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Destroying government property is a crime, so will pro-Hamas rioters be punished like election deniers?
Compared to the burning of the American flag and virulent anti-Jewish nastiness on full display in Washington by rioters during the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — בנימין נתניהו, what happened with defacement of the Christopher Columbus monument in Washington is pretty minor.
There is no excuse for burning of the American flag in America. None at all. Period. Full stop. If people want to protest the policies of the American government, or if they don’t like something the president is doing, they have plenty of opportunities to protest and I will fully support their right to protest. I have plenty of my own problems with President Joe Biden, and the same for former Presidents Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton. I could make a list of things I didn’t like that were done by former President Donald J. Trump, former President George W. Bush, former President George H.W. Bush, and even former President Ronald Reagan (though a lot fewer than the others on that list).
In America we have a Constitutional right to criticize our government.
But when protests turn into destruction of property and defacement of symbols of our country — of which the flag burning was the worst, with government-owned flags being torn down from their flagpoles and burned on city streets in our nation’s capital city — it’s time to call out the protestors for what they are.
They may call themselves pro-Palestinian.
What they really are is anti-American.
What was the point in defacing a Christopher Columbus statue? What did Columbus have to do with Israel, or Netanyahu, or the Israeli war in Gaza?
Absolutely nothing. And the Columbus statue wasn’t targeted due to some sort of anti-Italian hatred, but rather generalized hate for symbols of America by people who don’t know about the history of what was once among America’s most despised immigrant ethnic groups. That monument was put up in our nation’s capital to remind people that ethnic Italians who become American citizens are just as legitimately American as people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
