Sunday, Dec. 10, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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“Yes, but” should never be confused with “yes, and.” Moral clarity demands we understand the difference.
I will explain by using the horrific murders and kidnapping of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7 and what Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill called and everyone agrees was a “tragic day” at UNLV this past week.
The Hamas terrorists’ attack on innocent Israeli men, women, children and infants has led to a monthslong war between Israel and Iran’s terrorist puppets in Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It is no secret what has been taking place most days in Gaza — unless you don’t own a TV set or subscribe to a daily newspaper.
The chronicling of the war and the resulting death and destruction have become part of our daily lives and a significant part of a national debate. Sadly and alarmingly, that debate includes defining the limits of free speech as it bumps against and tramples its way across the red lines of hate speech amid calls for the genocide of Jews.
From college campuses across America to the streets of our largest cities, there are many people — willfully or benignly ignorant — who are marching in what they think is solidarity for the Palestinians and who are actually calling for the murder of Jews. There are others, of course, watching those marches and directing those protests who know exactly what they are doing and what they are saying. Those people are antisemites.
And whether it is a college president or just an everyday citizen, knowing the difference between free speech and hateful, genocidal speech — and being able to freely call it out — has become the moral challenge of our day.
The tragedy at UNLV this past Wednesday has placed front and center, once again as is always the case when a mass shooting devastates an innocent American community, the refusal of America’s elected officials to do what is necessary to keep our children and our neighbors safe as they go about their daily lives.
All we need to do is look at two editorials that followed that “tragic day” — one published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and one by the Las Vegas Sun — to understand the issue.
While both rightly pointed out the devastation that occurred and the bravery of the first responders that no doubt saved many more lives, there was a difference in approach. It’s a difference that points to the problem.
The R-J glossed over the “guns versus mental health debate” by leaving that for another day. As if the carnage should be blamed on either guns or mental health, not both. That attitude is always used by the gun lobby to freeze any real effort to find a solution to the mass murders on our campuses and in our shopping malls and churches. After all, debates take a long time and assume one side is right and the other is wrong.
The Sun’s editorial called for action now, not debating, because the dithering of elected officials just allows more death and devastation to continue. Thoughts and prayers are for the bereaved. Action to stop the carnage is for the living.
In both the Israeli-Hamas war and the mass murder at UNLV, the argument is not about the “yes, but” — as in yes that might help but what about this or that — because that is just an excuse not to act.
The truth about mass killings in America is that gun safety laws need to be enacted and mental health issues need to be addressed as would occur in the aftermath of any other national disaster — with promptness and with purpose. They are not mutually exclusive — that’s where “yes, but” gets us. They are mutual challenges that need our immediate attention, both of which need to be solved. That’s where “yes, and” takes us.
When we hear college presidents say “yes, what Hamas did was horrific and an abomination, but we have to look at the marches calling for the genocide of Jews in context,” what they are telling America is that there may be a justification for the raping of young girls and the beheading of babies. Most Americans, with apparently some notable exceptions, know that is just not so.
It is sad to say, but we have reached a point in America where issues of right and wrong are no longer clear. And we are teaching the younger generations that such moral ambivalence is OK in this democracy.
Well, it is not OK. America has always been clear-eyed when it comes to matters of conscience. We have instinctively known the right thing to do.
But today, when our bastions of higher learning and our elected leaders to whom we turn for thoughtful solutions equivocate on issues we know require no equivocation, we do a disservice to ourselves and our country.
There is a place for the “yes, buts” in our world, but this is not the place nor is this the time for the luxury of indecision.
A protest march calling for the murder of Jews or university presidents trying to justify calls for genocide is just flat-out wrong. Thinking and praying about what to do about out-of-control gun violence and mass killings is also flat-out wrong when we refuse to do anything to stop the carnage.
Yes, we should and must do something to end antisemitism in this country. And yes, we must do something to stop the immorality of allowing mass gun violence to define our daily existence.
And yes, there are no “buts” about that.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
