For many Americans, Sunday’s NFL games might have been a respite from the stomach-churning news coming out of Israel after Saturday’s massive terrorist attack.
Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone didn’t have that luxury.
He had two very important reasons to be paying attention to what was happening half a world away from the football field.
Anzalone’s parents are with a church group in Jerusalem, according to The Detroit News.
“It’s hard,” Anzalone told the newspaper. “[It’s] really all I’ve been thinking about.”
That might not have been evident from Anzalone’s play on Sunday. He recorded a team-high 11 tackles in a dominating 42-24 win over the Carolina Panthers. But clearly, the thought of his parents was never far away.
On Sunday, the News reported, Anzalone published a social media post to X with a request to President Joe Biden.
“Please get my parents home,” he wrote, according to the News.
The post is no longer on Anzalone’s account — maybe someone decided that raising the profile of any Americans in Israel when the country is in a state of war wasn’t such a great idea, considering how ruthless the Hamas terrorists have proven themselves to be (again).
But according to the News, Anzalone — a former Florida Gator from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania — was responding to an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” by Rep. Byron Donalds, a Republican who represents Florida’s 19th Congressional District, in the southwest part of the Sunshine State.
The district includes the city of Naples. Anzalone’s parents are traveling with the First Baptist Church Naples, according to the Detroit News.
“I have 53 members of my constituency who are in Jerusalem right now,” Donalds told “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo.
“Obviously, they are panicked, trying to find their way to get back to America …
“We need to provide every assistance possible to Israel to get Americans back. And listen, let me be very clear with Hamas: Touch an American’s head and see what happens to you.”
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Those words might be more likely to strike terror into the heart of a terrorist if the United States had a president who was able to project more power than the octogenarian in the Oval Office right now — a man whose primary concern in the Middle East seems to be making nice with the Islamic Republic of Iran, where “death to America” is more or less the official motto as well as the dominant foreign policy. (“Death to Israel” runs a close second.)
But the terrorists of the world — whether in world capitals or in Third World caves — have been watching Joe Biden along with everyone else.
They saw his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which amounted to a craven capitulation to ragtag Taliban fighters.
They saw how he shrugged off — almost literally — the deaths of American service members in a Kabul suicide bombing.
They saw his indifference toward the plight of Americans left behind in Afghanistan and the Afghanis who worked with the United States.
They’ve watched him cooling ties with Israel — the United States’ only real ally in a region of the world steeped in hatred of the West.
And they’re clearly willing to bet that the United States under Joe Biden is not the kind of threat that will keep them from wreaking bloody havoc whenever it suits their whims.
In a Facebook post published Sunday, First Baptist Naples Pastor Alan said: “We are doing good at our hotel in Jerusalem. Continue to pray for Israel and for this to be resolved as peacefully and quickly as possible. We are trusting in the Lord and we know that God’s got this.”
That’s the kind of hope and faith Americans need now, at a time when the country is in the hands of a president with a track record of failure in foreign policy and even worse failure at home.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
