This week, the Associated Press—the pinnacle of mainstream media—demonstrated its inability to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil. They published a lengthy article on the suffering of Hezbollah terrorists following last year’s pager attack, portraying them as victims rather than as Iran’s proxies and one of the chief manifestations of evil in our time. In doing so, they not only revealed a complete lack of moral compass but may also be portending the destruction of Western civilization
Most of us have heard the teaching about “boiling frogs.” The idea is that if you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water, it will immediately jump out. But if you put it in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the temperature, it will stay in the water until it boils to death. It is an absolute fallacy, as frogs have internal heat detection systems; but it is a great analogy as to how human beings can destroy themselves a gradual step at a time without realizing it.
This is what has been happening to Western culture since the attacks of October 7th. And if we don't stop the process quickly, modern civilization as we know it will be destroyed.
Western civilization is not based on industrialization. Rather, it is founded on accepting and integrating the values found in the Bible—both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. At the most basic level, this includes the Ten Commandments, the Torah, and the many teachings of Jesus: the rejection of enslaving other human beings; acting rightly and righteously; and, most clearly, recognizing the difference between good and evil and fighting evil whenever it raises its ugly head
But since October 7, 2023, Western culture has been repudiating those basic values, and step by step moving towards a value system based on hate, anger, bigotry, and selfishness (as opposed to the selflessness of Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus). It has been a gradual progression—seen on both the left and the right of the political spectrum—perpetuated and encouraged by a self-indulgent mainstream media, and grown exponentially through the manipulation of the darkest aspects of the human psyche. From a religious perspective, Western culture has, for 22 months, been going down a pathway that can only be described as the manifestation of the “evil inclination” (Judaism), or the work of Satan (Christianity).
If we do not stop this progression down the road of evil soon, it may be too late.
Let's just review the last 22 months, and see how our culture has been moving towards evil a gradual step at a time.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel in ways more brutal and evil than anything seen since the Middle Ages: murder, rape, torture, and the kidnapping of over 1,200 civilians. It was even worse than the Nazi regime, which tried to conceal its atrocities in concentration camps, because these Hamas perpetrators proudly recorded and shared their acts as if they were admirable. The entire world was shocked, condemning them as the ultimate manifestation of evil in human form for the heinous crimes they committed.
Within weeks, the head of the snake of evil started to expose itself through anti-Israel statements being made by social influencers like Candace Owens, Jackson Hinkle, Jake Shields, and Lucas Gage on the political right; and Rep. Ihlan Omar, Rep. Rashid Tlaib, and celebrities Ice Cube, Bella Hadid, Emma Watson, and Joy Reid (who by Oct. 11 was already blaming Hamas’ attack on Israel) on the political left. While the majority of the world was still in shock after viewing the evil of Hamas, these influencers and others like them were blaming Israel, rather than recognizing the true evil inherent in Hamas. They ignored the reality that Hamas defines itself as a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, and, like the Brotherhood, is totally committed to the entire destruction and death of every Jew (and non-Muslim) in the world.
These Jew-haters couched their comments as “anti-Zionism,” but, as has repeatedly been demonstrated (and was illustrated so beautifully through the words of Lord Jonathan Sacks), anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. It is the 21st century version of the world’s oldest hatred. Through constant media exposure of Jew-hating celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Ariana Grande, and others—including some secular Jews like Seth Rogen and Joaquin Phoenix, who reportedly hate their own religion as much as any non-Jewish anti-Semite—the Hollywood community became a hotbed for castigating Israel. This environment also contributed to some portraying Hamas as “freedom fighters.” This became so prevalent that. at the 2024 Academy Awards, the majority of attendees wore pins with the symbol of two red hands. These ignorant celebrities thought this was a symbol of freedom, when in actuality it is a symbol explicitly referencing the beatings and murder of two Jews in 2000. That evening, statement after statement was made about the “victims” in Gaza, and how Israel’s response was too extreme, despite the fact that over 100 hostages were still being tortured as captives in Hamas tunnels.
It didn’t take long before people like Candace Owens to start expressing hatred not only towards Israel, but towards Jews: questioning the Holocaust, denying the experiments of Nazi Dr. Mengele, claiming that Judaism is a devil worshipping cult of pedophiles, and even blaming Jews for the death of JFK. Other influencers like Nick Fuentes started rewriting history and describing Hitler as “awesome and really f***ing cool” and qualitatively no different than Churchill or Roosevelt. More and more social media influencers like Cenk Uyger and Dave Smith (a formerly rarely employed standup comedian who is a secular Jew who rejects his own religion and has never even been to Israel, although he is happy to blame Israel for everything) jumped on the bandwagon, attacking Israel in order to gain their own level of financial success.
These influencers had an effect on American and Western society. Pro-Hamas demonstrations, couched as pro-Palestinian freedom rallies, started to infiltrate our culture. The Academy Awards were in March of 2024, and by the spring of that year college campuses around the country were filled with ignorant students protesting in support of Hamas and even preventing Jewish students from being allowed into college libraries.
