On Republican Neo-Nazism, Hamas and Israel: An Epidemic of Moral Cowardice

I write today about an epidemic. It’s not biological. It’s an epidemic of cowardly, immoral and unprincipled decisions by leaders across the political spectrum. Our last biological epidemic — Covid 19 — was a tiny invisible pathogen that made us physically sick. This epidemic of moral cowardice is right in everybody’s face and it’s eating away at the civic bonds that hold societies together.

Three examples preoccupy me personally: The Republican Party today has a neo-Nazi problem that it refuses to confront. The progressive left today has a pro-Hamas problem that it refuses to confront. And the Jewish people and Israel have a radical Jewish settler problem that they refuse to confront.

While this may seem an odd grouping, its elements have more in common than you might think. The neo-Nazis in the Republican camp want a white Christian America from sea to shining sea — empty of as much diversity as possible. The radical settlers in the West Bank want a Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — empty of as many Palestinian Arabs as possible. And Hamas jihadists also want an Islamic state in Palestine from the same river to the same sea — empty of as many Israeli Jews as possible.

Those three examples have other things in common. One is they just don’t care anymore about hiding their excesses or their agendas. It’s all out there online or on YouTube. They are not embarrassed.

Another is how much they feed off each other — how each uses the worst behavior of the others as both justification and fuel for their own twisted views. Republican neo-Nazis exploit global condemnation of the Israeli settlers’ violent behavior in the West Bank — on top of Israel’s excesses in Gaza — as license to now openly flaunt their antisemitism.

Jewish supremacist settlers, and those in the Israeli government who support them, use Hamas’s savagery as a moral permission slip for their own lawless marauding against Palestinians in the West Bank. Lately, the Israeli right has begun a vociferous campaign to prevent the prosecution of Israel prison guards caught on camera abusing a Palestinian prisoner.