials and members of Nazi Party organizations, including the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth. German civilians unaffiliated with these Nazi organizations also participated. The attackers included the Hitler Youth and German civilians along with governmental forces and the SS. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that:

“The SA was associated with the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), which in turn was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), better known as the Nazis.”

More than 1,400 synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish-owned businesses broken into and ransacked, and many homes attacked. Jews were humiliated, physically attacked, and murdered. Nazi leaders coordinated the Kristallnacht riot but wanted it to appear like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. As part of Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps just because they were Jewish.

From the perspective of Anti-Semitism and how it has poisoned the minds and souls of Europeans and Americans for long centuries, we must seek to understand and deal with the seemingly eternal strife in the Middle East that has once again exploded throughout the world in the form of hate-filled anti-semitism. It is important to remember that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Adolph Hitler in Germany in 1941 and endorsed what he was doing. He stated “the Jews are also our enemy”. We must also confront the sickness it represents in our own societies and institutions.

Eventually, the term Reichskristallnacht came into popular usage among the German public during the Nazi era. The word means “Reich Night of Crystal.” It was a reference to shards of shattered window glass that lined German streets and was eventually shortened to “Kristallnacht.”” See additional reports in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

Hannah Arendt’s “Banality of Evil”

Philosopher Hannah Arendt, when commenting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann years later in Israel after he had been secretly extracted from his safe haven in Argentina, remarked how ordinary he was, even though he had murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. This led Arendt to the troubling insight she phrased as “the banality of evil”.

As I grew up I did some research on Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other camps. It was stunning to find out how efficiently the organized horror of what had happened in a faceless and mechanical way took place or more acutely stated was “engineered”. It was an industrial-sized strategy to terminate millions of people whose only “crime” was being a Jew, Gypsy or Roma, Pole or Russian.

This is an insight that dominates the reality of our developing political and social interaction, and appears to be once again developing. It is one where the maniacs feel so strongly that “virtue” is on their side and that fault is never their’s because they are only doing what they are told. As Arendt notes so brilliantly, this idea contrasts with our apparently naive expectations that those who do terrible and evil things to other humans ought to look like the monsters they are rather than shoe clerks or insurance agents.

“Kristallnacht” Is Still With Us

We are afflicted by a demonic spirit. In that dark world, hating and condemning Jews has created a host of “New Nazis” and infused in them a deep, deep sickness of the soul. We are experiencing an intensifying anti-semitism that heralds a new “pogrom” aimed at an ethnic-religious group that has already suffered thousands of years of attacks, forced diasporas and dispersals involving long and often permanent exiles from their Middle East homeland.

We are experiencing a stunning series of “Kristallnachts” of the kind that foreshadowed World War II with its web of concentration camps. Over six million Jews were “harvested” for whatever assets they had. This included even hair and gold teeth. Then they were tortured, gassed, shot, beaten to death subjected to inhuman experiments and burned.

Victor Davis Hanson writes that Jews are “becoming the hunted”

“We know the reasons for violence against Jews — but refuse to say them aloud”, Victor Davis Hanson, 12/25/25. https://nypost.com/2025/12/25/opinion/we-know-why-jews-are-targets-of-violence-but-refuse-to-admit-it/.

“Jews celebrating Hanukkah were just slaughtered by Muslim gunmen on an Australian beach, in an imitation of the Oct. 7 massacres. An inert Europe is canceling Christmas celebrations out of fear of threats of violence from Muslim minorities. In the West, when an Islamist shoots a Jew, politicians often offer two bizarre remedies: gun control or a task force to tackle Islamophobia. Yet, our political class rarely offers data on the overwhelming preponderance of targeting Jews rather than Muslims .… To catalog all the recent violence against Jews in the Western world would fill a book.

We know the causes. Anemic Western leaders — politicians, college presidents, media grandees and celebrities — [all] fear Muslim terrorism, growing Muslim voters and their own growing antisemitic campus constituencies. [T]hey never call out antisemitic violence other than with nauseating nothings like, “Such violence has no place here.” Or “We condemn such violence in the utmost terms.” Or “This is not who we are.”

Jews are becoming the hunted. The attacks will increase because there is no foreseeable force to combat them. Just a few years ago, it used to be that antisemitism was mostly on the left and repugnantly identifiable and condemnable by most. …. Many leftist icons used to voice blatant antisemitism, such as Jesse Jackson (“Hymietown”), Al Sharpton (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”), or Louis Farrakhan (“your gutter religion”). ….

Where does it all end?

Either there will be an 11th-hour Western intolerance of antisemitism, a limit of student visas and immigration from the illiberal nations of the Middle East, a return to melting-pot assimilation, an end to DEI tribalism and a reform of the weaponized university curricula — or we will see more images of gunmen shooting Jews as if they were mere animals.”

The Depths and Depravity of Human Evil

I first met my Father when he got out of the Army and came home from Germany. I was five years old. He had seen some serious combat in WWII. He had been promoted quickly and stayed in Germany in the Army after the end, running an officer’s club in Munich. According to family legend, he was also supposedly helping identify and chase down Nazis who were still hanging around. In managing the club in Munich for several years after the War while still in the Army he dealt with Jack Benny, Wallace Beery, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Phil Harris and Alice Fay, as well as Lana Turner and whomever she happened to be married to at the moment.

