Victor Davis Hanson

Jews celebrating Hanukkah were just slaughtered by Muslim gunmen on an Australian beach, in an imitation of the October 7 massacres.

An inert Europe is canceling Christmas celebrations out of fear of threats of violence from Muslim minorities. In the West, when an Islamist shoots a Jew, politicians often offer two bizarre remedies: gun control or a task force to tackle Islamophobia.

Yet, our political class rarely offers data on the overwhelming preponderance of targeting Jews rather than Muslims, much less the vast disparity in Jewish-on-Muslim versus Muslim-on-Jewish violence.

To catalog all the recent violence against Jews in the Western world would fill a book.

We know the causes. Anemic Western leaders — politicians, college presidents, media grandees, and celebrities — fear Muslim terrorism, growing Muslim voters, and their own growing antisemitic campus constituencies.

So, they never call out antisemitic violence other than with nauseating nothings like, “Such violence has no place here.” Or “We condemn such violence in the utmost terms.” Or “This is not who we are.”

The prime minister of Australia — a country that produced some of the most heroic soldiers of World War I and II and still is a bulwark of the West in the Pacific — goes through a series of linguistic contortions daily to avoid identifying the threat to Jews and how to stop it. He talks as if guns were animate and murdered Jews without the aid of radical Islamic killers.

So nothing much follows in the West, and Jews are becoming the hunted. The attacks will increase because there is no foreseeable force to combat them.

Just a few years ago, it used to be that antisemitism was mostly on the left and repugnantly identifiable and condemnable by most.

In 2009, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright grew angry against his former favorite parishioner, then newly elected President Barack Obama, and scoffed in anger, “Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me.”

Many leftist icons used to voice blatant antisemitism, such as Jesse Jackson (“Hymietown”), Al Sharpton (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”), or Louis Farrakhan (“your gutter religion”).

Do we remember the utterances of once White House press corps liberal icon Helen Thomas (“Jews should get the hell out of Palestine. They should go home to Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else.”)?

Their left-wing legacy is now amplified by Rep. Ilhan Omar (“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby”). The so-called Squad, New York Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, the “The Democratic Socialists of America,” and the legions of campus protestors never disown the slogan, “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” — a call to destroy the current state of Israel and everyone in it — because they either all believe in it or assume their clueless followers have no idea what it means.

Again, when the elite say, “River to the sea,” does that mean they will erase all the Jews in Israel but spare its two-million-Arab citizenry, about the only Arabs in the entire Middle East who vote in free and fair elections and enjoy constitutional rights?

Of course, no left-wing Westerner visiting the Middle East would wish to publicly express his free speech, atheism, or pro-gay/trans support either in the West Bank or in Gaza.

The combination of providing DEI exemptions to biased minority activists, the anti-Israel and antisemitic indoctrination in universities, and no-borders immigration has turned the Democratic Party into the natural home of those who dislike Israel in particular and feel free to demonize Jews in general.

Indeed, most polls show that 60 percent of Democrats favor the Palestinians over the Israelis. Translated, that means they prefer a terrorist autocracy over a Western liberal constitutional government.

The right used to be a unified corrective to left-wing antisemitism. It still polls nearly 70% in favor of Israel. For a while longer, it is far more likely to condemn antisemitic violence than the left.

But recently, its own base, in varying degrees, has come full circle and joined the left in its distaste for Israel and Jews in general.

The new anti-Israel right despises Israel and the U.S. support of it, either in terms that are commercial (there are more Arabs, with more money and oil), cowardly (trashing Jews does not earn terrorist reprisals; rebuking Muslims can), political (Jews more often vote Democratic), or simply antisemitic (cabals of Jews control Wall Street, Hollywood, the media, etc.).

Once-fringe antisemites like Nick Fuentes are now welcomed to air their views openly, but mostly the conspiracy venom is of the more insidious sort, like “I’m just throwing this out there…” or “Here is something to consider…”

In the last few weeks, we have been told — without any evidence — by right-wing influencers that the Jews may well have had a hand in killing Charlie Kirk, in bombing an Iranian nuclear facility, in pressuring the Maduro kleptocracy, and in the 9/11 slaughter.

One hallmark of the new right-wing furor against Jews and Israel is the strange symbiosis they employ. Formerly edgy podcasters become vicarious hosts of virulent antisemites. The partnerships are a way of not directly owning up to their toxicity but just “putting it out there.”

