With all of the news coming out of the Middle East over the last week, one effect of the whole mess has been to provide some hard reality checks. One such is the case of Ilan Benjamin, an American Jew and peace advocate who wrote movingly and eloquently in The Free Press of his change in outlook following the Hamas attacks. It's worth reading every word; Mr. Benjamin has received a cold, hard dose of reality -- and he acknowledges it.

His reality check didn't happen overnight, though; it began 10 years ago, he wrote.

In March 2003, I turned 13 and celebrated my bar mitzvah in Walnut Creek, California. By Jewish tradition, I became a man. But the ceremony felt redundant; I had already grown up. Only one year earlier, my older cousin, Daniel Pearl, an investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamist jihadis while on assignment in Pakistan.

His killers, like the Hamas killers of last weekend, proudly released a video documenting Danny’s murder. Among Danny’s last words were, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” At first, I was in shock—how had my own cousin become a player in such a large international nightmare? Why did people get murdered simply for being who they are? In this case, for being Jewish?

Here, even at 13, Mr. Benjamin was doing what so few people today seem to do; that is, to question their own assumptions and biases. That was the beginning.

When I immigrated to Israel at the age of 18 and enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, I was still driven by ideals. I thought I could promote more goodwill with our Palestinian neighbors. Serving in a combat unit based on the Gaza border, I witnessed the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held for five years by Hamas, when his freedom was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One for 1,000. Despite my many criticisms of the Israeli government, I recognized then how much Israel valued the life of every soldier.

Yes, Israel does value every soldier, and indeed every Israeli, not only because they are a small nation surrounded by enemies; they value human life as a matter of principle. Hamas does not. That's why Israel does not engage in the kind of barbarity that Hamas has demonstrated, repeatedly, over the last week. And it was over that last week that Mr. Benjamin got that final dose of reality that made him see very clearly the barbarity of Hamas.

Mr. Benjamin had, you see, proudly described himself as a liberal American Jew. He supported LGBTQ+ causes and the Black Lives Matter movement. He supported modern feminism. But all the while, he was observing the prevalent attitudes of the American Left towards Israel and Jews:

At first, I thought it must be miseducation.

“Ah, they think Palestinians are the indigenous people. I’ll show that Jewish history, and the archaeology to prove it, dates back millennia.” 

“Ah, they think we’re white colonizers. I’ll show how many Jews are people of color, including those who are Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian.” 

“Ah, they’ll get it once I show them that there are fifty Muslim countries, and only one Jewish state.” 

But my friends weren’t interested in correcting their misunderstandings. 

Of course, they weren't; most people aren't. The American Left does not have a monopoly on this, in all fairness, but they do seem to make something of a master class at it. The Left is convinced of its righteousness, not least of the reason being because of the old shibboleth attributed to the late Charles Krauthammer: Conservatives think liberals are stupid; liberals think conservatives are evil. This is a fundamental difference; conservatives have, historically, tended to think that liberals may be misguided, but that age, experience, and education can change their views. 

The apocryphal Winston Churchill quote applies, too; "If a man at 20 is not a liberal, then he has no heart. If a man at 40 is not a conservative, then he has no brain." But liberals, believing as many of them do that the Right (and believe you me, they include libertarians in that grouping) is evil, then that gives them an (unearned) moral high ground that enables them to ignore any counter-argument. That is precisely what Mr. Benjamin encountered with his liberal friends.

Here was Mr. Benjamin's final reality check:

How wrong I was. This past week, as over 1,300 Jews were slaughtered, the most murderous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I saw the true face of Palestinians and their allies. All around the world, they celebrate. They gloat. They mock our tears. They do not protest against Hamas. They embrace pure evil. 

And so, to the terrorists I now say:

When you killed my family, I forgave you. When you killed my people, I forgave you. But when you killed my idealism, I had no forgiveness left. 

It's sad that things have come to such a pass as this; but it's also important to note that, when this cup came his way, Mr. Benjamin did not ask for it to pass. He has accepted the reality of the situation, and credit to him for doing so. We are all being hit with a very real dose of reality this week, and none of us will remain unchanged.

And it seems Mr. Benjamin isn't the only one who sees through the propaganda to the reality. As Nick Arama informed us only this morning, none other than Senator Chuck Schumer, he of threatening the Supreme Court fame, got a taste of his own medicine, and maybe a little reality check of his own. And Bonchie tells us how some pro-Hamas students may find their prospects dimmed when their support for horror comes to light -- and that's good.

There is evil in the world. It's sad that it takes events like these to bring that message home. But that, too, is reality. It's something humanity will always have to deal with.