Whatever Happened to ‘Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself’? by Nils A. Haug
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21643/whatever-happened-to-love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself
- What instead seems to have been considered important is the great new cause to refabricate society in accordance with a skewed view of social justice that consists not of individuals but groups, and that decides which of those may, or may not, be members of some private global “club.” No wonder Western society, especially in Europe, seems to be bordering on implosion.
- “The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” — European Fatwa Council Brotherhood, “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America”, May. 22, 1991
- It was probably to be expected with the election of Donald J. Trump as US president, and with the fearless leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister, that a repudiation of those policies by opponents in both countries, would focus all their resources on bringing these two statesmen down.
- As Netanyahu’s detractors bring one charge after the other in a continual attempt to bring the take down the prime minister, one cannot but wonder who Israel’s real enemies actually are.
- It appears that some high-ranking activists are possibly prepared to destroy the nation in pursuit of their ambition for leadership, and to impose their own ideologies on its people. The prime minister and others no doubt see through their bogus proclamations that they are “protecting democracy.
The culture of Western society is Judeo-Christian. Its respect for individuals, its humanitarian morality, the need for empirical evidence, and entreaties such as “Love thy neighbour as thyself”‘ (Leviticus 19:18) — echoed by Mark and Matthew in the New Testament — are the values that have formed the foundation for all education in the West.
As we have seen, however, as recently as this week, however, when two young innocent staffers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., were gunned down, there have been increasing attacks on these Judeo-Christian social values. Both anarchistic revolutionaries and many religious zealots apparently wish to eradicate and replace them, presumably on the way to a world order featuring themselves.
The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), instructed his supporters:
“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. In the new Order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture through infiltration of schools, universities, Churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
In the neo-Marxist view of these ideologues, “Everything must be thrown into the supposedly great cause of social justice,” as First Things editor R. R. Reno wrote. Social justice, according to them, incorporates the division of society into tribal, allegedly oppressed, racial, religious or gender-driven groups such as Black Lives Matter, pro-Palestinian groups, LGBTQ+ and so on. White males, for instance, are accused of “toxic masculinity,” of benefitting from “white privilege” and of being “settler-colonialists,” and are required to repent for a supposedly sinful status they were never given an opportunity to select.
In his books The Madness of Crowds and The War on the West, social commentator Doulgas Murray notes that “contemporary social justice movements often operate less as genuine quests for justice and more as vehicles for retribution or revenge.”
In the formerly sacred halls of academia, traditional standards of social conduct, empirical biology, facts, merit and achievement, fairness and justice — with some sort of hearing or due process and respect for others — are irrelevant. What instead seems to have been considered important is the great new cause to refabricate society in accordance with a skewed view of social justice, that consists not of individuals but groups, and that decides which of those may, or may not, be members of some private global “club.” No wonder Western society, especially in Europe, seems to be bordering on implosion.
“The Jewish people brought morality to the world thousands of years ago and some people are still mad about it,” remarked, Safra Catz, CEO of tech-giant Oracle by way of diagnosing the open resurgence of Jew-hatred and anti-Judeo-Christian vitriol in Western societies.
The most recent protestors can be traced to the contemporary infiltration of Marxism, with its fixed view of the world as oppressors vs. oppressed, combined with increasing Muslim Jew-hate. The latter is being funded lavishly throughout both higher and lower education by Qatar and other proselytising supporters of “dawah” : inviting both Muslims and non-Muslims to understand the worship of God (Allah) as taught in the Qur’an and the Sunnah (traditions of Prophet Muhammad), and to inform them about the teachings and example of Muhammad.
The success of Israel in defeating at least some of centuries’ old jihadist terrorism, which no Western nation would – or should — tolerate, has resulted in vociferous protests in the West. The attitude often seems to be: “How dare those settler-colonialists succeed against a minority This is not social justice.” Never mind that the Jews have resided on that land for nearly 4,000 years, or that the “minority” is not only bellicose but bloodthirsty, and that this minority is oppressed, it is by their leaders, not the Jews.
The plan by President Donald J. Trump to resurrect civil rights laws that advocate equality and merit seems to have invigorated the opposition in the US.
To many, however, the eradication of a racist belief-system — one that has devastated Western culture, government departments, and universities while dividing friends, families, and confusing the gender identity of countless vulnerable youths – could not come soon enough. What they assumed they had been witnessing was the destruction of civilisation from within. It was proposed in a May 22, 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document by an acolyte of the late head of the European Fatwa Council Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, and entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America”:
“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
The promotion of racial policies, initiated by the presidency of Barak Obama, then cemented under President Joe Biden, had appeared to have become ingrained again in public life.
It was probably to be expected with the election of Donald J. Trump as US president, and with the fearless leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister, that a repudiation of those policies by opponents in both countries, would focus all their resources on bringing these two statesmen down.
