The Courage to Object – Radical Islamic Terrorism 

My ancestors in both Iraq and Egypt feared the murderous “Yitbach El Yahud,” slaughter the Jews, the ever popular rallying cry of the crowd exiting mosques onto the street after Friday night prayers. 

All it took to stir up the hate was an impassioned speech by the local imam when the climate, or the politics, or the holiness of the moment, expelled the vitriol. It was always there, beneath the surface. 

But what is “Yitbach el Yahud,” the blood curdling threat that marked the lives of Mizrahi Jews doing here, in the USA today? Because that is exactly what we are hearing on campuses, in marches in New York, on the streets of Los Angeles, across this nation today. 

I remember my grandmother’s anxious voice over the phone on 9/11 as Islamists brought down the Twin Towers; “Rachel, they are here!” 

At the time, I was afraid of her going into a panic, afraid of her triggered PTSD – Granny survived the Farhud massacre in Baghdad of 1941. The mobs’ chilling screams reaching her neighborhood were forever embedded in her cells. 

“Granny Granny, it’s ok, we are in America, not Baghdad,” I corrected her as if I was reassuring her. My denial. After all, how could “they” be “here.” It wasn’t possible, was it?

The next day a colleague, a fellow psychotherapist remarked, “It’s about time, we [Americans] deserve it.” 

I was repulsed at the degree of privilege it takes to be so ignorant about jihad. She wasn’t the only one at my workplace with that twisted narrative. 

That sick feeling is magnified today as I witness the horror of October 7, the unspeakably painful day in Israel’s history, ignored by feminists and turned upside-down into hatred towards Israel while the perpetrators of terror place their own women, men, and children in Gaza as “martyrs” for the cause. Where is the outrage against Hamas?  

I was disgusted by the “who cares” attitude back then among many of my progressive friends in 2001, but nothing in the past prepared me for the horror of the response from “progressives” today, from what once was my community, against Israel after Hamas’ murderous, sadistic, barbaric, carnage of October 7. 

We know what Western feminists didn’t do and don’t say about the most heinous mutilations and rapes, ripped into female genitals with the usual and unusual objects, from nails to rods infested with pure hatred into women’s bodies on October 7, 2023 – women and children burnt alive, beheaded, scattered body parts in home and festival grounds. Silence. 

Iran’s hand and money, Radical Islamic Terrorism, was all over the massacre of Israeli communities in the Gaza Envelope via its proxy Hamas, on October 7. 

Iran continues testing the United States using its other proxies as it rains bombs in the North via Hezbollah, and Houthis shoot drones into Tel Aviv. Iran waits and watches for the world’s response. 

Iran knows how America thinks, Qatar knows how the West thinks. Or doesn’t think.  

And October 7 didn’t prepare me for today’s Democratic Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech on how “ we have to have the courage to object when they use the term ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism’.”

The “courage to object” to the greatest threat the West is facing today? No seat at the table is worth this betrayal.

Islamists pay our universities well and CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood in the USA, is treated as if it is a respectable organization for Muslim rights. It is unfortunately a whole lot more than that. Ask Egypt. Ask Muslim countries who outlaw this radical Islamic movement. 

Islamists with their money free-flowing into our universities for years have created intensely problematic professors who express feeling “exhilarated” by Hamas’ barbarism on October 7. They promote hating Israel, resentment of Jews, blatant antisemitism, and burn Israeli and American flags. 

I grew up stateless for over twenty years because of Muslim hatred of Jews. I will never side with anyone who defends or pretends Radical Islam in any way. You cannot make friends with this insidious movement. The alarm sounded a while ago. 

If you can’t vote for Trump, don’t. Protest. 

I live in California. It’s been a while since I voted. But today, if I lived in a swing state, if I lived where it mattered… It’s hard to say but it’s no longer a “choice” to vote for a party that dismisses Radical/Political Islamic Terrorism. 

It’s about survival if you believe President Joe Biden’s words casually uttered to a partner of mine at her fundraiser before his exit; “without Israel there will be no Jews.” 

Of course there will always be Jews, we will never disappear, but Israel is another story. And Jewish self-esteem is also another story. Without Israel the self-esteem we Diaspora Jews take for granted will be history. 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ emphatically raised voice demanding we must “have the courage to object when they use the term ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism?’” rings in my ears.  In what world is that  “courage”? 

It was radical Islamic terrorists who blew up the Twin Towers and destroyed thousands of American lives. It was radical Islamic terrorists who crossed Gaza into Israel and broke the country’s heart and caused the most heinous of acts that they, the Islamist terrorists proudly filmed on their bodycams. 

And the terrorist adjacent chanting “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free Yitbach El Yahud” crashes into our world here on the streets of Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. “Hamas is coming” in blood red paint on monuments in DC is not just a “protest” of a very unpopular Israeli Prime Minister.  

There is no question Jews are between a rock and a hard place. We have for the most part been proud liberals. I remain a proud liberal. But I will never vote against Israel. Never again is now. 

If this country is not one hundred percent behind Israel and resists putting the burden of Gazan suffering on Hamas and Radical Islamist Terrorists and Iranian and Qatar funded terrorism, the Democratic party we have supported is a sham.

 “Americans are naive,” Granny said when I talked with her so long ago. But I no longer think it’s naivete. Its delusional self interest and arrogance not to recognize evil. Hamas is nothing more than a monstrous murderous death cult ready to kill all its people in the service of its paymaster, Iran. It should not be that hard to understand that Iran plans much more than Bin Laden’s pilots could ever do. 

 “Anti-Zionist” chants marching down major cities in America echo Islamic threats against Jews. Terrifying protests on college campuses and cities across America  scream for Israel’s demise, raise Hamas flags and burn American flags, glorify terrorism and normalize anti-Zionism, the Jew hatred of our time.

Denial of life under Islam is astounding despite common knowledge that gay people are not allowed to be free in Islamic countries, and caught being gay means being thrown off rooftops in Tehran, raped with iron rods (if you are a man) and dragged through the streets of Gaza, and hung on telephone poles in the Palestinian Territories. There are no open gay people in Palestine. They flee for their lives to Tel Aviv.  

You have to wonder how a progressive community I briefly felt safe in once upon a time, hates Israel, the only safe space for queer men and women, and are mum on Iran, poster child of oppression of women, murder and torture of gays, literally cloaking the country in black. 

The Orwellian Progressive idealization of monsters who started a war in the most brutal of ways and continue the war by horrifically using its own in every way possible, using its own women men and children, as many of them as it takes, all of Gaza if need be, as human ammunition to get rid of Jews and Israel is mind boggling stuff.   

Granny, you were right. Bin Laden’s rag tag jihadis were here then plowing into the Twin Towers. And it isn’t just “naivete,”on the part of people who refuse to see.  It’s denial, a sick arrogance, a cynical dance by our politicians, an ease from having lived too well too easily in the best country for too long, and a very old antisemitism.