The morning Dad came home from Munich to stay in America I was totally surprised. I came downstairs from my bed in the attic and reached the landing where the stairs turned a corner and the final three stairs went down into the living room. This very big man was standing beside Mom, Grandma and Grandpa Jones and other family members we lived with at the time. He was wearing a tan Army uniform with a Master Sergeants stripes on the sleeve and had a brown mustache. I shouted “DAD!” and without even thinking I launched myself through the air and the man caught me and held me. It was Dad.

It was about six months after Dad got back from his time in Munich that I looked through the cedar chest where he stored his uniforms and other military things. There were several medals including a Purple Heart. There was also a red-jacketed book filled with pictures. It was his 71st Infantry Division Yearbook from General George C. Patton’s Third Army in which he had served. I started leafing through the text and it was mostly pictures of soldiers, tanks and other weapons and war. For a little six year old boy it was fantastic.

But when I got about halfway through, the book turned into a compilation of horror. It had a lengthy section showing terrible pictures of bodies in striped pajamas. They were piled in open pits with arms and legs akimbo. It wasn’t a horror comic book like those we had around at that time like “Tales from the Crypt” with drawings of bodies in graves the zombies and other monsters of the illustrated story had killed. This was real, and the pits and twisted bodies were real, although I wanted for all my being for them not to be. I couldn’t look away. Those horrible pictures showed me the face of the worst evil anyone could imagine. It was far beyond what I knew really existed until I saw the unbelievably graphic photographs that recorded what some humans had done to millions of other humans.

Not only were there pits filled with dead people who had been thrown into large open holes in the ground like garbage, but there were skeletal people who were sitting or walking around. Years later I saw a horror movie called Night of the Living Dead and the pictured scenes almost seemed like that. I couldn’t even finish watching it. The people in Dad’s Yearbook looked just like zombies who were already dead but hadn’t realized it. I don’t know at this point which concentration camp was in the pictures but it was a searing image no one should ever forget. And I haven’t.

I was only six and a half years old at the time, but I have never regretted finding Dad’s Division yearbook. My brother Bret, who served two tours in Vietnam as an Army Medic still has the book and even had it rebound. That indelible memory is something I can still bring to the forefront of my mind in stark black-and-white photos many years later, including as I write this. It made me promise to myself that I would always fight against evil of the kind that was revealed in those awful pictures. How can people treat others like that? What kind of darkness exists inside some people that allows them to do this or look the other way as it is done? How can they live with themselves?

When I thought about writing this post I did some research on the website Quora and came up with several insights. One is contained in a post from an individual whose father had interviewed a number of the the guards who worked at the first camp into which Patton’s Third Army entered. It was one of those camps connected to Buchenwald. The questions and responses are important to keep in mind because we are now witnessing a rebirth of the kind of fanaticism in the form of the Anti-Semitism that gave birth to the Nazi’s horrendous actions with Kristallnacht only the early stage harbinger of what was coming. The murder camps, sometimes called “Extermination Camps” are the end result.

Who Knew What and When?

My youngest brother Barry relates that when he was in high school and working on a report on the Holocaust that he mentioned it to Dad. He told me:

“I remember Dad telling me about a concentration camp experience after I told him we were learning about the Holocaust in school. He made it clear to me that there was no way the people in the surrounding areas hadn’t known about horrible things happening, and also how what the soldiers saw sickened them, even though as soldiers they had already seen battlefield horrors.”

Witnessing the depths and depravity of human evil does something to people.

“General George S. Patton’s army liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp in April 1945. Ohrdruf was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp and was the first Nazi camp liberated by American forces. The liberation revealed the horrific conditions and atrocities that had taken place there, significantly impacting the soldiers who witnessed it and the broader public’s understanding of the Holocaust.”

As Bret and others who have experienced it, “War Is Hell”. Fighting and war are irrational and explosive acts of violence. Soldiers are pitted against each other in combat with enormous adrenalin and fear involved. Once the fighting begins, everything inside you is focused on surviving and destroying the enemy trying to kill you. But what happened in the Nazi camps was not warfare. It was organized slaughter using the calm and deliberate exercise of the faculty of reason and logic--cold, instrumental, efficient, and bureaucratic—mechanical extermination. The camps are the evil elevation of the highest faculties of humanity turned to the most evil and vile ends, the extermination of other guiltless and innocent humans.

The Mayor and His Wife Hanged Themselves and Others Committed Suicide

One Quora report summarizes what Patton and his troops, including my Dad, found. See, Quora. https://www.quora.com/What-concentration-camp-did-Pattons-army-liberate.

“The US Third Army under the command of General George S. Patton was spread out across a broad front after crossing the Rhine River in March 1945, eventually reaching Austria and Czechoslovakia, and actually liberated several concentration camps to include Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Gusen.

The first camp liberated by elements of the Third Army was Ohrdruf, part of the Buchenwald camp system, by XX Corps under the command of Major General Walton H. “Bulldog” Walker, which was the best remembered incident regarding the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The sight was so ghastly and so new an experience to the Americans that Patton and his immediate superiors General Omar N. Bradley and General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower soon arrived at the scene. Walker had ordered the Mayor of the town of Ohrdruf and his wife marched from their home into and around the camp.