A favourite tactic now seems to be the practice of “lawfare” – employing legal procedural tools, usually targeting process, to frustrate efforts by the Executive, in both the US and Israel, to carry out the mandates for which voters had elected them.
Netanyahu, commenting on the highly-suspect charges against him, recently tweeted that “in America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will.”
Israel’s prime minister has been facing persecution through opponents, legal channels and the media — all seemingly determined to remove him from office so that their policies, not voted for, can resume. During Israel’s current struggle for its existance on many battlefronts, the Court has insisted that Netanyahu continually make himself available for cross-examination on charges that appear politically motivated and seem not to have been holding up impressively in court . To the detriment of government’s ability properly to prosecute a war that threatens its survival. The prime minister has been compelled to attend Court for some 20 days while this 7-front attack on a country smaller than New Jersey was raging on Israel’s borders, as it continues to do.
After the completion of evidence in Case 4000, pertaining to the corruption charge – one that has persisted for ten years — two of the prime minister’s aides, in charges having nothing to do with Netanyahu — were immediately arrested in a further legal charge of involvement in assisting Qatar. Netanyahu himself has been questioned in this context and complained “it is a witch hunt” and accused “law enforcement officials of seeking to overthrow his government.
During March 2025, Israel’s ruling Likud Party accused the State’s Attorney General of “concocting false cases” charging the prime minister and his staff of supposed corruption. “As the cases concocted against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crumble in court,” the spokesman said, “new and false cases are concocted against his people out of the personal interests of those leading the investigation.”
Netanyahu filed a defamation suit against Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s opposition party, The Democrats, regarding messages he had sent to supporters accusing the prime minister of peddling the country’s security for money from Qatar.
Netanyahu had permitted Qatar to fund Hamas in the Gaza Strip with $30 million a month, in the hope, it seems, that if the government in Gaza felt financially comfortable, it would remain quiet. It was similar to President Biden’s policy in US toward Iran. The Biden administration disregarded sanctions, financing Iran with approximately $100 million – which Iran then used for proxies its proxies to attack Israel.
The supposed peace between Israel and Gaza before October 7 2023, was one which Hamas had gone to great lengths to reassure Israel was solidly in place. A few years earlier, for instance, when Gaza’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group had attacked Israel, Hamas deliberately did not join, claiming that Hamas was now interested only in building security and peace.
As Netanyahu’s detractors bring one charge after the other in a continual attempt to bring the take down the prime minister, one cannot but wonder who Israel’s real enemies actually are.
It appears that some high-ranking activists are possibly prepared to destroy the nation in pursuit of their ambition for leadership, and to impose their own ideologies on its people. The prime minister and others no doubt see through their bogus proclamations they are “protecting democracy.” Their actions are anything but. As Netanyahu stated recently, compared to Israel’s deep state, America’s is “a puddle.”
President Trump has also been forced to contend with countless legal challenges, all of which, so far, he has overcome. Upon his re-election, in command once again, his first actions were to issue orders eliminating all woke policies in government departments and federal agencies. Hundreds of officials have been dismissed; and whole departments and agencies gutted to eradicate divisive racist policies, so damaging to the innovation, growth and democratic nature of America.
As in Israel, Trump and his newly appointed officials have been facing numerous legal challenges to prevent policies he was elected to implement, but that to many seem intolerable.
More than 119 of the President’s directives have found resistance, mainly, it seems, from partisan judges in cherry-picked District Courts, who hold to a progressive outlook. On April 2025, for instance, a District Court Judge ordered the Government to “re-import an MS-13 member they deported,” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien, who had been convicted and ordered deported but had been granted a stay, which held until his groups was designated as ta Foreign Terroist Organization, at which point the stay no longer legally applied.
“These judges,” columnist Matt Vespa reported in April, “are getting out of control. That’s becoming an unfortunate evergreen statement ever since members of this gavel Gestapo have decided to engage in a campaign to wrest away authority explicitly outlined for the executive on numerous areas, like immigration policy. It’s reached new levels of absurdity.”
Now that an ultra-socialist sector of the Democratic Party has publicly come forth, revealing that “Explicit leftist radicalism is so deeply rooted in the party that efforts to disguise it are at once unavoidable and impossible” — the future of the party looks dim. The majority of America voted against these destructive tribalist theories, seemingly based on circumstances over which the bearer had no control, such as skin colour, gender and ethnicity, rather hard work or merit, when they elected a determined Donald J. Trump to the presidency.
The battle against for truth, morality, freedom, however, begun in antiquity, will likely continue.
“Hate never wins the final victory;” said the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “freedom does” — the freedom of respect for one another and to “love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Dr. Haug holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology and is author of ‘Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity’; and ‘Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.’ His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, Jewish Journal, James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Jewish News Syndicate, Document Danmark, and others.
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