Hi everyone and welcome to this week's edition of Laura's Links.
I've been procrastinating all week about writing the lede here of the column. I've been thinking about it a lot but haven't hit the keyboard at all, but now it's getting down to crunch time. I've also been expending a lot of energy avoiding reading various tributes to, and articles on Charlie Kirk because I'm still so sad and angry, and I want to avoid inadvertently plagiarising any of the outpouring of published, public grief about the absolutely demonic murder of such a good person. I think about him and his family especially before I go to sleep, and I think about my own kids having seen the footage of the brutal, horrific, evil assassination of someone that they followed quite closely for a number of years. He's someone that we all felt we knew, and someone whose words and way of life really meant something to us. I start crying every time I think about it and I wish the clock could be turned back. I really can't believe that we are all referring to him in the past tense and that he is in heaven now. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
When writing about someone's death, I think the really hard thing to navigate is making sure that what you write is mostly about that person and not about yourself and how you feel. When Kathy Shaidle died, I was heartbroken, and I knew I wanted to write about her, but one of the first things that I wrote was how hard it was to write about someone I loved so much, without it sounding self-serving.
When Princess Diana was killed, I was severely post-partum and living in Israel. It was exactly when the suicide bombings were happening at a frenzied, horrific pace. A massive bomb went off in the Mahane Yehuda market very close to when we heard about her death. I felt my apartment building shake. I was nursing a newborn, sore and scared and crying and it felt like the world was falling apart. I wasn't a huge fan of hers and I thought the aftermath was quite maudlin. But I did remember feeling devastated for her children. Holding my newborn close to me, and processing the suicide bombings and that news was overwhelming.
Charlie Kirk's assassination has hit me really hard. Of course it's not about me at all, but so many people all over the world are feeling like this: sad, angry, devastated. So few of us knew him personally. So what is this all about? I think there are many reasons for that. First of all, he seems to have been a good man. Just a good, good, Christian man, father and husband and son. We saw goodness murdered in front of our eyes, preserved on the internet for eternity. Graphic. Horrific. Exactly what these evil demons wanted to happen with President Trump. I don't really know enough about Christianity, but it feels like he was certainly a martyr for his faith and for freedom of speech, and for Western values. Again, I can't believe I'm saying "was". It's so awful.
It's also, I think, because he spoke the truth. Not "his" truth. Just "the" truth. And truth has a value, a recognizable resonance and cadence. Truth has a life of its own. In his conversations, you could feel the truth. He peeled back the lies, layer by layer, in the most gentlemanly and convivial way. He faced the most arrogant and displaced outrage of the poisoned minds of our young, and spoke in a respectful, informed and confident manner-never cruel or rude, never disparaging or snide. He was a real force of nature. I also think that he was preemptively murdered because he could have indeed been the President of the United States. I could go on.
I'm getting all teary again, so it's hard to keep my thoughts coherent. He was certainly a true friend of the Jewish people and I appreciate that so much. I think he brought more Jewish people to the Sabbath than any person on earth since the Lubavitcher Rabbi, and not because he was converting - not at all, but because of his own religious faith. One Rabbi compared him and his "tent" to our forefather Abraham.
We are also feeling it deeply because it forces us to see the evil within man. That's what is hard to explain to our children. That is what we are feeling deep inside our hearts and souls. And not just in the evil act itself, but in the ghoulish celebration of this murder on display among allegedly civilized humans who are our neighbours, teachers, doctors and other members of our own communities.
Charlie Kirk was by all measures, simply a treasure of a human being and I pray for his wife and his children that they will forever be blessed by his memory and that they feel the strength of millions of people from around the world who will never forget him, who are praying for them, and who became closer to G-d because of him and are taking it upon themselves to carry the torch - or mic as it were - of freedom in his honor and memory.
This is an absolute tragedy for America and the West. It has to mean something. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr said to Mark Steyn previously on The Mark Steyn Show, that some things are worse than death. Charlie Kirk lived unafraid because he, too, knew there were things worse than death. That's small consolation to his young widow and children, of course but his wife is also a woman of great faith. This repulsive murder has to change things, and has already become an awakening of sorts, and I fully agree with this assessment:
"It is incredibly important we find out every single detail that led a young boy from a conservative family to live with a transgender boyfriend and then assassinate Charlie Kirk. Then we must destroy those steps."
Rest in Peace, Charlie Kirk; a tremendous human, a good man, effective evangelical of his faith, a foot soldier within G-d's army on earth and a man of G-d who spent far too short a time walking among us before being taken from us in an act of unforgivable human evil.
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North America:
"I got that white girl". This is the American equivalent of Hamas.
"Something is happening with young men. Burn like fire. Pour like rain".
"We went to church today. It was the first time in 20 years. We are raising 3 boys that will one day be men. And we want those boys to be as strong in their convictions as Charlie Kirk was".
A good summary: "Here's what happened.The Dems/MSM told all the trans kids, who are already mentally ill and in a state of psychosis, that Trump is literally Hitler and wants to commit "trans genocide". They created a standing army of mentally ill lunatics who want to kill us. Not hyperbole".
"I wish this racial gap did not exist".
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Islam:
Dr. Gad Saad and The Officer Tatum on Islam and the dangers to the West.
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Jews and Israel:
"The depiction of Qatar as a poor little victim of the Zionist monster is preposterous beyond description".
My Idiot People. Jews celebrate our empathy and helping others, Tikkun Olam yada yada self-congratulatory, blah blah but so many of my blockheaded people don't realize that there is little reciprocity. This is not the first time a Palestinian child got free heart surgery from Israel and its Jewish donors only to be confronted with the SHAHID thing. Idiots, idiots, idiots. There will be peace when Palestinian doctors in Palestinian hospitals save the lives and do free heart surgery on Jewish children from all over the world.
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The Formerly Great Britain:
Everything seems fine in Ireland.
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Europe:
Be wary of everything you read.
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Human Grace (lots of other grace stories in the Charlie Kirk section):
These nuns are my new ride or die.
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