As a pro-Israel rally unfolds in Washington, D.C., a substantial segment of the global population is condemning Israel’s war in Gaza, which has now killed over 10,000 Palestinians and displaced roughly 1.5 million civilians from their homes. Large pro-Palestinian demonstrations have become common around the world and in the United States.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette, however, is urging Americans to never forget Israel’s Oct. 7 nightmare. He draws a parallel between this situation and a more personal tragic event from four years ago in El Paso, Texas.
And when Israeli troops, who are damned if they do, damned if they don’t, enter the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas and prevent future attacks, the media narrative shifted to one that portrayed Israel as the aggressor. There was no collective sympathy toward Israel for being the victim of such heinous attacks on its people.
At the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres said that the attacks on Israel “did not happen in a vacuum” and urged the world to put recent events in context, appearing to excuse the horror by chalking it up to decades of alleged mistreatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
At universities in the United States, Jewish students are being harassed and threatened by mobs who claim to be worked up over the deaths of Palestinians. There are even reports of Jewish college students being told to shelter in place at some schools for their own protection. And on the streets of U.S. cities, troublemakers are tearing down posters with photos of kidnapped Israelis and throwing them in the trash, as some Jews push back and try to protect the posters — all of this captured on video.
For Mexican Americans, both the tragedy in Israel and the aftermath have a familiar echo. They remind us of what the mood was like throughout the southwest four years ago, after an attack on Mexicans and Mexican Americans at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas–an attack that left a community shattered.
