I can't help reacting to Ms. Malavisi's comment (In Search of Moral Clarity in Israel, October 14, 2023).

She says she does not intend to take sides. Then immediately does.

She prefaces this with an aside about the Ukraine/Russia war: “there is a clear side to which one might align,” and suggests clarity is missing in the war against the destruction of Israel and the west. As an “historian,” she must realize that there are people who believe Russia is in the right.

There are clear sides to take in Israel, and doing so actually takes in “the bigger picture” that Ms. Malavisi seems to ignore entirely: There is Good and Evil in the World. There is a moral religious battle taking place. There is an ethic that values life, the Judaeo-Christian one that has given us the blessings of the world we live in, fighting an Islamic cult of death, one that barbarically dismisses the value of human life, and obscenely uses our compassion to further their cause.

This might actually explain the things that “makes no sense” according to Ms. Malavisi: that Hamas would viciously destroy the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, while Israel responds taking care no other nation ever has or would to try to minimize (not so innocent) Arab death. Of course, Ms. Malavisi puts the killing done by Hamas in the passive voice, but she has not taken sides.

Because Israel was compassionate, offering peace over and over again, freeing a thousand terrorists (some of them masterminds of the October 7 onslaught) for Gilad Shalit, allowing more and more guest workers from Gaza (many turning out to be spies laying the groundwork for the destruction of October 7), we have the disaster that is upon us.

To Ms. Malavisi's “very simple points,” I say You are an Anti-Semite if your criticism only shows up around the Israeli government. Where is the criticism of Pakistan driving undocumented asylum seekers back to Afghanistan? Where is the criticism over the excesses committed by Ukrainian forces? Where is the hand-wringing about poor dead Russians? or about the killing of homosexuals by the likes of Iran and Hamas? about the hundred thousand civilians killed by Bashar al-Assad with inspiration from the likes of Chemical Ali? about increased crime and the places police are wary of because of the influence of Islamic emigration throughout the West?

The truth is that no one cares more for the Arabs that call themselves palestinians than the Israelis. Where is Egypt to take in the dying babies? They don't want the Palestinians. How about we give them all free passage to Iran? The Shia Iranians would not treat their Sunni visitors (whom they regard as heretics when not using them to attack Jews) with great respect. How about Hamas actually letting UN teams in to the Al-Shifa to evacuate every “innocent” without trying to sneak soldiers out in the ambulances? Hamas won't. They shoot their own to stop them from leaving.

Ms. Malavisi's inflammatory re-writing of history further betrays her notions of moral clarity. She just spouts counter-factual “palestinian” talking points, and betrays her lack of understanding of the the present situation.

She is right in one thing. The United States and the West should take responsibility, for the UNRWA schools that teach hate, for pressuring the Israelis over and over again to negotiate peace with monsters, each time ending with more Jewish death, for perpetuating the UNRWA one-people only definition of refugee, for tolerating the growth of hate on college campuses, for negotiating with Iran, for being weak against Russia and China, for abandoning the Afghan people, for showing we are morally weak, for denying truth, for forgetting that there is a Good and an Evil, and for letting Hamas and the Palestinian authority steal from and compromise their constituents over and over.

It occurs to me that the morality that Ms. Malavisi represents, if allowed to ascend, is the death toll of Western values and civilization.

I pray that most of us know better.