See No Evil

I love Elphaba and Maleficent. I love how Hollywood and Broadway took two evil characters and gave them a backstory to make them not only sympathetic but heroines. We now understand their angst and their journey and how they were misunderstood and misrepresented.

These new storylines help us realize that we can’t judge others, that there is always another side to the story, and that fiction, and sometimes even history, can always be rewritten and reshaped.

But I fear that this literary reframing represents a much bigger and much darker picture: the inability in recent decades to recognize evil; the tendency to excuse it, validate it, and swallow false narratives that victimize the perpetrators of evil.

Once upon a time, not that many wars ago, good and evil were clearly delineated. The Nazis imach shemam were evil incarnate. The allies were trying to free the world from this evil. No one tried to find excuses for why Hitler, imach shemo was trying to exterminate an entire people. True there was ignorance and an awareness that took hold too late, but at least there wasn’t total moral confusion.

Today, things are different. Evil and Terrorism are given a forum for vindication, and once individuals or societies have caught on, it’s too late, they have taken over.

Nobody condemned Israel during the Six Day War, or the Raid on Entebbe. But now Israel has to defend itself as much from world condemnation as from its physical enemies. Who, a few decades ago, heard of such a thing as negotiating with terrorists as if their demands had moral validity?

Why are terrorists languishing in Israeli jails waiting for the next prisoner swap? Why aren’t they punished by death after they are interrogated? Why is America pushing Israel, their only democratic ally in the Middle East, to do things against their best interest? Why is Israel supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza?

It is because we have lost the ability to recognize and label evil. Hamas is broadcasting videos of the last moments of the hostages they killed. I can’t bring myself to watch. Moral equivalency has long ago lost all sense of proportion or logic. And history has been rewritten to support it.

Interestingly enough the 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of many terrorist groups in Ireland, in Quebec, in Cuba, among others. But they all died out. Why? Because they weren’t given legitimacy. Nobody wanted to see their side of it, negotiate with them, or give in to their demands. The much younger and wiser world fought, to eradicate terrorism.

Western Europe, with all its bleeding heart liberal policies, coupled with antisemitism, is on the cusp of collapse, and being overtaken by Muslim extremism. The victim has been rebranded the perpetrator, evil has found a listening ear, and compassion and democracy is doomed.

Terrorism must not be tolerated, let alone rewarded, truth must not be censored, and history must not be rewritten. Evil should be identified, recognized, and condemned for what it is, not glorified, and common sense and common decency should once again be allowed to prevail.

On Broadway, and in movie theaters, the lights come on and we return to the real world where, unfortunately, giving evil the voice of reason will not have a happy ending.

It is up to us to rewrite the script or, for us, God forbid, there will be no sequel.