When silence really is violence.

RightBooks4Kids usually posts a weekly roundup of books/education news on Fridays, but this week I’m doing something a little different. We will be back to regular programming soon.

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I’m not Jewish. I don’t have any idea what the Jewish community is feeling right now, nor do I have the correct wording to express my deep sadness about what happened over the past six days. I’m merely an American citizen, watching from across an ocean, as horrors are flashed across my smartphone and television. I’m sickened at the atrocities, heartbroken for the parents who lost their children, and flattened at the scope of the terror.

I’m also angry. Very angry.

I make it a point to raise my children to not become snowflakes. Rather I encourage them to be tough. Take criticism. Learn to listen to alternate viewpoints. Stop feeling sorry for themselves. In teaching them these lessons, I’ve often scoffed at the uber-syrupy language of the left, trotted out to soften the blow of real life for the rising next generation. Phrases like, “silence is violence” is on my blacklist because it’s usually used with absolutely no nuance or real meaning. It’s just parroted by social justice warriors whenever they demand you do something. Anything!

But in the face of the week’s literal bloodshed and murder, I’m finding, for the first time in my life, that silence really is violence.

Since Saturday I have watched in utter disbelief at the incredible audacity of student groups, college administrators, media pundits, and politicians all but lend their support for what is happening to the Jews in Israel. Of course, they cloak it in soft platitudes and “both sides” equivocation, but the speed at which they released their statements of “we stand with Palestinians” after Jewish women are raped and paraded around cities at the hands of Hamas, is really something to behold. I have had to restrain my fury.

The only thing that might make me a little more angry than uninformed college students who are chanting, “From the river to the sea!” would be the people who are saying nothing at all. For the first day or so, I absolutely understood why certain people might not be making statements. I don’t know their lives or circumstances and we all deal with tragedy in our own way. Not everyone needs to jump on social media to proclaim their outrage about every single issue or event. I get that.

But it’s been about a week and I’m beginning to lose patience for people who routinely make it their job to have an opinion about every single situation, not having a thing to say about what is happening in the Middle East. When you monetize the heck out of providing commentary about everything happening in DC, in culture, and in our world but you can only muster one Instagram story saying, “I’m not an expert on geopolitics, but I’m sad for both Israel and Palestine right now.” Listen, I report the news on Instagram every day. I follow thousands of accounts that, like mine, share commentary and opinions about what is happening around the globe. Their silence is specific and targeted and it is its own brand of violence.

And why’s that?

We are watching a new and unsettlingly large wave of Jew-hatred surge in our country and abroad. When over a thousand Jews are killed in a day and don’t have unilateral condemnation worldwide, you know something is wrong, but that’s where we are. Honestly, imagine this happening with any other people group, anywhere else in the world. To bring it a bit closer to home, imagine this happening in Connecticut. 1000 residents of the state are murdered in a 24-hour period and you have rallies all over the globe with protestors waving the flags of the region to which the terrorist organization belonged? Those same people on loudspeakers screaming, “Revolution!" I mean, think about it. We watched the single largest killing of the Jewish people since the Holocaust and some people are engaging in whataboutism, trying to rationalize the reasoning behind people putting paraglider images on Pro-Palestine marches.

And others are just silent.

In actuality, the silence is louder than the ignorant shouting because it allows the apathy for what is happening to seep further into the DNA of our country and of the global landscape. When we don’t loudly step out and say, “THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE” or try to sidestep a conversation because someone says we aren’t considering this and that, we lose a little bit of our humanity.

The sentiment stated above is made evident by those who persist in silence. For the individuals who do not have what it takes to come and speak their minds, for whatever reason, I can’t help thinking you’re a coward at best and an anti-Semite at worst. With no opinion, you are practically asking for that title. Is that what you want to be known for? Is that what you want to be labeled?

Jewish people have, of course, always known there’s a sector of the global population that wants them dead. They live knowing they are hated. Most of the people reading this have no clue what that feels like. I know I don’t.

What I do know is that last weekend we watched children, women, and entire families be hunted, maimed, and filmed and now we are watching the unraveling of humanity again with the deafening silence coming from so many.