Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

   The proposed government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid reminds one of a schmorgasbord table that is filled with food – kosher and non-kosher, meat and milk, and not quite separate and distinct. You don’t know where to start eating or whether or not to start eating. It looks tempting but the probability of eating treif is as likely as that of eating kosher. Without a mashgiach it is impossible and even with a mashgiach it is inadvisable. It is thus best to walk away.  

    The motivation for such a government is certainly understandable. A society cannot forever endure political instability. Four elections in a parliamentary system in a divided country have produced gridlock and the likelihood of further elections ending this morass in a decisive way is quite remote.  As long as PM Netanyahu leads Likud, the result will be electoral paralysis. He will always win the largest number of mandates but never quite enough to form a government. 

     Let’s face it. Netanyahu has many achievements to his credit. He has served longer in office than did Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States. Millions of people cannot imagine another individual as prime minister. He kept the country relatively safe and presided over unprecedented peace and prosperity. His relations with world leaders is unparalleled, as is his ability to exploit opportunities in the Arab world, Russia, China and with friendly Western countries such as the United States, as well as knowing how to survive hostile administrations. All this should be acknowledged by those people whose hatred for him blinds and cripples them.   

  Nevertheless, it must be conceded that he is a flawed individual. At the top of his list of defects is that Netanyahu is a bad breaker-upper. Too many people who have worked for him and closely with him despise him and that has created the current gridlock. If there is a villain in this muddle, it is Gideon Saar whose refusal to join a Netanyahu government precludes the establishment of a right-wing government that reflects the overwhelming majority of the population. But Saar is just one of many politicians and personalities whose relationship with Netanyahu has collapsed. If Likud polls in the 30’s as the largest party, it is never going to matter if 70 other Knesset members refuse to work with him. He, of course, is further hampered by the ongoing criminal trials against him that may not end for years. The wheels of (in)justice do grind slowly.   

  Truth be told, the PM’s record is not unblemished. He has always been coy towards the right wing, fully embracing their ideology only during elections. He was for the Expulsion in Gaza before he was against it. He endorsed the two-state delusion before he (sort of) walked away from it. His record on settlement building is decidedly mixed, always talking bombastically but without the deeds to match the rhetoric. No one campaigns from the right better than he does but campaigning is not governing. He has allowed Jewish outposts to be brutally destroyed but has turned a blind eye to illegal building in the Arab sector. He did a lot for Israel – but he could have expanded settlements even more, could have reined in the Supreme Court with limiting legislation, could have cracked down on the illegal weapons and crime among Israeli Arabs, could have expanded the Israeli housing market so there is availability other than luxury homes, etc.  The latter could have been accomplished in Judea and Samaria, and that is a missed opportunity and remains an unsolved problem.  

   Netanyahu also has the less than endearing habit of attacking his opponents with his own flaws. He has accused Bennett and Saar of enabling a left-wing government – but didn’t he do that in the past with Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni and Benny Gantz? He accused Bennett of wanting to form a government with Yair Lapid – but didn’t he do that in 2013? He accuses the new team of seeking to rely on Arab votes for its viability – but didn’t he just to do the same thing? He accused Bennett of being obsessed with becoming prime minister at all costs – but isn’t he obsessed with being prime minister at all costs?    

    All politicians should occasionally look in the mirror so they should know whom they are really addressing when they become the most passionate.  What Netanyahu must hate most about Bennett is that Bennett reminds him, too much, of himself. 

    That being said, the dangers and opportunities of this hybrid government are enormous. Their only common denominator is hatred of Netanyahu, which might help form a government but certainly not guide or sustain it. If a Minister of Transport Michaeli decides to destroy Shabbat by having public transportation and commerce or if a Minister of Finance Lieberman squeezes Torah education by freezing money to Yeshivot, then Bennett will rightly suffer lifelong ignominy. If a left wing government legalizes same sex marriage or imports some other madness from the Western world, then he will be to blame. Recall that the very first item on Yamina’s platform is to strengthen Jewish identity and the Jewish religious heritage  in the land of Israel. If a Bennett led government weakens Torah and Jewish identity – indeed, heads a government that lacks Sefaradim and religious Jews – that too would be shameful, and the price paid to him in future elections pales before the contempt Jewish history will have for him.  