Candace Owens initially championed Kanye West (“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up, I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”).

Then she graduated to expressing her own old antisemitic tropes: “There is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism. … All Americans should want answers because this appears to be something that is quite sinister.”

Tucker Carlson hosted critics of the U.S. effort against Hitler in World War II and Israel-behind-it conspiracists before escalating to inviting Nick Fuentes on in a mostly friendly manner — which might be attributed to his interview format, except he has attacked fellow conservatives far more than has odious Fuentes.

But now Carlson himself too throws out story-line hints about just maybe Jews’ involvement in Charlie Kirk’s death, or a sort of/kind of Jewish effort behind 9/11, or perhaps it was those Jews eating humus, not the Roman prefect of Judea who ordered Jesus killed for supposed sedition — a common fate of any provincial residents who even appeared to defy the absolute authority of the Roman imperial state.

Carlson strangely categorized Israel as an “insignificant” country. But is not Israel a democratic Western outpost in a sea of Middle East autocracy, the most technically advanced and scientifically sophisticated nation for its size in the world, and the ancient home of the Judeo-Christian tradition?

Somehow, many on the right forgot who funds the virulently anti-American mouthpiece Al-Jazeera, or where the 9/11 murderers came from, or who has killed Americans in Syria, Lebanon, and on the Red Sea, and or whom the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and theocratic Iran have vowed to destroy.

And as for October 7 and what followed, Israel waited in vain for nearly three weeks for Hamas to give up the 3,000 terrorists who murdered 1,219 Jews, wounded 3,400, and took 254 hostages before mounting a full invasion of Gaza.

Where does it all end?

Either there will be an 11th-hour Western intolerance of antisemitism, a limit of student visas and immigration from the illiberal nations of the Middle East, a return to melting pot assimilation, an end to DEI tribalism, and a reform of the weaponized university curricula, or we will see more images of gunmen shooting Jews as if they were mere animals.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books.

Mary Sanchez

Nothing President Donald Trump is pushing in his war on drugs would have saved Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner.

The murdered cinema couple’s loving efforts to help their son overcome addiction wouldn’t have benefited from any of Trump’s most ballyhooed efforts.

The president wants another failed war on drugs. Treatment for addiction, accessible mental health therapies, and funding for research aren’t top on the Trump agenda – they might barely make that agenda at all.

Instead, the White House is deploying shock and awe tactics, most of it self-serving to the He-Man persona the president craves.

Trump fancies himself a ruthless and all-powerful commander of the high seas, blowing up drug-ferrying boats, killing all aboard and even circling back to annihilate survivors. He is justifying these immoral acts by branding drug pushers “foreign terrorists.”

Trump’s latest salvo twists international law to label fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

Recall that WMDs didn’t exist in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And WMDs are not what is driving addiction rates in America.

Trump speaks as if Americans are being tied down and forced to shoot up heroin, snort and cook cocaine into crack, and consume opioids at the hands of nefarious foreign terrorists.

The truth is much more basic.

The monsters are within – literally, within the U.S. population.

Overdoses are down from years past, but still an estimated 81,700 Americans died in 2024, a decrease from more than 108,600 in the previous year. (Trump consistently overstates those deaths, inaccurately doubling and tripling the numbers.)

The illicit U.S. drug market has long been stable and incredibly profitable. The draw for the drug pushers and international cartels will remain until there is less U.S. demand – it’s as simple as that.

At his core, Trump understands this. He’s a businessman. He knows market forces are involved in transactions, even illicit ones, and therefore need to be part of the solution. He also has personal insight to tap.

A much younger Trump learned about addiction early with the painful loss of his brother Fred Trump Jr. to a life stewed in alcoholism.

He watched his once vibrant, handsome older brother transform into a shell, dying at 43.

Apparently, that familial pain is too deeply burrowed into Trump’s consciousness to influence policy, or decorum now.

Trump unloaded yet another inappropriate social media tirade after the Reiners were brutally murdered, allegedly by their son Nick Reiner.

The president blamed the victims. He was offended by Rob Reiner’s political activism, much of it against the policies, tone, and approach of the Trump administration.