The Mayor and his wife hanged themselves immediately after returning to their home. Patton then ordered the entire population of the town of Ohrdruf to be marched through the camp. The sight of the camp appeared as equally new and repulsive to the civilians living just down the road from the camp as it had to the American troops. Patton continued the practice of marching the local civilian population through most camps liberated, and there were apparently more suicides among the local politicians who were forced to confront what had occurred under their noses.”

“Who Me”?—Interviewing the Camp Staff and Administrators

John Evans writes about what his father discovered when he interviewed many of the people who staffed and controlled the camps. See, “When the concentration camps were liberated, what excuse did the SS have for their deeds?” https://www.quora.com/When-the-concentration-camps-were-liberated-what-excuse-did-the-SS-have-for-their-deeds. Evans writes:

“During and shortly after World War Two, my father had the task of ‘Interviewing’ actual or suspected members of various Nazi organisations. While he very seldom spoke of his experiences, he did tell us, my brothers and I, that the most troubling ‘interviews’ almost always involved members or ex-members of the SS. According to him, there were four main reactions by those who were ‘interviewed’.

1 - Denied membership. Often having assumed a false or stolen identity. Which, when proved, was taken as being conscious of wrongdoing,

2 - Admitted membership, but denied involvement and/or knowledge of any crimes.

3 - Admitted membership and knowledge of, but not involvement in, any criminal actions.

4 - Proudly declared membership and claimed that any actions were justified.

As to excuses where membership and involvement was proven?

Most commonly used was: ‘I was ordered’ or ‘Had I not done so, I would have been punished harshly’.

Fairly common: ‘Regrettable, but such things happen in war’.

Less commonly: ‘These were internal (German or occupied territory) affairs and are of no concern to the Allies’!

On a few occasions: ‘We were serving a higher cause.’ or ‘These things were not crimes.’ !”

Nazi Fanaticism Has Taken over Vital Parts of American Education

The 12 million murdered victims the Nazis considered “sub-species”included more than six million Jews, along with Gypsies, Poles, and other non-Aryans. I am not Jewish, but a continual flood of media reports describing the events of 2023, 2024 and 2025 cause me to feel surrounded by a new wave of Neo-Nazi “Blackshirts” and “Hitler Youth” in America—and the larger world, including the United Kingdom, Europe and even far distant Australia.

The depth and vileness of what is taking place is beyond my imagination. Seeing America’s streets and universities taken over by shrieking and chanting mobs whose members include necessarily include a core of “violent organizers” leading a heavily propagandized throng of young people playing the role of a new “Hitler Youth” or “Maoist Red Guard” who have no honest idea of what they are doing and no sense of history. This brings out in me total contempt for those who created the mindlessness we are experiencing.

These violent and intimidating so-called peaceful protests that have nothing to do with free speech and justice, and everything to do with power and the effects of propaganda and brainwashing on young mind who know no better. They are the projection of hate, and have exposed the moral and intellectual corruption that has been nurtured at our “top” universities during the past several decades. That has been a period in which the entire aim of what many of our universities—particularly those once considered elite—as well as our K-12 educational systems have been hijacked by “soulless pseudo-intellectuals and administrators”.

The poison generated by hate has spread around the world. There are far too many manifestations. A limited few are set out below that reveal the emergence of anti-semitic hate-filled and violent mobs on America’s university campuses hiding behind a fraud of claiming “Free Speech”. I see what is going on as the anti-semitic explosion of a “New Kristallnacht”.

To some extent, the rallying cry and chant of the protests we witness about destroying Israel and controlling everything from “the river to the sea” somehow leaves out the fact that almost 3,000 years agoJews and Hebrews lived in that territory in two kingdoms, and progressively experienced multiple conquests, “Diasporas” and pogroms at the hands of the Assyrians, Hittites, Persians and Romans. That makes me wonder just what students taking Middle Eastern studies at the hands of teachers and a curriculum designed to decry the Jews actually understand about the history of the ongoing conflict.

It almost seems that someone, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jasmine Crockett, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer or some other morally corrupt politician will be proposing that America’s Jews should wear something that identifies they are a member of that group, perhaps a Yellow Star of David. After all, if Jews are an enemy, you certainly wouldn’t want them to be invisible. This has already begun to some extent. Many Jews cannot risk revealing their faith in public or even in university classrooms or campuses. It is the same when our leading political leaders hesitate to condemn and oppose the vileness of anti-semitism and a propagandized “Jew hatred”.

It is a moment when we must condemn and oppose even such organizations as the United Nations, an institution that has gotten away for decades with stimulating the anti-semitic hate even though their duty for existence is to facilitate peace. The policies the UN has pursued are those of hate even to the point that some UN staff in Gaza staff reportedly facilitated and even participated in the events of October 7, 2023.

Rather than showing intellectual elegance and true brilliance we long thought they were offering to the world on the most critical challenges we face, and providing students with the quality of skills, mind and knowledge required to meet the challenges, they have offered ignorance, hate, and ultimately the violence and division we are now experiencing. What is occurring is not an accident. It is, in fact, the result of a deliberate strategy to capture the youth of America and other nations as the rabid foot soldiers of radical causes.