    Yet, there are advantages to such a government as well, assuming religious life is not devastated by it, and they bear some reflection. A cult of personality is damaging in any environment, religious or political. No politician should ever think he is indispensable. Democracy is reinvigorated, even safeguarded, by the presence of new blood.  A Netanyahu forced out of office is unlikely to return and a new era in Israeli politics begins. Due credit, on balance, will be accorded him for his long and mostly successful tenure. A Bennett-Lapid government will have the benefit of dealing with a Biden administration that does not know them, that has been gearing up to pressure Netanyahu and will not quite know how to handle a right-winger and centrist, both on record as opposing the two-state delusion. Such an inherently unstable government will not be able to make any concessions at all, and will be bolstered by its right-wing opposition. But such a government will be able to deal forcefully with Arab terror and threats to the security of Jews both foreign and domestic. 

      There is a way forward out of this discordant daze in which we live. Obviously, if Netanyahu stepped down as head of Likud, and a new leader – say, for argument’s sake, Nir Barkat – was appointed, a right-wing government would be formed in 30 minutes. But as that won’t happen in the short term, here is what might (should?) happen.

     Assume that the Bennett- Lapid government is sworn in with the support of four Arab mandates. Ten members of Likud can then break away, form their own faction, join the government, and there is already a sizable Jewish majority. Then, one or two of the religious parties can join the government as well, which obviates the need for Labor and/or Meretz to control any portfolios. The end result is a right-wing government, respectful of Torah and tradition, strong and resolute, but including Lapid and Lieberman who, like it or not, do represent a sizable part of the Israel electorate. In two years we can worry about what will happen in two years, which is an eternity in Israeli politics (or, recently, the equivalent of four election cycles).

     That being said, it will be shocking if Bennett and Lapid are able to form a new government this week, and if they do, doubly shocking if it lasts even six months. But they will have achieved their primary goal, for better or for worse, of ousting Netanyahu from power.

     “This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.”    

It would be exhilarating if Israel’s Prime Minister spoke these words and meant them. But this is actually part of the stirring speech given by President George W. Bush at the National Cathedral on September 14, 2001, just three days after the vile Arab-Muslim terrorist attack of September 11 that killed thousands of innocent Americans. There were no calls for restraint, proportionality or a cease fire. Instead, President Bush appropriately reserved for himself and his nation the right to end the way “in a way and at an hour of our choosing.”    

  That is an elementary right, part of natural law. No one had to acknowledge America’s right of self-defense, and certainly not as a grand concession. But Israel’s right to defend itself, according to much of the world, is not absolute and subject to limitations, and our right to conclude this war “in a way and at an hour of our choosing” is non-existent.  

   What has changed through this recent conflict? Why did Israel agree to a cease fire? And why does this sane government constantly do the same thing and expect different results?   

   There are two ominous takeaways. One is the questionable loyalties of many Israeli Arab citizens, who rioted in the mixed cities, assaulted Jews, desecrated Jewish holy sites, and were treated as victims by the Israeli police who arrested Jews who defended themselves while letting the Arab marauders slip free. That they are nihilistic enough to betray the only country in the region where they can live freely is not such a surprise; hatred runs deep. A variety of well meaning organizations will surely try to paper over the violence (“blaming both sides” always works) and call it aberrational but this fissure in Israeli society will linger without resolution, awaiting the next explosion. It is bad enough to have such a fifth column in our midst, however small their number; it is even worse to lose faith in the police, which absented itself from the rioting, failed to quell it to any significant degree, and focused on inhibiting Jews from responding. 

