Jewish Rutgers Student Protests At Event Featuring IDF Soldier

[Cristiano]

This is powerful. Never Again means never again, and it is happening again. He is incredibly brave.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Never Again means never again....

That phrase means different things to different people, and it's pretty much the template for the divide between liberal and conservative mindsets. I'm talking the brain wiring that informs our reactions at a largely subconscious level, rather than the very loosely associated political party alignments that use those terms as labels.

From the liberal perspective, "Never again" means "Never again for any group of people under the sun. We are all one in humanity."

To a conservative person, however, "Never again" means "Never again to me and my people."

In Israel, both these sentiments are born of the deep trauma of the Holocaust. A liberal mind would take that historic travesty as an object lesson in what we must prevent from happening again anywhere in the world. A conservative mind, on the other hand, is willing to go to any length to protect themselves and their group -- the Us -- from harm caused by the Other. And that's the side that has control over Israel.

I get the trauma, even if it doesn't sear as deeply for me as it would for anyone of Jewish heritage. To understand the origins of their visceral hatred for the Arab Them isn't an excuse, any more than I excuse the Holocaust itself while still understanding the emotional underpinnings of post-WWI Germany. Jews aren't inherently more noble than any other group of people. Their cultural suffering -- like most suffering -- has resulted in psychological damage rather than an enlightened state of mind.

I have no clue how any of this ends well.