People hate those who fight evil more than those who are evil

When I was in high school, I realized something very important about the human condition.

I realized that people tend to hate those who fight evil much more than those who do evil.

What brought me to this conclusion was the way many people reacted to communism and anti-communism.

To my surprise, a lot of people – especially all leftists and many, although not all, liberals – hated anti-communists far more than they hated communism.

Because of my early preoccupation with good and evil, even in high school, I hated communism. How could you not do this, I asked myself. Along with National Socialism, it was the great evil of the 20th century. Needless to say, as a Jew and as a human being, I hated Nazism. But since I was born after National Socialism was overthrown, the great evil of my time was communism.

Communists murdered about 100 million people – all non-combatants and all innocent. Stalin murdered about 30 million people, including 5 million Ukrainians, through starvation (in just two years: 1932–33). Mao killed around 60 million people. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) killed around three million people between 1975 and 1979, i.e. one in four Cambodians. The North Korean communist regime killed between 2 and 3 million people, not counting another million launched by the North Korean communists in the Korean War.

For every 100 million people killed by communists, there are at least a dozen more people – family members and friends – who were terribly and permanently affected by the death of their family member or friend. Add to that another billion whose lives have been ruined by living in a communist totalitarian state: their poverty, their loss of basic human rights and their loss of dignity.

You would think that anyone with a functioning conscience and some degree of compassion would hate communism. But that wasn't the case. In fact, there were many people in the non-communist world who supported communism. And there were an even larger number of people who hated anti-communists, dismissing them as “cold warriors,” “warmongers,” “Red haters,” etc.

Currently, we are once again witnessing this phenomenon – hatred of those who oppose evil rather than those who do evil – with regard to Israel and its enemies. And on a much larger level. Israel is hated by individuals and governments around the world. Israel is the most vilified country both at the United Nations and in the Western media and of course in universities.

Israel is a liberal democracy with an independent judiciary, an independent opposition press and equal rights for women, gays and the Arab population (20% of Israel's population). Its enemies – the Iranian regime, Hamas and Hezbollah – grant no such freedoms to those under their control. More relevantly, their main goal – indeed, their stated reason for being – is to wipe out Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. Hamas and Hezbollah have built nothing, absolutely nothing, in Gaza and Lebanon respectively. They exist solely to commit genocide against Israel and its Jews.

Why did so many people hate anti-communists more than communism? And why do more people hate Israel more than Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?

The general reason is that it is emotionally and psychologically difficult for most people to face evil. Evil is generally described as “dark.” But it's not dark; it's easy to look into the dark. What's far harder to see is blindingly bright light. Perhaps that is why Lucifer, the original name of the Christian devil, comes from the word “light”.

Why this is the case – why people don't call evil “evil” – probably has to do with a lack of courage. Once you declare something evil, you are morally obligated to resist it, and people are afraid to resist evil. The fools who make fun of Christianity – whether through a “work of art” like “Piss Christ” (a crucifix in a urine jar), or through the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics that mocked the Last Supper, or through the Los Angeles Dodgers, who honored the “Sisters of Eternal Pleasure” (men in costume dressed as nuns) – would never mock Islam. They fear the wrath of the Muslims; They are not afraid of the wrath of Christians. But Islamic anger has done far more evil in our time than Christian anger.

And there is another reason to hate Israel – one that is specific to Israel – and not to those who want to eradicate Israel: Jew-hatred, better known as anti-Semitism. The people who introduced a judgmental God and gave the world the Ten Commandments have been hated for thousands of years. Not those who systematically violate these commandments.

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