Step by step, outrage at the evil of Hamas shifted to anti-Zionism, then pure Jew hatred. By 2025, the atmosphere had so shifted to hate in our culture that even some Jews were starting to condemn Israel and support Hamas and its allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis The fact that these Iranian proxies want not only the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews, but the destruction of the United States itself, seemed not to matter. The reality that over 30,000 rockets had been launched from Gaza towards Israel, that Hezbollah had launched over 10,000 rockets and missiles, or that the Houthis were launching daily ballistic missiles at Israel didn't make a difference. It had become fashionable to hate Israel and, as a result, all Jews.
This is not about anti-Semitism, even though there is truth to the old statement that “Jews are the canary in the coal mine.” Historically we can see that if a culture accepts anti-Semitism, it soon accepts all forms of hate. And this is what we are now finding in Western culture, as evidenced by the AP article, which portrays Hezbollah as innocent victims, denying the many thousands of attacks that they have launched at Israel and their repeated commitment to destroying that nation.
The AP article is significant, because it is so mainstream. It is a demonstration that as a culture, over the last 22 months, too many people have lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil. It is frightening that our culture seems to now have an inability to tell the difference between Israel, which has been brutally attacked, and Hamas and Hezbollah, which are proxies of Iran and committed to the destruction of America and the creation of a worldwide caliphate ruled by Sharia law.
This blurring of the lines between good and evil translates into all aspects of our culture, and is a symptom of a disease that could rot all of Western civilization from the inside out.
Zohran Mamdani is an avowed Marxist and anti-Semite who is running for mayor in New York City, and currently is ahead in the polls by 19% against his closest competitor. Moreover, he is even being endorsed by Jewish leaders despite his history of Jew hatred. Clergy on a national level are supporting concepts that are antithetical to their religions’ doctrine. such as gender mutilation and gender fluidity. Candidates for national office in this country are promoting the elimination of borders in favor of amnesty for all illegal aliens. White supremacist influencers like Fuentes preach hatred against blacks, and this is mirrored by black influencers like Ibram Kendi preaching hatred towards whites, while Congressman Summer Lee, a black woman, has introduced in Congress a resolution that all descendants of slaves should get reparations paid for by the government.
There is truth to the saying that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, and over the last months, too many good people have been staying silent as step by step our culture moves towards a precipice. And if we fall off that edge, Western civilization as we know it will be over--supplanted by a mixture of anarchy, religious fanaticism, and barbarity.
Most educated people recognize that Israel is the front line of defense in a war against the West. The enemies of Israel would attack the United States just as vehemently as they attack Israel if they could. They call Israel the “Little Satan” with America being the “Great Satan.” Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. It is the only place in the region where people can observe any religion they choose, be it Muslim, Christian, Jew, Druze, or atheist, and live by any personal sexual standard they embrace, whether straight, gay, or even transgender/gender fluid.
The loss of a moral compass that distinguished good from evil started with a hatred towards Israel that became accepted and then encouraged in society. Equating the heinous acts of Hamas terrorists, who deliberately hide behind innocent children, with the actions of IDF soldiers, who defend all civilians—especially children—has led to a loss of the ability to distinguish between good and evil.
here are only 15 million Jews worldwide, comprising less than 0.2% of the world's population, but condoning anti-Semitism—even or especially when couched as anti-Zionism—opens the door to a world without boundaries or ethics. When we turn the world upside down and pretend that Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are "good" and Israel is an "evil colonizer" (an especially ridiculous claim, given that Jews have lived in Israel continuously for over 3,000 years and are the indigenous people of that land); when we deny the Holocaust; or when we blame the death of Kennedy or the pedophilia of Jeffrey Epstein on Israel, we are leading ourselves down a pathway that will accept any form of evil and then pretend that it is righteousness.
So what must we do? We must defend Israel and its right to exist. That does not mean that we need to agree with all decisions made by the Israeli government. But we do need to recognize that Hamas is an expression of pure evil; that the definition of a Palestine that extends from “the river to the sea” means the annihilation of Israel; that Hamas has kept hostages tortured and in tunnels for almost two years; and that this entire war would be over immediately if Hamas released the hostages (the kidnapping of which violates every international law and basic code of ethics for hundreds of years) and exiled themselves out of Gaza. We need to remember the statement of Golda Meir: “If Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be peace. If Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no Israel.”
We need to renew our moral compass and revive the definitions of right and wrong for the survival of the United States and Western culture. We must continue to fight for what is righteous and against what is amoral—for the values enshrined in the Bible, the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence.
If not, if our cultural moral compass remains damaged and is not repaired soon, then we can be assured that in a short time there will not only be no Israel, but no United States or Western civilization as we know it.
May we all choose to wage this fight against hatred: hatred against Jews; hatred against Israel; hatred against the United States; and hatred against the traditional values that have created Western civilization. And may we replace it with a true respect and caring for people of different faiths, different nations, and different backgrounds.
“And every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall make him afraid.” (Micah 4:4)
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