      Part of the feckless response will be noted in the Supreme Court decision on the Sheikh Jarrah real estate dispute. The case seems open and shut – some residents are squatters and others have no legal title to the land and refuse to pay rent – and if the Court caves because of fear, intimidation and public pressure, then it is even clearer that there is a two-tiered system of justice in Israel, with Jews getting the short end of the stick.

      The second consequence is predictable, and here past results are indicative of future performance. Hamas will derive lessons from this conflagration as it has from the previous ones. The lethality of its weapons continues to improve, as does their precision. Israel’s remarkable ingenuity blunts most of its impact, but there is tragic loss of life, limb, and treasure, and a complete disruption of normal life. Hezbollah will learn as well, and thus each subsequent conflict becomes, if not more deadly, then certainly more disruptive. 

     That interference in our lives is the primary goal of Hamas. It cannot achieve any political or military goal. My sympathies for the “innocent civilians” of Gaza are somewhat limited, considering that they voted Hamas, a genocidal terror group, into power in 2005. They didn’t vote for Hamas because of Hamas’ trade policies. They knew for whom they were voting. Bear in mind that one of the putative reasons for the latest round of Hamas violence is Hamas’ desire to improve its electoral position for the upcoming (but never quite arriving) Palestinian elections. That means that, according to their calculus, Hamas gains votes by subjecting its “innocent” citizens to Israeli reprisals. Hamas wins more support when it places its rockets and arms in residential buildings and neighborhoods, with the attendant consequences to “innocent” civilians when their buildings are blown up. Such civilians may not be as innocent as the media presents them to be. 

    Nor is the media itself. Can it really be that the Associated Press or Al Jazeera did not know that they shared an office building with the Hamas intelligence services? If so, it is the worst case of journalistic malpractice – or willful ignorance – since ace reporter Lois Lane could not figure out that her colleague Clark Kent was Superman.    

Of course, it is worth remembering that Hamas only took power from the defeated Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas after a brief war in which they killed hundreds of each other and civilians. Fatah officials were literally thrown off the roofs of their office buildings, something less than an orderly transition of power. Hamas murders more Arabs than it does Jews. Its political echelon lives not in the squalor of Gaza but in the luxury of Qatar. Its leaders abscond with the money foolishly provided by the West if they are not using it to build munitions factories and underground tunnels. For all the billions sent their way in the last two decades, not a single “refugee” camp has been closed or renovated.

     Why, then, does Israel tolerate Hamas? Why can’t the most vaunted and feared army in the Middle East vanquish this band of terrorists who, as their charter states, seek to “obliterate” Israel and Jews from the face of the earth? How many times must we play the same macabre game?      One answer might be that Israel wants Hamas to suffer – but also to survive. Hamas remains because Israel wants it to remain.    

Don’t get me wrong. Israel would rather have peace and prosperity, and welcomes good relations with all Arab nations. It certainly would prefer, ideally, that there not be genocidal maniacs to our southwest. But the existence of Hamas plays a practical role in Israeli calculations.   

    Consider: if Israel invaded Gaza for the purpose of conquest, there would be one of two results. There would be great bloodshed, followed by calls for an Israeli withdrawal to which Israel would invariably succumb. Conversely, Fatah would take over. And then?   

    There would be a renewed demand for some territorial linkage between Gaza and Samaria, and Israeli “gestures” (i.e., concessions) for the sake of peace. More importantly, this would provide new life to the two-state illusion, the fanciful idea that the land of Israel can be partitioned again into Jewish and Arab states and co-exist peacefully. For some reason – probably because the West needs to project one Arab group in this conflict as moderate – Abbas, Fatah and the PA are always perceived as possible diplomatic partners for Israel, notwithstanding that President Abbas is a dictator, rules with an iron fist, enriches himself and his family, has little popular support and hates Israel no less than does Hamas.  

    Hamas is the counterweight to this two-state delusion because Israel can point to the dangers of ceding land to any Arab entity, as Israel did with Gaza sixteen years ago with deleterious results. The specter of Hamas seizing power in any potential independent Arab entity has rendered the two-state illusion moribund even to the Israeli left and, frankly, frightens much of the Arab world as well. As long as Hamas exists, two states are impossible. If Israel wanted Hamas gone, Hamas would be gone.     

