“Kristallnacht” was the 1938 German Nazi pogrom attacking Jews with violent atrocities. (My own forebears got out months earlier.)
The word came to mind while reading a January 19 AP report which begins, “Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank, setting fire to a series of structures . . . in an overnight onslaught that has become a common phenomenon in the occupied territory.” Accompanied by “the sound of gunfire, screaming and barking.” Homes and cars were burned.
Israel’s military said soldiers were searching the area to make arrests — but none were reported.
Such vicious unprovoked assaults upon ordinary Palestinians have indeed been constant. Perpetrated by racist religious settler fanatics believing God wants them to reprise the Old Testament’s conquest of Canaan slaughtering its original inhabitants. Israel’s regime, captive to these extremists, hardly pretends to restrain them. Only going through the motions, as in this latest episode at Khirbet al-Sidra, reported above. Practically no settlers are ever punished for such crimes.
They apparently see an open door for them, while the world’s eyes are on the far greater ones in Gaza, with over 70,000 killed and most housing there destroyed, the population reduced to starvation and wretchedness. While Israel works to impede humanitarian help. Warring against the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, whose headquarters have now been bulldozed, Israelis whooping in jubilation on the rubble.
At least the Gaza monstrosity had the pretext of October 7 and continuing Hamas enmity. There’s not even any such pretext for West Bank settler savagery.
“Never again” was the line after the Holocaust. But these Israelis are themselves taking a page from the Nazi playbook.
And then there’s Minnesota, likewise with ethnic “others” singled out for brutalization. Today brings an AP report about U.S. citizen ChongLy Thao, of St. Paul (whose family had escaped from Communist Laos in the 1970’s). His home was attacked by a brace of masked ICE agents, with no warrant, breaking down his door, pointing guns at his family and screaming at them. Thao tried to get his ID, but the ICE men said they didn’t want to see it.
Instead, they handcuffed him, in his underwear, took him outdoors in frigid weather, drove him away, then exposed him outside again — and demanded his ID.
Later they drove him him back, viewed his ID, and left with no apology.
Broadcast video of other ICE operations shows shockingly cruel brutality. Its gauleiter Gregory Bovino insists everything they’re doing is lawful, proper, even “moral.” Kristi Noem’s DHS justified the Thao attack as having sought some sex offenders — one of whose first name supposedly matched that of the owner of a car borrowed by Thao’s son. AP’s report finds nothing connecting any sex offenders to the Thaos. So the regime just makes stuff up — as usual.
Why aren’t all these ICE pricks’ violent crimes prosecuted by local law enforcement and grand juries? Certainly Renee Good’s murder should be. The regime says it won’t allow Minnesota authorities to impinge upon its own investigation of that case — an investigation which the regime meantime deems unnecessary. They also say all these federal officers are immune from prosecution. Utter bunk. This is still a nation of laws where all government personnel (though not, apparently, the president) are accountable to the public and not free to commit crimes with impunity.
Or is it?
The Rational Pessimist 