The same strategy has been used by Mao Zedong, Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and a collection of Muslim leaders from places such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has poured massive amounts of money into Western universities through grants and the funding of special courses favorable to their interests. Frequently, this has often involved intensive one-sided teachings that fit the CCP’s and Middle Eastern funder’s political and ideological aims and for the Middle East those aims included attacks on Jews and the creation of Israel itself.

The large scale funding of Confucius Institutes by the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP’s strategy provided enormous financial support to greedy universities from the CCP and created heavily biased one-sided programs and courses in America’s universities. The CCP even gleefully created Confucius Classrooms in K-12 schools to instill in America’s children an undeserved positive view of China. The impetus behind these efforts is, as Mao and other despots know full well, if you “get” the children when they are young they become your foot soldiers. Mao even wrote in a 1937 polemic that he didn’t want Liberals in his revolutionary forces because they analyzed, thought and asked questions. He wanted obedience.

Google explains through its Gemini AI How the Indoctrination “Game” Is Being Played and the CCP’s Strategy Has Been Used in Other Educational Contexts

A Confucius Classroom is a Chinese government-sponsored program within K-12 schools, partnered with local schools and universities, designed to teach Chinese language and culture, often receiving funding and materials from China for Mandarin programs and cultural exchange, though they’ve faced scrutiny in the U.S. for potential CCP influence and censorship of sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square or Taiwan, leading to many closures.

• They are established through partnerships between a U.S. school, a local university (often the sponsoring Confucius Institute), and a Chinese government entity.…

• Funding & Resources: The Chinese government provides significant funding, teachers, and curriculum materials to schools.

• Curriculum: They offer Mandarin language classes and cultural activities, but critics say they promote the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political narrative and avoid sensitive topics .…

• CCP Influence: Critics, including lawmakers and organizations like Parents Defending Education, argue these programs are a tool for CCP propaganda and ideological influence in U.S. schools…

William Jacobson, a Professor of Law at Ivy League Cornell explains.

“Toxic ideas fueling far-left terrorists came straight from our college campuses”, William A. Jacobson and Kemberlee Kaye, 12/23/2025. https://nypost.com/2025/12/23/opinion/toxic-fuel-for-far-left-terrorists-came-straight-from-our-colleges/.

“Every time someone claims a person or group is “marginalized,” that’s intersectionality at work, whether the speaker knows it or not. This group-identity mindset urges the “marginalized” to unite against oppressors, using a toxic mix of economic, sexual and racial/ethnic identities as its fuel. Intersectionality has been the dominant ideology on campus for two decades, and in recent years it’s chosen Israel as its point of attack. It does so by bringing “marginalized” groups that have nothing in common together — for example, proclaiming “Palestine is a feminist issue” even though Palestinian society is one of the most patriarchal and misogynistic in the world. It’s what fuels “Queers for Palestine” — even though actual gays and lesbians wouldn’t last a day in any Palestinian city or village. ….

Campus student groups organize based on color and ethnicity to combat Israel, the supposed white oppressor. Intersectionality is the gateway drug isolating Jewish students on campus. But like so many other toxic ideologies, what started on campuses didn’t stay on campuses — and what started with Jews and Israel has spread to a more general hatred of the United States, capitalism and Western civilization. We have intersectionality to thank for the widespread rot in higher education, as it works to “dismantle the persistent colonial structures and Eurocentric biases” of academia. Worse, intersectionality has become the ideology of terror — the next logical step for a worldview that pits people against each other based on group identity.”

The Monsters Are Everywhere

ISIS-inspired plot could have become the UK’s deadliest terrorist attack

“Guilty verdicts in ISIS plot police say could have been ‘the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history’”: Police chief says plot was aimed at Jewish sites in Manchester that would have had ‘catastrophic’ results”, Efrat Lachter, 12/23/2025. https://www.foxnews.com/world/guilty-verdicts-isis-plot-police-say-could-have-been-the-deadliest-terrorist-attack-uk-history.

“Greater Manchester Police video shows the three convicted terrorists involved in planning the attack in what prosecutors say could have been the deadliest terror attack in U.K. history. (Greater Manchester Police via Reuters.) A foiled ISIS-inspired terror plot targeting Manchester’s Jewish community has renewed fears over Jewish safety in Britain, after three men were convicted on Tuesday of planning a mass-casualty gun attack. English authorities said the Manchester case exposed a highly advanced ISIS-inspired terror plot that could have become the deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were convicted at Preston Crown Court of planning a firearms attack against Jewish targets in Manchester. …. Prosecutors said the men planned a marauding gun attack using military-style weapons. Saadaoui paid an initial deposit toward the purchase of four AK-47 assault rifles, two pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, with funds raised after selling his home and business.”

Sydney and Bondi Beach

There are too many examples. They include the murders of more than 15 Jews in Australia celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. It is just the surface. Add to that an October 2023 event in Australia where a mob of young people allegedly chanted “Gas the Jews” in support for Hamas shortly after the Hamas slaughter, rape and torture of people attending a musical event.

