[SIGNAL] Bari Weiss, the former New York Times editorial writer, delivered a tour de force speech explaining the West’s current war of ideas and laying out what we must do to save our civilization.
Speaking at The Federalist Society’s annual National Lawyers Convention, Weiss spoke after receiving a prize named after Barbara K. Olsen, a victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She perfectly encapsulated the "civilizational war" the West faces, a war that "too many had foolishly thought was over." She eloquently used the dual catastrophes of 9/11 and the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel to underscore the current war of ideas, conviction, and will.
Throughout her 38-minute speech, Weiss proved eloquent, poignant, and self-deprecating. She used humor to disarm and challenge the primarily conservative audience to look past the reality of her same-sex marriage and support for abortion to the stark truth that she, and millions like her, are allies with them in the more profound and deeper fight to save Western civilization as we know it.
She opened by noting that the attacks of Oct. 7 were not like "previous wars or battles Israel has fought in its 75-year history." It was a "genocidal pogrom," akin to the Nazi Holocaust, the European pogroms, or the Farhud, the 1941 massacre of Jews in Baghdad.
Comparisons between the 9/11 and Oct. 7 attacks are apt because, as she noted, "the spectacle and savagery were the point." Yet while the West responded with due horror to 9/11, Weiss lamented the West’s response to Oct. 7 as a "moral and spiritual catastrophe, revealing the rot permeating our civilization.
At the Sydney Opera House, protesters shouted "Gas the Jews." People celebrated "on the streets of Berlin, London, Toronto and New York." Black Lives Matter of Chicago created an image of the Hamas paragliders as a "symbol of freedom." Posters materialized on college campuses calling for "Israel to burn." 
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