I erred in my 10/15 blog. I wrote Hamilton County preacher Micah Beckwith [FN1] posted “a photo & article, purportedly from a right wing website w/a headline: ‘Leftists Want the Same Massacre Here,’ i.e., Hamas & Israel.” A 10/12/23 op-ed used the photo &the headline 1/10

cited by Beckwith. It was written by Kurt Schlicther [FN2] a Townhall.com Senior columnist, as well as an L.A. trial lawyer, and retired army infantry colonel. [FN3] The op-ed is sick: “our foreign and domestic enemies” want the “rape and murder we saw in Israel repeated ... here 2/10

in America” and adds “attempts by the goo-goos” to appeal to morality or to argue in good faith will “end in abject failure.” The op-ed, light on facts, contains false assertions: “We know what has happened to crime lately - it has exploded.” This is not true. The FBI “reports that the 3/10

violent crime rate, including homicide, dropped “an estimated 1.7%” in 2022 compared to 2021. “The rate of violent crime is the lowest it has been since 2014"& nearly half of what it was in 1991 & 1992. [FN4] The property crime rate has fallen 61% since 1991.” [FN5] 4/10

This rhetoric is based on falsehoods & refers to those on the “other” side as “creatures” and “the ‘civilian’ savages of Gaza.” Mr Schlicther has a solution: “The answer is war.” Actually, peace has been close. During the Carter administration two former terrorists entered a peace treaty. 5/10

Menachem Begin, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the 1940s led the Irgun, which blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 7/22/46, killing 91 people. [FN6] Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s President, in the 1940s was a member of the Free Officers, which assassinated opponents. [FN7]. 6/10

Nearly two millennia of anti-semitism included the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, some of whom were denied refuge in the United States. After WWII Jewish settlers fought to establish the modern state of Israel. We cannot ignore the millions who were displaced from 7/10

their homes and forced to live in refugee camps by the establishment of that State. We should not have ignored the evils propagated against Jews. Violence is the reason the Middle East is messed up. The headline and the op-ed are sick. 8/10

Footnotes: FN1. Beckwith lost in the 2020 GOP primary for INCD5 and says he seeks the GOP nomination for Lt Gov in 2024. FN2. Townhall, 10/12/23. FN3. Regnery Publishing, www.regnery.com FN4. “America’s Zombie Crime Wave,” Popular Information, 10/17/23. 9/10

Footnotes: FN5. Id., citing Jeffrey Asher, crime analyst, Jeff-alytics,” 10/16/23. FN6. Crenshaw, Martha, International Encyclopedia of Terrorism (1998), p. 287. FN7. Reid, Donald, “Political Assassination in Egypt, 1910-1954,” 15 Int’l J of Afr Hist Studies, 632-34 (1982). 10/10