Israel’s recent strategic thinking has been quantitative rather than qualitative. It seeks to degrade the enemies’ capabilities every few years but without actually crushing the enemy. Perhaps, then, this is Israel’s qualitative strategy – to keep Hamas as a player in the game because it serves as a useful foil and precludes Israel from acquiescing to a further partition. Such a strategy, cynical though it might be, is not unreasonable. The problem in kicking the can down the road is that the enemy’s capabilities continue to improve and that would make the next war even deadlier. It also leaves Israel vulnerable on the diplomatic front as various Western nations – including the United States – want solutions and not protracted conflict, even if solutions are impracticable and illusory. America’s support for the two state illusion is less than two decades old but politicians speak of it as if it has always been American policy.  

    Indeed, the rise of Jew hatred in the United States is also menacing. Jews especially should take note and seek to counter the explicit Jew hatred that now predominates in a leading wing of the Democrat Party. It is understandable if they can’t – “where is Schumer?” – but the silence of the Jews is still unacceptable and embarrassing. Can it be that American Jewish support for the Democrats exceeds American Jewish support for Israel? 

     If that is the case, then the continued deterioration of the American Jewish community is more dangerous than even Hamas –and even Israel’s tolerance of Hamas, which will rebuild quicker than last time, as we await, G-d forbid, the next round of hostilities.  

   The good news is that, as always, Jews in Israel rally around each other in difficult times, and furthering Ahavat Yisrael is its own reward.

I just emerged from my safe room. One alarm, one rocket, no damage. Moving on…    

Why does it seem like I have seen this movie before? It is true that there is a sense that it is all new, that each time the enemy tries to kill innocent Jews (and sometimes succeeds, unfortunately) it is a big shock. I was working at my desk earlier today, heard an explosion in the distance. A rocket flew over my house, landed a couple of miles from here in an empty field. No siren at all because the trajectory did not endanger anyone. I was unfazed. But why would people be shocked? This has been going since the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif in 2005. Perhaps people have forgotten that; forgetfulness can be a most convenient psychological tool.  

   You might recall that the expulsion (euphemistically called the “Disengagement”) was supposed to end the “occupation,” and empower the Arabs to govern themselves productively and peacefully. And if not – if hostilities would persist – then it was said that Israel would have the absolute right to obliterate Gaza as no normal country tolerates attacks on its citizens. Well, the “occupation” ended, there are no Jews in Gaza, no grounds for animosity. But instead of governing themselves productively and peacefully, the citizens of Gaza – yes, the “innocent” civilians whose plight has the world’s hypocrites up in arms – voted in the Hamas terrorists. You might recall as well that Western (and Israeli) fellow travelers touted Hamas as more attentive to the Gazans’ social and welfare needs and so would be good stewards of that territory. 

     Those geniuses were dreadfully wrong, which hasn’t precluded them from offering new advice. As some of us predicted, Gaza became a terror state, whose only industry and export is violence and mayhem. I assume there are some good Gazans who regret voting for Hamas and would like nothing better than to live in peace. Since their rulers will not allow that, they would be well advised to follow the path of the Syrian refugees and go live in Europe. The plight of Gazans is bad, getting worse, and will not get better. Anyone with sense should leave.

     It is clear that Hamas does not mind at all inflicting the worst type of suffering on their people. And this suffering is exacerbated by the Hamas terror tactics of placing their rockets launchers and weapons depots above, below and inside residential apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, mosques, and the occasional UNWRA facility. Obviously this is cruel and cynical and results in civilian deaths, but what astonishes is the immediate claim – parroted by liberal media outlets – that Israel is violating international law (!) by firing on civilians (!). It is astonishing that people should utter it sincerely (I’m sure they are insincere) because placing military facilities in civilian areas is itself a violation of international law. Since it would be absurd to impose international law on only one side in a conflict, what we have here is a battleground in which international law is irrelevant. It either applies to both sides or it does not apply at all. All the more reason for good Gazans to flee and for the international community to assist them in finding a new home, if indeed that is what they want. That would be humane and moral.

