HATE

 The Thesaurus contains 118 synonyms for the word 'hate'. Merriam Webster defines it as:  "intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury - extreme dislike or disgust: ANTIPATHY, LOATHING: a systematic and especially politically exploited expression of hatred".   Here are the words which come to my mind when asked to define hate and its consequences. Ugly. Hateful. A blackening of the soul. A warping of the heart. A powerful, destructive emotion. Palpable Evil. Loathing. Detesting. Abhorring. Negative to the nth power. An emotion of pure negativity leading only to desolation. and destruction. A feeling which opposes anything of positivity. A force which sucks the very humanity out of humankind.   

 Hate. Hatred. The act of hating. All found within and generating the primitive emotion which long ago should have been banned, discarded from the lexicon and roster of deeds of humanity. It contains not one scintilla of positivity but 100% of a darkening, ugly tool of those who lack humanity. Who contain within themselves only the broken crushed remains of humanity along with the crumbs of their soul. And the formula to end mankind for all eternity.

In today's world, hate, hatred, its consequences, its impulses, are rampant and toxic above any other idea and execution of said idea. Apparently, people have nothing better to do than to indulge in the barbaric satiation of these emotions up to and including the act of murder. Yes, murder. There is no other word to describe it. It is not defense. It is not excusable. It is the worst of mankind. Worse even when it is applauded. and promoted at times from the very ones who should be fighting it with all their might, all their heart and soul, with 100%   of the energy contained within them.

 I hate - hate. I hate hatred. Yet today I know I have great big vats of hatred within my soul. How I hate those who have made me into a hater. I hate those who have abandoned even the slightest bit of a resemblance to humanity. They indulged the very worst of themselves, bathed in irremovable, irredeemable, unfixable vitriolic hate. Their hate has an acrid odor, a sharpness which cuts through to the very center of one's core and consumes all. Most often induced is an evil which is palpable and overpowering, running over any obstacle in its path. Any pureness of soul, of goodness is sucked out, spit out and tossed on the trash heap of mankind, to remain unclaimed forever.     

How else can I describe how I feel now? How can I feel otherwise when I know there are people out there who are chanting eagerly, avidly, madly, calling for my death. Calling for my torture. Condemning all that I love, all that I cherish.    They are the destroyers of my life, of my future. How else can I relate to those who adopt symbols of hate and gather under its auspices. They twist and turn anything they touch into excrement and refuse to acknowledge the very clear responsibility for the bloodbath of the Middle East. Theirs and no one else. They are the cause of the refugees within Gaza and the ignored refugees of Israelis within their own country.  The world remains defiantly silent, other than to condemn Israel as it wages a war for continued existence.

 The world excuses, even endorses perversion of the right of free speech into a right to call for the death of others, for those they hate - Jews, Israelis, in any site anytime. They wreak havoc upon all they oppose from the tiniest little baby to the frailest elderly and to anyone and everyone in between. There is no mercy in their eyes. There is no compassion in the soul. There is nothing of humanity within them at all.

Hate and hatred. Viruses which spread in pandemic manner. There is no stopping it once it starts. It gains in a momentum of its own and seeks and finds relatives within all they come into contact. What is one to feel other than dismay and doom when the very ones charged with educating our oncoming generations are those who have dipped deep, deep, deep within the pool of hate. When elite schools condone hatred. and violence associated with that hatred, when universities must be cleared by police because of the violence, when public high schools are rank with the odor of hate and virulent JewHatred, how is one supposed to feel other than hurt, fearful, dismayed - and filling up with a hatred rivaling theirs and justifiably so. 

I ask, when for two days I have been immersed in reviews and presentations of October 7, from the Nova exhibition which shreds one heart to the play of October 7, staged in the Temple of the (Jewish) Actors. I ask, I challenge, you. Tell me what other emotion a I to feel when I see the destruction wrought on that ugly day and its aftermath. How else am I to feel when the world turns a blind eye to the truth? Who broke the permanent ceasefire now? Demands yet another fake permanent cease fire. Who hides among civilians? Cynically uses their deaths, their unavoidable deaths to falsely smear Israel with yet another blood libel.  

Israel is fighting for its life. Should it lose this battle it is the end of Israel. Now. Make no mistake about that; do not underestimate the hatred, the putrid hatred, found within Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad and all their adherents, all the "innocent” civilians who enable, who cooperate, who hold the hostages within their own homes.   

Once upon a time I was a proud American. Once upon a time I had no fear of walking the streets of America as a Jew. Open. Proud. Content. Safe. Once upon a time I admired my grandparents for their courage to come here to begin anew, and their pride at being citizens of this country.

 Once. Upon. A. Time. I pledged. I sang the anthems. I stood. with respect. All that has now turned to ash and blows away in the winds of hate. My country is no longer my country, for it no longer protects me. It no longer wants me. How can I think otherwise when some of the biggest, highest, most influential people speak ill of me, demand a Christian nation -and have we Jews not been there before! What remains?   How can this any longer be my country? Upon what base?      When even the very museum of the very industry begun and built up by Jews in Hollywood turns to pejorative terms re the founders - Twice! - where are belief and trust?   Where do I turn? Where do I look? Where can I find hope?

Luckily, even as I am now up to my eyebrows in that negative emotion of hate, of a hatred directed at those who have made me hate them, I also know that there are good people out there. I have met them, known them, become friends with them or shared a brief moment in passing. But they are there. Would there were more. 

I hate the tension. I hate the bloodlust. I hate the haters and that they have made me feel hate.    

 Someone with a heart and soul. Someone with a brain. Someone with the know-how. Someone - that someone must exist somewhere. We must find that someone. We must become 'someones' along with him/her. If we fall short, the future is dim, lit only by the gleam of hate in the eyes of the marauders. Why must I have become a hater? It curdles my soul and yet how else am I to feel?

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Yitzy, the current ugliness corrodes the soul. It makes it almost impossible to breathe for with       every breath we inhale more acid of hate. More desecrations of the soul with nowhere to expel it. Even the trash piles reject it. Perhaps you up there with your golden soul might tap a few angels on the shoulder and remind them of us and our drastic, immediate need for aid. The only One who can stop this snowball of hate is, in fact, The One. Time to get back to work. Where the Hell have you been? For so long! 

Where. Are. You.  Time to step up to the plate and do what must be done.  

Yitzy, even in the midst of all this ugliness and toxicity of hatred, you remain pure and golden and the center of our souls. 

Always and forever. Always and forever.