‘I identify as a terrorist’ and ‘I am a Hamas fangirl’

The horror is spreading rapidly. See, “4 indicted in foiled New Year’s Eve terror bombing plot targeting Southern California businesses: Suspect Audrey Carroll allegedly said ‘I identify as a terrorist’ and ‘I am a Hamas fangirl’ while planning attacks”. Bonny Chu, 12/23/2025. https://www.foxnews.com/us/four-indicted-foiled-new-years-eve-terror-bombing-plot-targeting-southern-california-businesses.

“Poland foils ISIS-type bomb plot and triggers UK, Europe terror alerts

“Poland foils ISIS-type bomb plot as Sydney attack triggers UK, Europe terror alerts: 19-year-old student detained in Lublin as Germany and UK raise security measures for holiday events”, Emma Bussey, 12/16/25. https://www.foxnews.com/world/poland-foils-isis-type-bomb-plot-sydney-attack-triggers-uk-europe-terror-alerts.

“According to Jacek Dobrzyński, a spokesperson for the Minister’s Coordinator of Special Services, investigators believe the teen had been studying how to make explosives and intended to join a terrorist organization to help carry out the attack. “The purpose of the crime was to intimidate many people, as well as to support the Islamic State,” Dobrzyński said in a statement shared on X. …. At a news conference, Dobrzyński also referenced a June case in which three 19-year-olds were charged over alleged extremist plots, including a reported plan to attack a school in Olsztyn. …. In Germany, police in Lower Bavaria also arrested five men on Dec. 12 on suspicion of preparing an attack on a Christmas market, according to reports. Authorities said an Egyptian national described as an Islamic preacher had allegedly called for an assault during gatherings at a mosque in the Dingolfing-Landau area, per Euronews.”

Nowhere Is Safe: Turkey, Syria, Israel

“Dozens of Islamic State suspects plotting Christmas and New Year’s attacks detained in Turkey”, AP, 12/26/25. https://nypost.com/2025/12/26/world-news/dozens-of-islamic-state-suspects-plotting-christmas-and-new-years-attacks-detained-in-turkey/.

“Istanbul police launched scores of simultaneous raids on Thursday, detaining over a hundred suspected members of the militant Islamic State group who were allegedly planning attacks against Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, authorities said. A statement from the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said police were tipped off that the extremist group had called for action — particularly against non-Muslims — during the celebrations. The office had issued warrants for 137 suspects, of whom 115 were detained. Officers also seized many firearms, cartridges and documents during the raids. It said 124 locations were raided. …Syrian security forces have also launched operations against IS in recent days, including two raids on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital. In those raids, Syrian officials said Taha al-Zoubi, identified as the IS leader in the Damascus area, was captured and Mohammed Shahadeh, a senior IS commander in Syria, was killed.”

Rather than demanding the indictment and imprisonment of Hamas leaders and criminals along with anyone who funded and supported them, the “peace loving” leaders and activists of the world instead condemned the Jews for retaliating and pursuing a “no holds barred” strategy in a savage war against an enemy that hides behind the people of Gaza. That enemy is also one who along with Iran and numerous terrorist groups swears it will never stop in its crusade to kill all Jews and destroy Israel.

Victor Hanson asks in his New York Post analysis. “As for Oct. 7 and what followed, Israel waited in vain for nearly three weeks for Hamas to give up the 3,000 terrorists who murdered 1,219 Jews, wounded 3,400 and took 254 hostages before mounting a full invasion of Gaza.”

What, I ask, is the solution in such an environment? I am afraid that in the context of the ongoing extremist Islamist “Jihad” the answer is a great deal of violence aimed at the fanatics who are waging an intensifying “crusade” against not only Israel but the people and governing ideology of the West as US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently described.

Extreme Islamist Ideology Is a “Direct Threat to Freedom”

A very real danger, generally unrecognized, is that in many ways “Anti-Semitism” serves to mask another vector of hate. What we are experiencing is also “Anti-Americanism”, and “Anti-Europeanism”, and “Anti-Democratism”. This is because the traditional values of those systems of governance and society are in direct opposition to theocratic systems that require their leaders to follow the “divine will” of a Supreme Being. This is the situation in Iran where the Ayatollahs decry America as the “Great Shaitan (Satan) and in Nigeria where the radical group Boko Haram say that “Western knowledge is forbidden”. Tulsi Gabbard explains:

“Booker says Gabbard ‘endangering’ NJ with remarks on radical Islam, heavily Muslim city; deputy responds: New Jersey senator fires back after DNI warns cities are ‘working to implement Islamic principles’ in government”, Charles Creitz, December 26, 2025 8:54am EST

“During her speech, Gabbard warned that Islamist ideology fuels terror groups that should be defeated “militarily” but also presents a “direct threat to freedom“ because it is effectively “political” thought. Gabbard warned that such ideology is both political and a direct threat to freedom because it seeks to “create a global caliphate that governs us here in America” and seeks enforcement of Sharia Law governance.

“If you fail to comply, if you fail to adhere to this ideology, if you dare to exercise your God-given right to free speech, censorship is not what we face. They will use violence or any means they deem as necessary to silence us,” Gabbard warned during her Phoenix address, before noting that German cities have canceled Christmas festivals due to the threat of radical Islamists; warning some may be taking root in America.

