KINSELLA: We have become disturbingly desensitized to horror and cruelty

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On Google, the listing for the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, now says: “Temporarily closed.”

But that’s not quite true, is it? It’s closed for good.

At 4:10 a.m. on Friday, the synagogue was set on fire while some Orthodox worshippers were still inside. They got out in time, thank God, but the Adass Israel Synagogue is now gone. All that remains is some charred bits of wood, and some religious texts, reduced to nothingness.

The synagogue was at the sunny corner of Glen Eira Ave. and Oak Grove in Melbourne’s Ripponlea neighborhood. It’s a nice neighbourhood, by all accounts.

Pretty much everyone in political office swiftly offered lots of thoughts and prayers, and the police have said predictable things about the two men who destroyed the synagogue. (They were wearing masks, surprise surprise.)

What struck me, however, was something else: how much the Adams Israel Synagogue looks like other places of worship in so many other places – Synagogue Brunnenstraße in Berlin, Mordechai Navi Synagogue in Armenia, Oldenburg Synagogue in Vienna, the Rouen Synagogue in France, and on and on.

Schara Tzedeck synagogue in Vancouver, too, along with Congregation Beth Tikvah synagogue in Montreal, and quite a few in Toronto.

The synagogues are architecturally dissimilar, but they all have lots of tall fences and security cameras. All of them.

Here’s how they are similar: all of them have been firebombed, or set on fire, since Oct. 7, 2023. All of the ones named above, and too many others to list here. And, guess what? You would have needed a magnifying glass to find a mention of the Melbourne synagogue fire in Canadian media the next day.

As such, we have reached that point where actual news is no longer news. That is, something that is disturbing has become less disturbing – because it happens so often. That’s what we have observed with attacks on Jews, and Jewish places of worship, in the 428 days since Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Jews in Israel on Oct. 7: evil has become banal, per Hannah Arendt.

Why? Why has it become so difficult to rouse people from their slumber, when places dedicated to love are being set ablaze – in the above cases, literally? Why?

The reasons are myriad and multiple. It is partly because of the digital age in which we all live. We receive so much information via the palm-sized computers in our pockets, now, that we just tune it all out. It’s data smog, American writer David Shenk memorably called it. So, we just don’t pay attention like we used to.

Kittens on Facebook profiles have become way more compelling. (Mark Zuckerberg, of course, cravenly knew that first – which is why he removed news from his platform.)

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That’s one possibility. Another is that we have become desensitized to horror and cruelty – again, because of the blue screens we all peer down at every single day, every hour. We see so much blood and destruction, these days, we have become immune to it. Our capacity for outrage and empathy has been reduced to somewhere near zero. Or less than zero.

The main reason, however, is likelier this: it’s the Jews. This is how it has always been for them, this is how it always will be, pass the cranberries. It’s their fight, not mine. (Also said less often, but never far from the surface with the Jew haters: they kind of bring it on themselves, don’t they? They’re so clannish. They’re always picking fights. And so on. You’ve heard it all, maybe at your own kitchen table.)

In other words, it’s antisemitism. That’s why so many people can now hear about a place of worship being reduced to cinders – a place where people were inside, praying, at the moment when they are most vulnerable – and kind of, you know, shrug. It’s antisemitism, whether it is the variety we see in our streets, or the variety found in private-club drawing rooms. It’s all the same.

But make no mistake, fellow citizens: this is not, not, not just some Jewish thing. On the same day the Melbourne synagogue was set ablaze, hundreds of masked pro-Hamas types marched at Columbia University to stop the annual lighting of a Christmas tree. JOY IS CANCELLED, one of their signs read, which is the truest thing that these scumbags have ever said.

Remember this: they come for the Saturday people first, folks. But then they always, always come for the Sunday people.

Wake up. Your house is on fire.