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Societies That Hate Jews Endanger Every Single Citizen

Pro-Hamas protesters outside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Photo: Ron Sachs via Reuters Connect

My father was not what you would call a philosemite. At the dinner table, he complained bitterly about the Jewish employee who supervised him when he got a job at a defense company, after his career as an insurance salesman ground to a halt in his late 40s.

My father would repeatedly refer to the Jewish man in obscene and racist terms, as my brother and I would look down at our plates. Our mother would remonstrate with him from across the dinner table, to no avail. To be fair, my father spoke about one of his Irish Catholic colleagues in similarly bigoted language, but the phrase he used to describe his Jewish supervisor was much worse than the man with the Irish last name he also disdained.

But for all the contempt my father expressed for his Jewish supervisor, he was a Zionist. Part of his Zionism was rooted in his admiration of Israel’s success, but it was also rooted in a desire not to repeat the horrors of World War II.

Dad knew full well that German Jew-hatred was a major factor in starting a war that cost 60 million people their lives. His own father, who returned from World War I a profoundly wounded human being, cried like a baby at the kitchen table in Harrisville, New Hampshire, when he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He had a premonition that he was going to lose one of his two sons in the ensuing war.

“And he did,” dad said. My father’s older brother, who joined the Marines when he was 17, died on Iwo Jima in early 1945 at the age of 20. “He saw three pitched battles by his 19th birthday,” Dad would say. “Tinian, Saipan, and Iwo Jima.”

Consequently, my father had a visceral and supernatural fear of antisemitism and the chaos it introduced into the world. That’s why he supported Israel. Anything that made it harder to kill Jews was a good thing — not just for Jews, but for non-Jews as well.

He vocalized his support for Israel when the UN General Assembly passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution in 1975. “What do they think they’re doing?” he asked. “Don’t they remember?” He viewed the Arab world’s open expression of hostility toward the Jews as a people as a harbinger of catastrophe — not just for the Jews, but Arabs as well. The past few decades of the region’s history confirm this assessment.

Three decades after his death, my father would be shocked to see the growing prevalence of antisemitism in American society where, according to the FBI, Jews are by far and away the most likely targets of violence because of their identity. For him, no patriotic American could hate the Jews as a people because to do so would be to side with the forces that turned Europe into a disaster zone in the mid-20th century. “Don’t they remember?” he would ask. (No Dad, they don’t, and I’m sorry.)

My father, a lifelong Republican, would be shocked at Tucker Carlson’s efforts to portray Hitler as something less than the world-ending villain he was in a recent interview. As shocking as it is to hear such an assessment, this interview was preceded by a flood of commentary from the left portraying Israel — not Hamas — as the villain in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre. In sum, the left and the right have contributed to the diminishment of what used to be a strategic asset that kept the crazies from power in the West: Contempt for Jew-haters.

Despite his disdain for his Jewish supervisor, my father understood that those who hate Jews cannot and should not be trusted. Maybe this is something French military officer Georges Picquart understood during the Dreyfus Affair, which rocked France between 1894 and 1906. Picquart was no philosemite, and according to The New York Times, was “casually antisemitic.”

Nevertheless, he spent a year in jail as a result of his role in the ultimately successful effort to absolve Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, falsely charged with spying for the Germans in the 1890s.

Picquart’s efforts did not just help the falsely accused Dreyfus, or French Jews, but France itself. As long as France falsely blamed Dreyfus for espionage, France would be unable to acknowledge who the real threat was — Ferdinand Esterhazy, who had been spying for the Germans for years. Blaming Dreyfus the Jew obscured the real problem: a general air of incompetence in the French military establishment — an incompetence that played a huge role in France’s disastrous defeat at the hands of Hitler’s armies in the mid-20th century.

The truth is that as long as elites blame Jews for problems in the societies they lead, they will remain unable to confront the source of the threats to their well-being.

But there is hope. When my father died after a long period of confronting his demons — and helping others to do the same — hundreds of people showed up at his wake. A man in his fifties came through the reception line and offered me and my brother condolences over our father’s death.

“I worked with your dad,” he told us. “I learned so much from him. He was a really good man. He was very kind to me.”

“What’s your name?” my brother asked. He told us. We both shook his hand earnestly and thanked him before he moved on to speak to our mother. My brother and I struggled to keep our mouths from opening in shock as we looked at one another. It was the Jewish supervisor our father had routinely vilified at the dinner table years before. Wide-eyed, we nodded at one another before extending our hands to the next mourning well-wisher, awash with astonishment and gratitude.

Dexter Van Zile is managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism, a news site published by the Middle East Forum. His opinions are his own.

The post Societies That Hate Jews Endanger Every Single Citizen first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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