“In places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Islamist clerics are openly pushing this Islamist ideology, trying to recruit and radicalize young people,” she went on, saying that advocacy-group-backed efforts to institute Sharia law are already in place in Houston, Texas, and Paterson, New Jersey.

“Paterson is proud to call themselves the first Muslim city. They are working to implement in their own governments these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence,” she said. “The bottom line is this. When we talk about the threat of Islamism, this political ideology, there is no such thing as individual freedom or liberty. As Charlie [Kirk] said over and over again, it is fundamentally incompatible with our nation’s foundation of freedom.”

I admit to having to deal with a savage feral force within me that literally could be willing to terminate these mindless vindictive “creatures” who are betraying everything we have supposedly been striving to become as humans. I can’t stand the thought of the internal “beast” that lives within all of us, and is driving the hate we are experiencing. But I also can’t deny the “beast” lurks within us, just as Hannah Arendt warned when she spoke of the “banality of evil” hiding within a pleasant shoe clerk. If I ever gave in to the feeling, I would be “like them” and have to bend my knee, raise my arm, and shout “Heil”! I won’t do that. But that is part of the danger we are experiencing that will set us at each others throats.

We are all vulnerable to the darkness of hate, resentment, the challenge of seeking and discovering meaning and purpose for our lives, and trying to be part of something greater than ourselves. These admirable desires are in one dimension a source of strength focusing us on “The Good”. But unless we admit there is a darkness that lies within each of us and strive to resist and overcome that tragic fact of human nature, we contradict our essential humanity.

This has long convinced me of the need to ensure that humans should not be given unlimited power over others no matter what any political system claims. No matter what system we profess, those who seek power always eventually rise to positions of power and authoritarian control. It is therefore essential that political systems be constructed to “diffuse” power among different parts and roles and this has been the “magic” of America’s doctrine of the Separation of Power between critical functions and duties.

We Are Suffering From A Seemingly Incurable Insanity

The understanding of the evil that lies within humanity also requires an admission that, while I have long supported Israel there is a kind of quite possibly incurable insanity underlying the current Israel-Palestine conflict. The fact that, while I am not a Jew, I am a supporter of Israel as an independent nation. This does not make Israel “good” and the Palestinians “bad”.

There is something wrong in how Palestinians were driven from the lands on which they lived, just as there is something evil about how Jews have been treated throughout history. I remember in college talking with a girl, Laila, from Lebanon who was a Palestinian. In the midst of an “Exodus” moment in which I praised Israel, Laila asked me to think about how I would react if I and my family had been forcibly ejected from our own homeland and forced to live in refugee camps. I know how I would respond. It would involve bitterness, a desire for vengeance, and a burning thirst to recover what had been taken.

This doesn’t shake my faith in the need for a sanctuary for Jews of the kind Israel represents (or was supposed to represent) because the ways that Western and historical Middle Eastern societies have used, murdered, and stolen from Jewish people throughout history are obscene. This includes not only the Nazi horror of World War II, but the many pogroms or “ethnic cleansing” episodes that have occurred far too frequently throughout our history.

It includes the driving out of Jews from Spain and England. It includes the theft of Jewish fortunes by European aristocracies which, after they had engaged in high pressure coerced borrowing from Jewish bankers and money-lenders and once the “noble” debtors reached the point of having extorted more than they could or were willing to repay or were simply unwilling to honor their debts. Since the sin of usury was denied the “holy” Christians, Jews were the sources of what often added up to “free money” for the Christian nobles.

This Land Is Mine!

I don’t want to get to the “this land is mine, God gave this land to me” proclamations whether the utterer is Christian, Jew or Muslim. The operating conditions under which a cosmic, universal God who created and is allegedly managing something like a hundred trillion stars and maybe ten times that many planets across an unfathomable vastness, renders claims to the divine selection of land and the anointment of a particular religious belief as being the most “holy” and deserving of an eternal grant of “holy land” is absurd.

Such claims are driven by the psychological need to feel significant and “special”. The reality is that a God such as Jehovah or Allah is unlikely to anoint an infinitesimal biological pest such as humans as “Godlike” in a universe so vast we cannot even comprehend its nature and scope. Such a vast and powerful entity has better things to do than dedicate arid desert land to an allegedly “chosen” people of any faith. There is an incredibly self-centered arrogance to such claims, ones belied by the reality of human behavior. Human history and behavior suggest a quite different scenario. If any people are “chosen” it is by themselves—a byproduct of our fear, arrogance and need to feel “special”. God has better things to do. Humans apparently do not.

Hebrews were forcibly exiled from ancient Israel on multiple occasions. The Assyrians (c. 720 BCE) exiled the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Babylonians (c. 587 BCE) conquered Judah and forced many Jews to abandon their homeland. Centuries later the Romans had taken over the territory and forced many Jews who had fought against Roman control to leave in the early part of the Christian Era (CE) along with large scale killing of Jews and the forced removal of others. The Romans also destroyed the Jews Second Temple in Jerusalem.