What is unacceptable and immoral is to grant immunity to a gang of terrorists, even if they are sovereigns in their own territory, because they repudiate international law. No person of genuine integrity would posit such a thing. If, then, one goal of Hamas is to win the PR battle, Israel would do well to announce to the world that Gaza, by its own choice, is an “international law free-zone,” with whatever consequences pertain.

    Those consequences should include – immediately – the cutting off of the electricity, power, water and food that Israel furnishes the Gazan kleptocracy. It is a twisted reality that Israel provides the infrastructure to Hamas, which then uses it to attack their benefactors. I don’t recall the Americans providing funding, supplies and weapons to the Nazis in World War II. This is a strange region. Blackmail and threats are an acceptable way of doing business, and weak governments are easily manipulated into embracing a false sense of stability.   

Why now? Even Hamas is not irrational, although they too have no realistic end game. The reasons for these flare-ups are multifaceted, and we would do well to note that has changed in the recent past. Hamas uses its rockets as a release valve, allowing its people to vent (through attacks on Jews) in the hopes of distracting them from the crooked governance and the miserable lives they are living. The people see Israel making peace with a number of Arab countries, bringing prosperity to the region – but not to them. They could have it but the Jew hatred of their leaders (and many of them) is so absolute that it blinds them to any other reality.

    Hamas also was poised to triumph in the upcoming (but never quite arriving) Palestinian elections. Those were just postponed by Mahmoud Abbas, currently in his sixteenth year of a four year term. In the warped arena of Arab politics, your preferred party attracts more support if it can murder innocent Jews. So this conflagration is also about building street credibility among the voters for an election that may never come. 

     The Arabs also notice the dysfunctional Israeli government now at loggerheads for almost two years, with new elections likely in a few months. Part of this dysfunction has enabled the terrorists to horde weapons and improve their abilities which they like to test every few years. The Israeli governments – ineffectual, divided, and seeking only momentary stability – have allowed the problem to fester. Long term strategic thinking, including reasonable objectives and goals, is completely absent. Besides the improved rocketry, Hamas is testing out the new strategy of instigating Israeli Arabs to commit violent assaults against Jews. Only the context – a battle – is new. Israelis in the mixed cities have long suffered from Arab violence, although it must be added that the main victims of Arab violence even in Israel is always other Arabs. Jews in Lod and Akko are suffering from the vicious assaults of their fellow “citizens.” Those who believe that coexistence is possible have good hearts but weak minds. It is hard to swallow that Jews have been arrested for defending themselves. That is outrageous and unworthy of a Jewish state. And if there have been unwarranted attacks on innocent Arabs, those too should be condemned.

     The land dispute in Sheikh Jarakh is as much a phony pretext for hostilities now as it was for Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was in 2000. It is all fabricated. I can’t weigh in on the particulars of the case – the reclamation of Jewish owned land seized by the marauders in 1948 – except to say that wars have consequences. The evil losers of wars that they themselves started have no claim to anything. That is justice – otherwise there is literally no price to be paid for launching wars against peaceful people.

      Finally, Hamas, like the PA, has been struggling financially because their funding was cut off by the United States, Iran is reeling under the weight of the Trump sanctions, and their cause has lost its allure in much of the Arab world. Even terrorists have to follow the money – they need money for weapons, and they need money to pay terrorists. The PA pay-to-slay had fallen on hard times resulting in a steep drop in terrorist attacks on Jews, and last year, the fewest attacks on Jews in generations.     

Well, like the cavalry in bizarro world, Joe Biden rode to their rescue, and has provided hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to the PA, and to UNWRA, which is similar to writing a check directly to Hamas. Within a few weeks, with the funding resumed the terror resumed. Those who predicted that a Biden administration would do that and thus provoke another round of terror and war have been vindicated. There may have been legitimate reasons for vote for Joe Biden, but support for Israel was not one of them. Most American Jews do not vote based on a candidate’s feelings towards Israel; it is not a priority for them. But those Jews and their rabbis who claim to love Israel and make it their priority, and having been duly warned that this would be the result, should take a good look in the mirror. Good intentions that underwrite lousy results are unhelpful.

