"We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."

Mrs. Thatcher, in her speech to American Bar Association in London, 15 July 1985

Mrs. Thatcher was on my mind this evening. A an old friend who fancies himself a socialist comes to my house for dinner a few times a month, even though he knows that the rule is “no politics at dinner or you starve.” He is a bit of a hermit and has very little in person contact other than me, so I strive to make him a home-cooked meal and have a nice time, even though we have drifted apart.

He was saying something about “capitalist scumbags” when I suggested it was time for me to do the dishes and him to depart. He does not wish to do work that, according to him, makes money for capitalist scumbags. “The problem with socialism,” I replied, only to learn that I was misquoting Mrs. Thatcher, “Is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The correct quote is, “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”

As I was looking up Mrs. Thatcher’s quotes, I found the one I used as the title of this post. Rarely could it be more appropriate than this week.

The Ceasefire Now crowd is notably silent now that there is a ceasefire. They seem quite disappointed that their favorite war is ending. Masks are falling of like rotten limbs on a dying tree: they were never about peace or a two-state solution. I for one believed them when they chanted “Intifada revolution.” They want Israel gone, Jews dead, and anyone with brown skin whom they label as oppressed to be glorified (“Glory to our martyrs!”) and defended, no matter what atrocities they commit.

We, my dear friends and worldwide family, may be about to win this part of the war. We know that Hamas and their allies are just waiting to rebuild, and I am holding my breath with you until the hostages are home. I have a bad feeling that this will not go as planned, but I remain hopeful.

Even if we get our hostages back and this round of fighting ends, we are in a fight for the very long haul. The terrorist and the hijacker have made good friends with young people in the West, who were primed to be vulnerable by their leftist professors and teachers. They will continue to clamor for publicity, and have promised all over the world to commit more acts of terror, which the left will continue to justify and excuse.

How can we follow Mrs. Thatcher’s advice of depriving them of the publicity on which they live, while remaining clear about the threat we are facing? Israel is just the front line: the battle is for civilization.

The children who have been taught to hate the country that gives them the freedom to protest against it will not grow up overnight. Educational institutions have been captured by people who think it’s a good idea to teach maps that erase Israel. Walk through a public school in a deep blue city and you are likely to see tons of that Pride flag that bears no resemblance to the old Gay Pride flags but looks more like the Palestinian flag on an acid trip. You may see a few posters that say, “Free Gaza.” But you are unlikely to see an American flag. Children know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves but very few can tell you what number president he was, and many don’t even know that he was a president. The civilization that brought you equal rights for women, freedom of choice, freedom of religion, the ability to have sex with consenting adults of either gender without being thrown off a rooftop for it or otherwise tortured, will not continue if we let kids be poisoned by anti-American, anti-Western ideology.

If this phase of the war is truly over, many in the US will be tempted to go back to focusing on the liberal causes that consumed their time and energy before the world showed its ugly October 8th face. Please don’t be lulled into thinking everything is okay. We saw the people we marched with in the days and years before October 7 deny the rape of our sisters, the torture and murder of our families and our friends’ families. We saw the normalization of supporting a terrorist group. We can not go back to the golden age when antisemitism in the West was largely banned from polite society.

The fight may be changing, but it is far from over.

I join you in prayer tonight for our hostages, their families, and our worldwide family. I’m not Jewish, but I am proud to be a member of Western civilization, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Yellow for our hostages.