These tragic events were part of a long history. The most powerful empires of the time drove the Hebrew/Jewish people from their land, dispersing the Jewish refugees throughout the generally unwelcoming nations of that period. The Jewish dispersion from Israel, has never really ended, but the creation of Israel by the United Nations in 1948 allowed many whose ancestors had been driven from their ancient homeland that dates back almost 3,000 years to return. Summarized from Britannica, “Judaism: Religious and cultural life in the Diaspora”

Jews have been murdered, tortured, expelled and dispersed for almost three thousand years by the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Nazis, Soviets and others. It is not surprising that Jews and Israeli Jews possess a significant degree of paranoia about others’ intentions. In fact much of it is not paranoia. There really are people who are “out to get them”.

Rather than demanding the indictment and imprisonment of Hamas leaders and criminals along with anyone who funded and supported them, the “peace loving” leaders and activists of the world instead condemned the Jews for retaliating and pursuing a “no holds barred” strategy in a savage war against an enemy that hides behind the people of Gaza. That enemy is also one who along with Iran and numerous terrorist groups swears it will never stop in its crusade to kill all Jews and destroy Israel.

Palestinians are the Pawns of the Fanatical Leaders of Islam

Jews are not the only victims of this tragic situation. Palestinians also have been treated as an inferior “throwaway” group. They are being used by other Arab Muslim nations as a “stalking horse” by which those others can play out their own religious and ethnic hatred of Jews. In doing so, they have created a manufactured enemy that deflects their own peoples’ focus on the deficiencies of the leadership of their own political-theocratic systems run by a religious theocracy that enriches its small group of members while preventing the creation of strong middle classes of the kind that ask questions of their authoritarian and despotic religious and political leaders.

Those leaders are opportunists and fanatics. Rather than concentrating on making better the lives of the people they profess to be entitled to rule and care for, they instead focus on making themselves rich and powerful. The sad part is that the Israelis have played into the “game” being run by Arab nations and allowed themselves to be easily demonized because of the way Palestinians have been treated. At this point no one knows what to do because of hatred, propaganda, murder and destruction.

The tragic fact is that the political agendas of numerous power-brokers in the Middle East are dependent on continuing the strife. I always felt that the problem with Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, and Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, Boko Haram, and other sects in a never-ending set of civil wars in Africa and the Middle East that has now spread globally, is that their very existence and identities have been defined by the historical conflict. They continue to stimulate the hate because they cannot conceive of any other state of affairs that does not weaken their control on power and wealth. Solutions are impossible in such a context because the real solutions are counter to the interests of fanatics, despots, and maniacs whose very identity and privilege depends on the continuation of hate and conflict.

I’m sorry if I sound “preachy” here but this is a deeply profound issue for me and has been since I was little and opened Dad’s Division 71st Infantry Division Army yearbook. One of my concerns is that throughout the world, including America, there is a rising cloud of hate that is spreading and that we are breathing. And no, I am not talking about Donald Trump when I say that. What is happening throughout America at this point is made up of hate, resentment, evil thoughts, the drive toward power, and the ability of coordinated propaganda and lies made possible by social media and the Internet.

The Internet is a deadly weapon. There is no way to describe how the ability for people who would—and should—not otherwise be able to control communications has produced an ultra-powerful tool. That tool allows the fanatics to bring out the worst of the darkness many humans possess and project onto others.

I also know that, as an American, if my country and other Americans were being attacked by an enemy or set of allied enemies who announced a total and permanent commitment to my death and destruction and to those I love, I would be stupid to ignore that declaration. Instead, I would consider it the justification for a total war to the death by any means necessary. With that in mind the only possible solution to our dilemma is for serious, honest, decent, and reverent leaders who are willing and able to deal with the poisonous actors within their own political and social contexts take coordinated action.

Tragically, I don’t think that will happen. There was, however, a small unanticipated glimpse of potential progress with the Abraham Accords. Even there it is vital to understand the depths of the enemy’s fanaticism. The October 7, 2023 Hamas-committed massacres were almost surely driven by Iran in an effort to undermine the progress that had been achieved between Israel and the non-fanatical Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia. Even there great wisdom and caution are needed because it has been shown that several members of the Saudi Royal family are at least financially involved in supporting those who attacked and destroyed the Twin Towers in NYC on September 11.

Getting Inside the Minds of the Fanatics and Deepest “True Believers”

The multiple Islamic groups, nations, militias and the like are not a unified alliance. They are playing behind the scenes “games” with and against each other that have been going on for centuries. A letter written by a leading terrorist months before his death demonstrates the true face of the most dangerous and intractable of those who are the enemy even of other Muslims that do not share their identical version of faith.

The “Zarqawi Letter” offers an incredible insight into the mind of a leading terrorist. It shows the radical divisions within the minds of different groups and the inability to resolve disputes that have plagued Islam since its founding in 622 CE. It also reveals the extreme difficulty in being able to negotiate realistic solutions, in large part due to the fact the fanatical extremists really do not want any outcome other than what they like to claim is the “Will of Allah”.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian militant jihadist who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. In the span of just eighteen months, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi … emerged from obscurity to eclipse Osama bin Laden as public enemy number one in the Bush administration’s war on terror. … Zarqawi rose to become the “emir” of radical Islamist terror groups in Iraq largely on the strength of his networking skills. … Zarqawi was born Ahmad Fadil Nazal al-Khalaylah in October 1966 to a family of modest means in the working class Jordanian town of Zarqa. . … Contrary to many Western media reports, he is not of Palestinian descent. Profile of Zarqawi. https://jamestown.org/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-a-biographical-sketch/.

