Where Are The “Cease Hamas Fire Now” Posters?

It’s crazy how some truths are so engrained we end up just taking them for granted. Take this well-established whopper: the Jews are humanity’s favorite scapegoat. That sordid reality has been so true for so long that saying it today only draws a yawn.

Since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, we have seen this “favorite scapegoat” phenomenon displayed in all its glory.

The scapegoat-mongers, of course, first had to overcome an annoying wrinkle: those 1200 Israelis who were murdered by Hamas didn’t lend themselves neatly to scapegoat status. But sure enough, because they were Jews, that proved to be just a wrinkle. Within days, the scapegoat locomotive had revved up. By the time Israel began retaliating to eliminate the Hamas threat, the “blame only Israel” engines were roaring.

Country after country, activist group after activist group lined up to join the roar and demand that Israel “cease fire now.” It never occurred to anyone to ask someone else to stop their aggression.

It’s only when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stunned the world on Dec. 20 with an extraordinary explosion of logic that some people did a double take.

“What is striking to me,” Blinken said, “is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying— demanding of Hamas that is hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that.”

This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that.

How many justice-seeking groups have had the courage to scream that logic on campuses and on city streets? How many “Cease Hamas Fire Now” posters have we seen? Last anyone checked, that number was zero.

Blinken’s simple logic is that the group that murdered, mutilated, raped and burned alive 1200 people on October 7 should bear some responsibility for the consequences of its actions. In other words, it is HAMAS that must stop firing, not the country that was forced to retaliate. It is HAMAS that is most responsible for the tragic deaths and humanitarian disaster it has knowingly and cowardly unleashed on its own people.

If those hysterical rioters accusing Israel of being genocidal monsters had any sense of justice, they would be demanding that the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre cease their murderous aggression, return the hostages and put the interest of their people first.

If they really cared about the welfare of Palestinians, they would have demonstrated long ago in support of the millions of Palestinians who have suffocated and been brutalized over the years in Lebanon and Jordan. Why have they kept so quiet about that other Palestinian suffering? Here’s a hint: the Jewish state had nothing to do with it.

For those of you who are new to this single-minded obsession with Jews, one fact from the United Nations tells you all you need to know. Since 2015, there have been more UN resolutions against Israel than all other nations combined. Yes, that includes Syria, Russia, Iran, China and all of the planet’s top gangsters. That is radical Jewish chosenness.

“Horrific massacres of unarmed civilians are, unfortunately, taking place right now in South Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Syria, and Darfur,” NYU Professor Susie Linfield wrote recently in Quillette. “Unforgivably, the so-called international community usually ignores them.” Why? You guessed it: Jews and Israel have nothing to do with any of it.

Even terror groups get special treatment when it comes to Jews.

“In recent years, the Left’s embrace of terror seemed to have ebbed,” Linfield writes. “The notable exception has been groups devoted to the destruction of Israel: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, all of which still garner enthusiasm and deluded admiration.”

This deluded admiration may seem inexplicable, but I have a theory that may help explain it.

After the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, for obvious reasons much of the world was deprived of its convenient and invaluable Jewish scapegoat. But that is a centuries-old habit that is hard to shake. So, eventually, with the birth of Israel and the subsequent wars the Jewish state was forced to fight, the good old days of “blaming the Jews” for everything people hate came back with a vengeance. And thanks to wily terrorist groups like Hamas who are geniuses at provocation, that favorite scapegoat status seems secure, if dressed up now as a powerful modern state.

Evidently, nothing riles up the world quite like modern Jews who have the chutzpah to defend themselves.

That’s why we’re not likely to see too much pressure on Hamas or any “Cease Hamas Fire Now” posters. While Hamas may indeed be guilty as sin, luckily for them they’re not Jews.