RUTHFULLY YOURS

Quite frankly, Western civilization is losing the capacity to hate hatred. Far too many Europeans and Americans are engaging in outright denial of the most heinous and evil occurrences across the globe. Too many people will not truly acknowledge “the age old fact that God’s children are capable of the most horrid things.” Consequently, the West refuses to articulate a message of resistance, mobilize itself, and destroy the evil.

In his essay titled “Home Is Where to Learn How To Hate” Leo Rosten lays out a compelling argument asserting that denying evil is a result of “never having been taught to hate properly: that is (a) relevantly; (b) in proportion, fitting the thing or person hated; (c) without blind rage; and (d) without guilt.” Thus, we find a young woman smiling and holding a sign that says “will trade racists for rapists” and calling for women to cover up so as not to offend. What an odious acceptance of evil. That the horrific crime of rape is accepted in order to avoid the alleged appearance of racism against the perpetrators is mind-boggling. Such sanctimonious depravity needs to be called out. And ignoring Islamic jurisprudence which permits sex-slavery, destruction of pre-Islamic antiquities, and pedophilia merely paves the way for our eventual enslavement if we continue to be meek bystanders.

In fact, Rosten maintains that “not ever to hate is to surrender a just scale of decent values. Not ever to hate is to drain love of its meaning. Not to hate anyone is as crazy as to hate everyone.”

Furthermore, “a world of automatic indiscriminate loving is suicidal — for the good and loving are enslaved or exterminated by those who gratify their cruelty and their lust.” Consider the rapacious cruelty of ISIS and the moral cowardice of a world that will not admit that “neither truth nor justice nor compassion can possibly survive unprepared and unarmed.”

Instead we see an ardent desire to literally disarm law-abiding people while simultaneously and deliberately erasing the facts about our enemies’ intentions. Iran can chant “Death to America” and Kerry superciliously lectures Americans and ignores genuine concerns. Obama dismisses beheadings, amputations, boiling of humans, sexual assaults, kidnapping, stoning, burnings, burials of live human beings, and genocide with mealy-mouthed word games and double talk. He divests the peace warriors of the vital information needed to understand our enemies’ intentions. His flights from truth do not mitigate the intentions of our enemies. Ending the blacklisting of U.S. Islamic charities that are helping to finance terrorist activities is unconscionable. Bribing journalists to paint a favorable coverage of the Iranian nuclear deal is reprehensible. How can we defeat what we cannot identify if their wicked objectives and actions are deliberately camouflaged?

As Rosten emphasizes, “[b]lind hatred is, of course, horrid and indefensible. But hate need not be blind. Hate can be clear-eyed — and moral.” In fact, hate “can be enlisted in the service of decency and kindness.” How many pleas are required from the Yazidi child, or the Christian priest, or the Israeli mother, or the Shia Muslim child to know that silence from the world is but another form of absolute sheer brutality?

In a similar vein, Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik in his essay titled “The Virtue of Hate” states that “hate is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful. While Moses commanded us ‘not to hate our brother in our hearts,’ a man’s immoral actions can serve to sever the bonds of brotherhood between himself and humanity.” In fact, “[r]egarding a rasha, a Hebrew term for the hopelessly wicked, it is clearly stated that one is obligated to hate him.”

In fact, “hate can be virtuous when one is dealing with the frightfully wicked.” In Judaism, there is the belief that “God affords every human being the opportunity to choose his or her moral fate;” we are not mere puppets; we have free will to choose our moral pathway.

Thus, during the most serious holiday of Yom Kippur, when Jews ask for mercy and forgiveness, it is at the end of the closing prayer or neilah that “thoughts turn to the utterly evil and unrepentant.” Towards, the end of this prayer, one states “Our Father, our King, avenge, before our eyes, the spilled blood of your servants.'” So after 25 hours of fasting, meditating, and asking for forgiveness, Jews turn their attention “to those who gave no thought to forgiveness… and assert ‘Father, do not forgive them, for they know well what they do.'”

Soloveichik asserts that “God gave humanity the means for its own redemption,” and people will be judged by the choices they make. Thus, “while no human being is denied the chance to become worthy of God’s love, not every human being engages in actions so as to be worthy of that love, and those unworthy of divine love do not deserve our love either.” Contrast the belief of the rabbis who “strongly believe that we go to heaven precisely because we deserve to be there as a result of doing good deeds on this earth with the jihadists’ goals of destroying the world in order to advance to his or her afterlife.

Of course, the “danger inherent in hatred is that it must be very limited, directed only at the most evil and unrepentant.” Thus, “[a]n Israeli mother is right to raise her child to hate Saddam Hussein, but she would fail as a parent if she taught him to despise every Arab.” This recalls Rosten’s admonition that we “must learn how to manage hate, how to channel it, how to use it where hate is justified — and how to teach our children to do these things, too.”

In fact, the “opposite of hate… is not love; it is hypocrisy.” While some may say we need to understand the evildoer — “is it not true that the more we understand some people or acts, the more we detest them — and should?” Islamic terrorists deserve our unqualified hatred for their malevolent deeds. There is no justification for the carnage and destruction they commit.

Thus, I pledge that “I, for one, hate fanatics (regardless of race, color, or creed) who are ready to kill me or you or our children in the detestable certainty that they are absolutely right.” That goes for Ku Klux Klan and Black Lives Matters activists who incite murder.

Thus, I pledge that “I hate injustice, therefore I hate those who treat others unjustly (because of their color, or creed, or simply because they are powerless).” That goes for Lois Lerner, Hillary Clinton, and Loretta Lynch, who blatantly lie about their misdeeds and cause grievous harm.

Thus, I pledge that “I hate those who teach others to hate those who disagree with them: I loathe demagogues.” The Iranian leader is my enemy when he demands the death of my country. And anyone who would actively support his actions deserves my opprobrium as well.

Thus, I pledge that “I hate anyone who hates indiscriminately — without hard thought, for irrational reasons, or out of false principles. I think my hatreds are the result of careful thought, reason, and moral principle.”

How can we not react to evil except with the “most profound moral outrage?” When will we rise in a strong chorus and cry out with intense moral passion as Soloveichik writes:

“Let the terrorist die unshriven.

Let him go to hell.

Sooner a fly to God than he.”