Excerpts from a lengthy strategic letter Zarqawi wrote and distributed to others with which he was working are set out below. The letter in its entirety can be found in the US Department of State Archives. I find the document of significant interest because it provides a clear look inside the mind and motivation of a leading Jihadi fighter and terrorist. Of interest particularly is his description of the enormous splits between Zarqawi’s Sunni Muslim sect and that of the Shia and other “fake” and deceitful Muslims.

To provide a sense of how deep the schisms between Islamic sects run, before his death and according to a Hadith saying that is considered authentic Muhammad stated:

“his Muslim community (Ummah) would split into 73 sects, with only one group being saved (entering Paradise) and the other 72 destined for Hell, explaining the saved group as those who follow his path and that of his companions.” Gemini.

One need only read this letter to understand the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of successfully negotiating reliable and long-term peace deals with the full range of Middle East actors. It also provides insight into the fact that he wrote this missive to his allies months before his death, and that they are operating from a viewpoint that is not only Anti-Semitic, but dramatically Anti-American, and focused on recapturing all of the territory that Israel occupies.

Given that America’s universities have been indoctrinating students in Middle East and Islamic studies in programs largely created by funding from Muslim nations seeking to project their agendas onto our understanding of the struggle that is taking place with Israel and various Islamic centers of power it is useful to understand that the issues are much more complex than is likely to be otherwise portrayed and that there is no single viewpoint or agreement even within the ranks of the various Muslim political groupings. It is also a clear truth that no matter what some parts of Islamic groups set out as their goals, there is simply no way across the board agreement will be achieved through negotiations.

Excerpts From the “Zarqawi Letter”

I offer the letter because it reveals the reality of what we are dealing with and the fact that there are few workable solutions, in large part because there is no common ground for overall agreement among the various elements of Islam and for a significant number nothing is possible with Israel continuing to exist. The rabid Anti-Semitism—that is to a significant extent also Anti-Americanism—is what many educational institutions are offering and students internalizing. We don’t have to look far to understand why so many young American college students took to the streets to scream vile threats at Jewish students and television cameras.

“Zarqawi Letter”, February 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority English translation of terrorist Musab al Zarqawi letter obtained by United States Government in Iraq. US Department of State Archives. https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm

.As you know, God favored the [Islamic] nation with jihad on His behalf in the land of Mesopotamia. … . It is a stone’s throw from the lands of the two Holy Precincts and the al-Aqsa [Mosque]. We know from God’s religion that the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land, i.e., in [Greater] Syria and its surroundings. Therefore, we must spare no effort and strive urgently to establish a foothold in this land. …. I say, having sought help from God, that the Americans, as you know well, entered Iraq on a contractual basis and to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and that this Zionized American Administration believes that accelerating the creation of the State of [Greater] Israel will accelerate the emergence of the Messiah. …. This was in the Sunni Triangle, if this is the right name for it. This forced the Americans to conclude a deal with the Shi`a, the most evil of mankind. The deal was concluded on [the basis that] the Shi`a would get two-thirds of the booty for having stood in the ranks of the Crusaders against the mujahidin.

The Shi`a

[They are] the insurmountable obstacle, the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom. We here are entering a battle on two levels. One, evident and open, is with an attacking enemy and patent infidelity. …. The unhurried observer and inquiring onlooker will realize that Shi`ism is the looming danger and the true challenge. “They are the enemy. Beware of them. Fight them. By God, they lie.” History’s message is validated by the testimony of the current situation, which informs most clearly that Shi`ism is a religion that has nothing in common with Islam except in the way that Jews have something in common with Christians under the banner of the People of the Book. …. These [have been] a sect of treachery and betrayal throughout history and throughout the ages. It is a creed that aims to combat the Sunnis. When the repulsive Ba`thi regime fell, the slogan of the Shi`a was “Revenge, revenge, from Tikrit to al-Anbar.” This shows the extent of their hidden rancor toward the Sunnis.

The Qur’an has told us that the machinations of the hypocrites, the deceit of the fifth column, and the cunning of those of our fellow countrymen whose tongues speak honeyed words but whose hearts are those of devils in the bodies of men - these are where the disease lies, these are the secret of our distress, these are the rat of the dike. “They are the enemy. Beware of them.” Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya spoke with truth and honesty when he said - after he mentioned their (Shi`a) thinking toward the people of Islam - “For this reason, with their malice and cunning, they help the infidels against the Muslim mass[es].

Don’t Talk About Crusades: Islam Almost Conquered Europe

The Shi`i Safavid state was an insurmountable obstacle in the path of Islam. Indeed it was a dagger that stabbed Islam and its people in the back. One of the Orientalists spoke truth when he said that had the Safavid state not existed we in Europe would today be reading the Qur’an just as the Algerian Berber does. Yes, the hosts of the Ottoman state stopped at the gates of Vienna, and those fortifications almost collapsed before them [to permit] Islam to spread under the auspices of the sword of glory and jihad all across Europe. But these armies were forced to return and withdraw to the rear because the army of the Safavid state had occupied Baghdad, demolished its mosques, killed its people, and captured its women and wealth.