Douglas Murray: Liberals turn killers, racists, and haters into martyrs

New York Post

18 hours ago

Why do parts of the left and the media keep asking for sympathy in all the wrong places?
In recent months we have had to put up with crazed activists like Taylor Lorenz claiming that Luigi Mangione is a 'revolutionary' and a 'morally good man' because she finds him 'handsome.'
Unfortunately he is also on trial for gunning down a father of two in cold blood on Sixth Avenue.
In the eyes of many people that still counts against a man.
And then there has been the bizarre defense of absolutely anybody who ICE has tried to deport.
It doesn't matter whether the people being deported are gang members, violent criminals or serial abusers, if ICE wants them out then the illegals must be defended.
In quick succession we went from protestors and Democrat lawmakers objecting to ICE taking illegal aliens from their homes, then to protesting when they are taken to a courtroom.
Above the law?
Then there was the case of Hannah Dugan, the Milwaukee judge who was arrested in April.
She is accused of aiding an illegal alien to evade arrest.
But rather than see the law take its course, Democrats kept suggesting that it was the Trump administration that had broken the rules, not the judge, and the judge who deserves our sympathy.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers claimed that the Trump administration was 'undermining the judiciary' and Chuck Schumer called her arrest 'an attack on the separation of powers.'
But isn't it a bad idea for a judge to try to help someone evade the law?
Doesn't it 'undermine the judiciary' for a judge to apparently help a man accused of battery to slip out of her courtroom through a side door so that waiting federal agents could not detain him?
And if you think so, then why make a hero of Dugan?
Why pretend that what she is accused of doing is in any way excusable?
Why not at least wait for the law to take its course — and not make heroes of people who have done deeply unheroic things?
It is the same here in New York, where the authorities, student groups and others continue to try to make a 'free speech martyr' out of Mahmoud Khalil.
In their estimation, Khalil was simply an exemplary student, even though he wasn't a student.
And he apparently has to be given all the rights of a US citizen, even though he isn't a US citizen.
Just because all he did was spend 18 months helping to cause civil unrest and bring about what his group called 'the total eradication of Western civilization.'
'But' — so many people said — 'Khalil has a pregnant wife.'
In which case you might have thought that Khalil would have tried to be on better behavior while enjoying the hospitality and benefits of this country.
But no — it is he that has to be made into the martyr, he and his family who have to be given the sympathy, and he and his family who have to be said to have suffered so much.
Bizarre new height
This week this strange desire to extend sympathy to the worst people reached a bizarre new height.
Habiba Soliman is the daughter of Mohamed Soliman.
He is, the man who was in this country illegally and who last week firebombed Jewish Americans while they were protesting peacefully in Boulder, Colo.
You might have thought in the wake of that gruesome attack — an attack that Soliman had apparently been planning for a year — sympathy might go to a number of people.
Most obviously you might think that it would go toward the 12 people who were badly injured in Soliman's attack — victims including a Holocaust survivor, set on fire on the streets of a US city.
By a man who should never have been here.
And who seems to have had links with Hamas.
But, oh, no.
The real victims — we are now being told — are Soliman's family.
Because the immigration authorities have looked at Soliman's illegal status and now arrested his wife as well as Habiba and her four siblings.
Why should the sympathy go to them?
Well, take the title of USA Today's story on the case: 'Habiba Soliman wanted to be a doctor. Then, her father firebombed Jewish marchers in Boulder.'
Oh, no!
If only that little stumbling block hadn't arisen we could have had another doctor in about a decade.
What a bummer.
CNN chose to go with a similar angle, saying that, 'The family's arrest threatens to derail what looked to be a promising academic career for Soliman's oldest daughter, who graduated days before her father's attack and had recently won a 'Best and Brightest' scholarship from the Colorado Springs Gazette.'
Pity for 'terrorist's kin
We have been told that before the attack, Habiba Soliman apparently wrote an application for a scholarship in which she said that being in the US: 'I learned to adapt to new things even if it was hard. I learned to work under pressure and improve rapidly in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, I came to appreciate that family is the unchanging support.'
And then her dad decided to carry out a terrorist attack.
As a result, it is Soliman's family who are now being pitied.
While the victims of their family member, ranging in age from 25 to 88, are swiftly passed over.
The Trump administration has repeatedly said that it wants to prioritize the deportation of people who are in the US illegally, who have committed crimes and who support terrorism.
It is an effort not only to clear up the open borders mess left by Biden — or whoever was in charge of the autopen in those years.
It is also an effort to dissuade violent criminals and terrorists from thinking this country is an entirely safe space to operate from.
But there is a cost to committing crimes.
And there are costs for carrying out acts of terrorism.
If one of those costs is inconvenience to your loved ones, then perhaps you should think twice about it first.
Because the sympathies of the American public have been stretched quite far enough.