The Jewish people do not “see things differently.” We see things as they are. It’s the benefit of being an eternal people.

So we don’t need to play the postmodernist’s games of interpretation. Just as “from the river to the sea” has one meaning and one meaning only, we can reject the recent attempt to whitewash the most famous and grotesque moment of the Second Intifada.

Last week, a group at Georgetown Law invited Rudy Rochman, an Israeli, to speak at an event. There were, among the protesters, a small number dressed up as a historical figure of ill repute, a man whose photo became famous in October 2000. His name is Aziz Salha. When two Israelis accidentally wandered into Ramallah 24 years ago, they were held for their own safety at a Palestinian police station. But when Palestinians stormed the station, it became a death trap. The Israelis were lynched and murdered in cold blood. Salha, one of the lynchers, held up his bloody hands in celebration to the cheers of his fellow Palestinians.

Salha became an icon to a surprising number of deeply deranged people. His horror-flick exploits returned to wide attention recently when an organization called Artists4Ceasefire chose the image of the bloody hand he made so famous as its logo. The group then convinced some of the biggest stars in Hollywood to wear a pin of that logo to the Oscars.

As I explained at the time, Mark Ruffalo and Billie Eilish and Ramy Youssef and Ava DuVernay and the rest know the meaning of the “red right hand” of war, regardless of the particular war, because it only ever has had one meaning, even if there are context-specific applications for different wars.

At that point, Jews pointed out, far too delicately, what they see when they look at the red-right-hand pin, as if it were a matter of opinion. This was a mistake. The organization that put together a public-relations campaign on behalf of Hamas isn’t confused, and the participants knew with whom they were getting into bed. After the Israelis were murdered by hand in that Ramallah police station, one of the bodies was thrown out the window to the crowd below, which further tore it apart. One of the videos shows a man holding up what appears to be the victim’s heart. The red right hand pin of Artists4Ceasefire shows the bloody hand holding a black heart. None of this is arbitrary,

But here’s the thing: Even if you were generous enough to allow ghoulish activists to pretend for a moment that it were open to interpretation, Georgetown Law students provided the other bookend to this story. The mere suggestion that Jews “saw” the pin as a reference to the lynching was enough to encourage anti-Israel activists to adopt the “Jewish interpretation” as their own. They showed up dressed as Aziz Salha because they wanted to remove any ambiguity, and because they knew that the Jews they were protesting would get the message.

Ask yourself the following question: After it was made clear how “from the river to the sea” was being “interpreted” by Jews and non-Jews alike—heck, after a congresswoman was censured over it—did activists and demonstrators use the phrase less often? In fact, some started using it when they hadn’t before the meaning was made undeniable, didn’t they?

Why do you suppose it is that when chants and symbols are shown to mean “kill the Jews,” they become more popular?

Stop playing volunteer spin doctor for people who worship at the altar of death.

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