As most of you are aware, the Islamic State burned a man alive in a cage the other day.He was a twenty-six year old Jordanian fighter pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh. His plane went down near Raqqa, Syria, and he was captured by the Islamists.
The Jordanians pleaded for his release as friends of IS or ISIS or ISIL pondered how best to murder and torture the poor man.
Until these people burned him alive on camera, the capture of the Jordanian pilot was a journalistic sideline. Those of us who follow the Middle East and the Arab-Israel conflict knew Kasasbeh was held. It was one of the stories out there, but it was decidedly second tier. After the Islamists head-chopped their Japanese prisoners, and in the midst of Obama's hissy-fit concerning the fact that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed to speak with Congress without first kissing Obama's ring, the Jordanian pilot story was of considerably lesser interest.
Until now, of course... at least for me.
I don't know what you guys think, but there is something particularly horrendous about this most recent act of barbarity. There are all sorts of Youtube videos available concerning Islamic head-chopping, but head-chopping is grounded within Islamic religious tradition. It has the full weight of fourteen-hundred years of Islamic religious practice behind it. It may be horrific, brutal, and immoral, but it is certainly nothing new. Burning people alive in cages, however, is definitely different for a western audience and will get people's attention.
It certainly got mine.
And whatever else we are dealing with here, we are dealing with theater. Pallywood, for example, is strictly about theater. It is about manufacturing hatred.
The Islamic State is, you understand, experimenting now in new and creative ways of murder and brutality. This needs to be acknowledged. The Islamic State recognizes no limits on human cruelty and its cruelty is a form of theater.
I even read where one particular Islamic State supporter, an older woman, actually, suggested reviving certain ancient Turkish methods of torture and murder that are so revolting I cannot bring myself to even describe them.
It must be understood that they are doing so for a reason. Just as Pallywood whips up hatred for Jews and for Israel, so these Islamic State videos create an excited passion among certain young Muslims throughout the Middle East and Europe.
The point of all the blood and the murder and the head-chopping is to create enthusiasm among young Muslim men.
These people are not to be trifled with. These are not cave-squatters.
They have tanks and they have taken over large parts of two countries.
And can you imagine what they would do with any old Jewish grandmother or child that they might come across? The word "compassion" is not in their dictionary. This thing - the Islamic State - whatever it is - needs to go away and it needs to go away soon, but that will not happen under the current American administration.
The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is a coward.
One might even say "chickenshit."
He knows better than anyone that political Islam is an enemy to western liberal society and it is an enemy that can no longer be ignored.
And, in the mean time, anecdotal evidence suggests that American youth on the elite campuses despise Israel and are indifferent to the Islamist head-choppers.
The head-choppers represent the exact opposite of western liberal values, such as democracy or freedom of speech or freedom of religion, but this does not bother soft and seemingly safe western progressive college students in the least.
The video below is by Ami Horowitz and, in fact, won the prestigious 2015 Hasby Award for "Best Pro-Israel Video."
The first part of the video shows a guy on campus waving around the black flag of the Islamic State.
The intention is to gauge student reaction. If you watch the video you will see that the students ignored him. Who knows how this thing is edited, but the intention is to show the indifference of University of California Berkeley students toward political Islam, the most fascistic political movement in the world today.
I suspect that were I a student in my early twenties that I would be likewise indifferent. The reason for this is because (one) the threat seems remote and (two) the concern seems politically tainted by the right-wing. All it takes, you must understand, to get most American university students to support or oppose any issue is to suggest that the opposite opinion is supported by the the Right.
And I say this as someone who speaks to you from a position of progressive-left apostasy.
What makes the video interesting, however, is the second segment wherein the guy is waving an Israeli flag. The Berkeley students included in the video are not the least bit indifferent toward Israel. Quite the contrary. They have very definite feelings toward Israel.
If waving the black flag of the Islamic State ruffled no feathers, waving the flag of the Jewish people stirred considerable hatred.
And that is precisely what is so disconcerting.
We are used to hatred for Jews coming from the Middle East, and the European elite, for trumped up charges. What we are somewhat less used to is youthful American hatred, which is why my reaction to San Francisco State University Jew-Hatred was somewhat raw.
I live in what is perhaps the safest place in the world for a Jewish person to live openly as a Jew, but this is also the place where hatred toward Israel is most prevalent in the United States.
Northern California is probably the most tolerant place on the planet... although just what it is about the Jewish people that requires tolerance remains a mystery, unless you believe that we are slaughtering Arabs like Nazis slaughtered my family.
From my view the United States is next up to bat, if you get me, and Obama has been a disaster because he stokes the flames of the hatred toward us. We can discuss just how that is. The United States will never be anything like Nazi Germany, but Jew hatred is emerging from the American Left due to the influence of the European Left and the Obama administration.
I am just sitting on a hill, watching it play out and observing the diaspora Jewish Left run for cover as they are driven from the non-Jewish Left.
And to my European brothers and sisters, you have no choice but to either run or fight, because no one is going to help you.
{I am sad to say.}
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.