It is not that these flare ups could not have taken place under Trump and were just more likely under Biden; it is that they did not take place under Trump because few of the conditions precedent obtained. That is to his credit – but we are left to deal with an explosive new reality.    

It amazes that people are praising President Biden for his public assertion that Israel has the right to defend itself. Sure, it sounds very noble. But do Jews have so little pride that we have to be thankful to someone who recognizes that we too posses the fundamental right of self-defense –as do all human beings? Is it some great concession that we are allowed to defend ourselves? Is that right really doubted by serious, moral people? Or is this praise grasping at straws because soon enough the Biden administration will not be so obliging?    

And with it all, the spirit here is fantastic, people adapt very easily, the death and injuries are horrific personal losses but the nation remains strong and resolute. If only we had politicians with the same spirit who could put their egos aside and serve the people rather than themselves. If only all Jews would realize that every action has a consequence; would that they would actually care about the consequence.

     Like Occam ’s razor, sometimes great complexities can be reduced to the simplest outcomes. The verdict is in, Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, and will spend decades in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Given all the facts and circumstances, the verdict was just and reasonable.

     Nonetheless, it would be misguided to ignore the complexities of this case which have far greater implications that the fate of two men, victim and assailant. America has descended into mob rule. It is obvious – and natural – that the jury would be influenced by the months of riots and mayhem in Minneapolis that followed Floyd’s death and the threat of future violence if it did not convict. They live there, work there, and own businesses and homes there. The jury was the only barrier between the match and the fuse, and the conflagration would eventually consume them as well. How could they not convict?

Obviously, there should have been a change in venue. The jury pool was contaminated, all having viewed the video and witnessed the anarchy. Obviously, the city of Minneapolis should not have paid Floyd’s family millions of dollars on the eve of the trial, essentially admitting the liability of their police officers and further tainting the fairness of the proceedings.  Obviously, politicians should not have demanded a particular verdict or else. That is not justice but mob rule, and many Democrat politicians today perceive themselves as agent provocateurs of the mob. It is equally obvious that these matters will be raised on appeal and that that appeal will be denied, and not only on the merits. Sure, expect the appellate court to trot out hoary dicta like “no trial is perfect,” but the appellate courts are subject to the same pressures as the jury. That is a sad day for the rule of law – as was police officer Chauvin’s criminal misconduct.

I was not surprised by the verdict. Asked about it for weeks, I offered one clue: Chauvin’s testimony. If he testifies, he has a slim chance of having a hung jury (an acquittal was impossible). If he doesn’t testify, he will be convicted and deservedly so.

Recall that I waded through the turbid waters of the criminal justice system for well over a decade and tried numerous cases. Unlike most attorneys, I preferred allowing my client, the accused, to testify. Yes, yes, I am well aware of the Fifth Amendment and the defendant’s right to remain silent. Yes, yes, an accused cannot be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” All that is true, and often, when the defendant is not just guilty but guilty as sin, he should not testify.

Yet, I always felt that human nature (and jurors are humans, after all) is such that people want to hear both sides. Jurors do not just want to have the defense attorney nibble at the prosecution’s case in order to engender reasonable doubt. Jurors want to hear the accused explain himself, tell his side of the case, defend himself on cross-examination, and offer a full perspective on the matter. Of course the defendant need not prove his innocence; it is the prosecution that has to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, human nature is human nature, and I had good success with having my clients testify.

Here, the big elephant in the room was this unanswered (perhaps unanswerable) question: why did Chauvin keep his knee on Floyd’s neck for the last 2-3 minutes? Why indeed.