First-degree murder charges have been filed against Reiner’s son and he deserves a fair defense and complete psychiatric evaluation. But so far the evidence is compelling that he slayed his parents in a rage.

The 32-year-old’s stints in rehab, homelessness, as well as periods of sobriety are heavily documented, captured even in a movie he helped to write and produce with his father in 2015, Being Charlie.

Strip the Reiners of their Brentwood address. Set aside the vault of cinematic classics they produced, and the gruesome brutality of how they died. What remains is very familiar to Americans, including Trump.

This is a family struggling to help one member, who, at times, resisted or simply couldn’t get sober. Their wealth, unlimited access to treatment, and years of loving attention couldn’t bring their son to sustained sobriety and stability.

Trump’s brother died in a different era, when we understood addiction and recovery far less, including the links to mental health disorders and self-medicating cycles of usage. At that time, we also didn’t understand much about how the support of others who’ve also managed to regain their sobriety can be best utilized.

Untwisting where addiction begins and a mental health disorder exists is work for psychiatric experts, scientists studying the receptors of the brain, chemical imbalances, and a swirl of genetics, environment, and individual factors.

Attention to the international drug trade and routes is warranted, along with continued oversight of opioid manufacturers, some of which have exacerbated dependency to chase profits.

The administration doesn’t tend to underscore the meetings, but there are on-going diplomatic conversations to bilaterally curb the illegal drug trade, especially fentanyl. Mexico is a great example of such collaboration.

Instead, the American public is fed heavy doses of bravado, the methods of bluster and attack that Trump has mastered. Meanwhile, families, some famous, most not, continue to be ripped apart by addiction.

Readers can reach Mary Sanchez at msanchezcolumn@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @msanchezcolumn.

Victor Davis Hanson

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.

But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets — what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model.

For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity.

From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science — until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD.

Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled.

In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms.

Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually reemerged.

The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse — and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in.

The hard work and sacrifice that built the West also creates wealth and leisure. Such affluence is taken for granted by later generations. What created success is eventually ignored — or even mocked.

Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment.

Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away.

The middle class of autonomous citizens disappear. Society bifurcates between a few lords and many peasants.

Tribalism — the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance — re-emerge.

National government fragments into regional and ethnic enclaves.

Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of antisemitism reappears.

The currency inflates, losing its value and confidence. General crassness in behavior, speech, dress, and ethics replaces prior norms.

Transportation, communications, and infrastructure all decline.

The end is near when the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease.

Such was life around 450 AD in Western Europe.

The contemporary West might raise similar red flags.

Fertility has dived well below 2.0 in almost every Western country.

Public debt is nearing unsustainable levels. The dollar and euro have lost much of their purchasing power.

It is more common in universities to damn than honor the gifts of the Western intellectual past.

Yet, the reading and analytical skills of average Westerners, and Americans in particular, steadily decline.

Can the general population even operate or comprehend the ever-more sophisticated machines and infrastructure that an elite group of engineers and scientists create?

The citizen loses confidence in an often corrupt elite, who neither will protect their nations’ borders nor spend sufficient money on collective defense.

The cures are scorned.

Do we dare address spiraling deficits, unsustainable debt, and corrupt bureaucracies and entitlements?

Even mention of reform is smeared as “greedy,” “racist,” “cruel,” or even “fascist” and “Nazi.”

In our times, relativism replaces absolute values in the eerie replay of the latter Roman Empire.

Critical legal theory claims crimes are not really crimes.

Critical race theory postulates that all of society is guilty of insidious bias, demanding reparations in cash and preferences in admission and hiring.

Salad-bowl tribalism replaces assimilation, acculturation, and integration of the old melting pot.

Despite a far wealthier, far more leisured, and far more scientific contemporary America, was it safer to walk in New York or take the subway in 1960 than now?

Are high school students better at math now or 70 years ago?

Are movies and television more entertaining and ennobling in 1940 or now?

Are nuclear, two-parent families the norm currently or in 1955?

We are blessed to live longer and healthier lives than ever — even as the larger society around us seems to teeter.

Yet, the West historically is uniquely self-introspective and self-critical.

Reform and Renaissance historically are more common than descents back into the Dark Ages.

But the medicine for decline requires unity, honesty, courage, and action — virtues now in short supply on social media, amid popular culture, and among the political class.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books.