Charleston to Jerusalem: Touched by Evil
No root cause. That was pure evil that walked into Charleston South Carolina’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church last Thursday and murdered nine African-American congregants at prayer. The search for the killer ended quickly – he is young, white and a racist of the worst kind.
He was caught. He confessed.
But for some people (namely Liberals) that wasn’t enough. They need something or somebody to blame other than the assassin.
Makes their day when, cued by Obama, they can find any pretext to paint every single American with the brush of racism.
Immediately after the massacre, they blamed guns. They blamed the Confederate Flag. They blamed Republicans and to make sure that nobody gets a pass they eyed all “white people” as the usual suspects. They blamed everything except what it was, the fact that some individuals are just plain rotten. Evil exists, period.
We call it the absurdity of the human condition.
We waited for a leader to give us healing and calm. We are still waiting.
We are still waiting. We are still waiting for a leader to console us whenever these tragic events occur. But this President is not that man.
Rather than offer words of comfort, last week he chose to scold us once again, saying: “Let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”
Clear enough? We are all at fault. We all pulled the trigger. We all have blood on our hands, according to our Scolder in Chief.
We the People are simply not good enough for this President. He prefers other people in other lands.
“Racism is still part of our DNA,” says our twice-elected African-American President with no hint of irony.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren remains the newsmaker of the hour through his revelations about Obama’s scornful attitude towards Israel. But Oren, in his book, “Ally,” likewise has words over Obama’s disdain for America.
“More alarming for me still,” writes Oren about Obama’s first book, “were Obama’s attitudes towards America.
“Vainly, I scoured ‘Dreams from My Father’ for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead. Instead, the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures.”
If America “can’t get no satisfaction” from this President, Israel has no chance.
Last year it happened in Jerusalem. Four rabbis at prayer were hacked to death by Palestinian Arab terrorists, but with this difference; these murderers were affiliated. They were motivated to commit bloodshed from the schooling they received at the feet of their political and religious leaders.
This past Friday the same collective hatred against the Jewish people took the life Danny Gonen, 25, who stopped to help an Arab in need.
In need to kill a Jew, as it turned out. In Israel such attacks are never from a “lone gunman.” They learn to hate and kill from mother’s milk.
We find nothing like this in Charleston. The killer acted alone. It was personal. He was attached to no larger movement.
He was committed to no cause other than to do evil. Ditto, for example, theassassins of JFK and John Lennon.
Most often the search for conspiracies and larger motives come up empty.
Some people are just that, wicked, and no other excuse or explanation will do. The “problem of evil” has been with us since the beginning.
King David wrestled with this throughout his Psalms.
Still, there is no solution. But we could use a leader gifted with an understanding heart to guide us through our most trying times.
Instead, we’ve got what we’ve got. We are on our own against the random brutes who stalk our world.
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