Had Chauvin testified, he could have stated that there are occasions when the suspect is motionless, pressure is taken off, and then he springs back stronger and more violent. He could have stated that for most of the time his knee was not on the suspect’s neck but on his shoulder blade, pinning him down (along with the leg restraint) without impairing respiration. He could have stated that he feared that if Floyd stood up, the mob that surrounded the police might have attacked them and the suspect could have escaped. He could have said that because of the noise of the onlookers, he did not hear his fellow officer ask him to stop. He could have spoken about the difficulties of subduing an enormous man who is high on some narcotic, thereby impervious to tasering, and resisting arrest.

More pointedly, he could have repudiated the narrative that has swept the country in the last year and provoked numerous riots, caused substantial loss of life, limb and property to innocent people, and emboldened a new generation of racial hucksters: the canard that Floyd’s murder resulted from racial animus. That is an assumption embraced by racial provocateurs and their enablers for which not a shred of evidence was ever adduced.

The great myth that has been nurtured in the last year (actually, the last decade) is that because a black person is killed, it means that he or she was killed because he was black. That is both a logical fallacy and a political narrative. Certainly, Jews were killed in the Tree of Life temple because they were Jews; so too in the Chabad of Poway. But I wouldn’t affirm that every Jew killed is necessarily killed because he is a Jew.  Whites are killed by blacks – always without a racial angle. Asians can be killed, and there is no immediate assumption that they were killed because they were Asian. That narrative is limited to the extremely rare “white on black” crime. Only then is racial animus presumed, and no evidence is ever needed.

Imagine if Chauvin had testified that he has no racial animus and never did (he was married to an Asian women before she left him after his arrest), that had Floyd been a white criminal resisting arrest and high on drugs he would have dealt with him the exact same way, that he has no history of racial animus on social media or anywhere else and has worked alongside black officers and been supervised by black superiors for years without incident and with mutual respect. How that would have changed the narrative!

Defendants do not testify to avoid exposure of their prior convictions, something that was not a factor here. Defendants do not testify when they are inarticulate and cannot present their case cogently. Perhaps that played a role here. Perhaps he had no explanation at all for his conduct – but such witnesses can be coached as to what they should say (without distorting the truth, of course). Could there have been reasonable doubt because of Floyd’s medical conditions, drug use and violent resistance?  It is possible – it took four officers to pin him down – but that version needed to be communicated by Chauvin’s testimony. To be sure, the safest route was not to have him testify. But since his conviction was assumed, this was his only chance to tell his story. It was a missed opportunity, and for that alone his conviction is deserved.

The assumption that everything that happens to a black happens because they are black – that fallacy – is what is roiling America today and is the holy grail of the myth of systemic racism. Systemic racism is an indictment that requires no evidence to support. It is a presumption that need never be proven. There is no defense to it and there is no cure for it. It is an indictment that has induced an epidemic of liberal white guilt that keeps government and corporate cash flowing to the hucksters who allege it and does nothing to ameliorate black poverty or family dysfunction. It does nothing to decrease the black on black crime that devastates those communities, and it encourages the glorification of individuals such as George Floyd and others, who, notwithstanding their wrongful deaths, were career criminals and convicted felons who primarily preyed on their fellow blacks.

It is not systemic racism to note that blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes and thus have a disproportionate number of police interactions that – for many reasons other than race – can quickly go south.

An unfortunate consequence of Chauvin’s warranted conviction is the impetus it gives to the black supremacist movement in America and its false narrative of systemic racism. Indeed, Black Lies Matter, and as a result, policing is down, crime is way up, and the biggest victims are innocent and hard-working black people and other good Americans whose stores, businesses and livelihood are subject to the whims and predations of the mob. They are defenseless against the mayhem because the authorities have backed down.

Was justice served by this verdict? Yes. It is a tragedy for Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers who will be convicted in a few months, and a bigger tragedy for George Floyd who lost his life. It is a sign that the system works. But that system is under siege and in the current political climate cannot be rectified. This conflagration shows no signs of being extinguished. For all the talk of the verdict providing closure, the true day of reckoning is still ahead.