I Don’t Understand Hate

Once again an attack of hatred has occurred in a house of worship. This time at the Poway Synagogue near San Diego, California. This shooting occurred exactly six months after a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

I don’t understand hatred. Especially hatred based on faith. Over the last few weeks the world has seen hate crimes perpetrated against people of all three of the Abrahamic faiths: Muslims, Christians and Jews. But it seems that antisemitism especially is once again rearing its monstrous head. I had not thought to see this level of hatred against Jews in my lifetime.

I was born not long after my father returned from helping to liberate France in WWII. I was raised as a child of a military officer, and growing up, almost every man I knew had served in the war. It wasn’t talked about much; most of those who served in the combat zones of WW II wanted to forget the trauma of their experiences.  But as a result, I paid more attention than most children my age when the war was occasionally mentioned or when I studied WW II in school.

I first learned about the Holocaust in 8th grade American History. I couldn’t emotionally understand why anybody would try and annihilate 6 million people based solely on their religion. But I did understand that my father, and anyone else who had fought in Europe, had helped to put a stop to the Third Reich’s unfathomable mass killing machine.

This hatred and rage still does not make sense to me, many decades later. But having grown up in the shadow of WW II and knowing about the atrocities committed in both theaters of the war, I honestly thought that we, at least the countries who had participated in the war, had learned a lesson. I truly thought that “Never Again” had been inscribed on our souls.

I was, and am, apparently naive. Where has this burning hatred emerged form? I have some complicated philosophical theories that I won’t go into here. But I’m still heartsick and confused. Why do we hate at all? Why do we continue to terrorize and kill because of differences of faith? How has it once again come to this, that people need to fear when they walk into their houses of worship?