CAN AMERICANS RECOGNIZE THEIR ENEMY?

 by Sheryl Young

as posted at ASSOCIATED CONTENT

October, 2007

(This article has been published and copyrighted. No portion of it may be reprinted without permission.)    

It was the mid 1950’s in a quiet American suburb. A little girl was being raised in the neighborhood’s only Jewish family in peaceful co-existence alongside other faiths. But then some new folks moved in and began spreading rumors about the Jewish people. "Jews drink blood and sprout horns at night”, they would say.

Soon, many neighbors wouldn’t associate with her family. Some began spitting and throwing stones at them. Once they bloodied the girl’s grandfather who had managed to escape Europe before the Holocaust. Finally, amid shouts of the worst word that can be said about a Jewish person, her family sold their house and moved. That little girl was me.

Many Americans prefer to remember the fifties as peaceful times. But Nazi youth training camps were flourishing in the Northern and Midwestern states while KKK rampages were still taking place in the south.

Today, amid the news of thwarted terrorist plans, we are still living in a fantasy world. Critics of current U.S. military involvement claim that if Israel would just give up their land, everything would calm down. But there are almost 5,900,000 Jewish people in America(1). The terrorists have voiced plans to kill Jews everywhere; that includes the USA. Next in their lineup for destruction are all Christians and every other faith – including Muslims who don’t support the dream of achieving a totally Islamic world through brutality.

If the terrorists ever have their way with America, there go our precious “choices”; their brand of Islam does not tolerate homosexuality or abortion. They will imprison all those involved and some Islamic countries still carry a death sentence for those offenses. They will most certainly do away with free speech. But while the terrorists yell “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”, the avidly anti-war Americans are opposed to stopping them.

TV personalities continue saying we should “sit down and talk nice” with the extremists and the audience nods their heads to the Hollywood icons and the wishy-washy United Nations. Our schools suspend children for carrying Bibles while teaching them how to have fake jihads so they “value diversity” and don’t blame anyone for 9/11.

At our airports, authorities are so intent on appearing tolerant that they’re bending over backward to avoid seeming judgmental. In “Profile Me, Please”, a recent Tampa Tribune commentary, naturalized American citizen Sam Rashid who is of Pakistani heritage recalls his last security gate experience. With his obvious Middle Eastern looks he was allowed to walk right through while the fair-complexioned blond teenage girl behind him was taken aside and fully searched. Rashid himself was upset at this paradox! He wrote: “I asked myself, What’s wrong with this picture? I would have felt a lot safer had I been pulled out of line”(2). Thank you, Sam!  

Taking the prize for ridiculous is the wild insistence that Geneva Convention rules should be applied to captured terrorists. How many times must it be explained to us - the Geneva Convention was for armies of  countries in a “normal” war. These are independent guerilla groups who act in their own interest. They are men who chop heads off on TV and train their women and children to blow people up. Sleeper cells are real and growing everywhere.

While our publicity-seeking politicians criticize President Bush to whomever will listen, the terrorists laugh. They see America divided, and big things are only accomplished by those who are united.

We are at the point of rejecting our own intuition and common sense. Because of this, most citizens don’t know what’s going on in their neighborhoods or schools – and if they did know of a threat they couldn’t tell anyone for fear of being called a judgmental bigot. Not wanting to get involved, they retreat to their comfortable, entertainment-cocooned environments.

In a recent Zogby poll on American citizen awareness, only 42 percent of those surveyed could list the three branches of our government. Only one-fourth could name just two of nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices. But seventy-five percent could name the Three Stooges and all seven of Snow White’s dwarves(3). One reality TV show recently interviewed twenty-something fashion models. They didn’t know who Condoleeza Rice is and one of them thought George Bush was Vice-President (4).

Who’s our real enemy? Is it the terrorists? Maybe America is its own worst enemy. As we continue to be freedom-spoiled with sensitive egos, displaying diminished resolve in hard times and a willingness to give in to everything that's popular, we become an increasingly easy target.  ♦♦

 RESOURCES (No direct quotes):

1 Jewish Virtual Library, “Jewish Population of the United States”, retrieved 2/21/06 at: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html.

2 “Profile Me, Please”, Sam Rashid, The Tampa Tribune, Sunday Sept. 10, 2006, Commentary, Section p. 1 column 4 and p. 5 column 4.

3 Zogby poll shown on Fox TV, “Hannity & Colmes” 8/14/06, 9:00-10:00 EST. Also:

§   Brit Hume, Zogby Poll: Most Americans Can Name Three Stooges, But Not Three Branches of Gov’t, August 15, 2006, FoxNews.

§   Zogby International: “Gold Rush, Pop Culture Trivia” by AOL and Mark Burnett Productions, retrieved 8/17/06 at:          http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060814/20060814005496.html?.v=1.

4 “The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency”, Oxygen Television Network, “Step It Up” episode, August 9, 2006.

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