“The world is too much with us”, said poet William Wordsworth. Well, it is certainly too much with me. The world—at least, my world, has been on a downward spiral since 2001, each disaster leading to its own compounding in a never-ending cycle of alternating cruelty and stupidity. The wanton murder of two innocent young Jews by an ignorant and emotionally disturbed fanatic is “accompanied” by a massive attack on Harvard University by an ever-more xenophobic and authoritarian Trump administration, wantonly upending thousands of lives in a vicious exercise of power for its own sake.
I know that two murders in Washington, DC are more than outweighed by thousands of murders in Gaza, and, of course, Elias Rodriguez, the accused murderer of Lischinsky and Milgrim says he did it “for Gaza”. Few who have and will express outrage—deservedly so—at the two murders have bothered to say much about the Israel Defense Force’s wanton murder of 15 paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza this April. The Israeli soldiers buried the bodies, crushed the vehicles they were riding in and buried those as well and lied about it in the reports they filed. The truth came out only when the New York Times provided real time video evidence of the actual events. The IDF “apologized” and forced a “deputy commander” to resign. The men who committed the murders and destroyed evidence suffered no penalty whatsoever.
But the crimes of Israel do not negate the murders of Lischinsky and Milgrim. The romanticizing of violence, particularly antisemitic violence, grows ever more repulsive in the U.S. “Globalize the Intifada” means nothing more than “we have the right to kill anyone who gets in our way.” Wearing a keffiyeh, not as head gear but over the face to conceal one’s identity, should be banned to the same extent as a KKK hood. The purpose of both is equally obvious and equally obnoxious. If the one can be banned the other can as well.
Peter Beinart, who is Jewish (I am not), has, as usual, intelligent things to say about these latest brutal events.
