How Flawed "Postmodern" Concepts Wrecked Israel's Military

This is one of the most insightful and important articles/interviews that I have read in a long time: Why Hamas is still standing – analysis. Ran Baratz, who teaches military doctrine at the IDF's National Defense College, asserts that Israel's military has been negatively impacted by postmodern military doctrines, and he says that this is also a major problem for other Western democracies. He identifies the development of nuclear weapons and the end of the Cold War as two events that influenced postmodern military doctrines that rely on "precision-guided munitions" and "shock and awe" in contrast to the traditional military doctrine that focuses on obtaining victory by destroying the enemy's capability to fight.

After Israel's failure to win the Second Lebanon War (2006), former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron pointedly noted that Israel's tactics had shifted from results-oriented to "effects"-oriented. Shomron lamented, "We used to hit the enemy on the head with a club—and then he felt the effects."

Baratz explains, "The postmodern IDF's approach was to try to reach the 'effects' stage without the intermediate clubbing phase, which, unsurprisingly, turned out not to work in the real world." He correctly identifies former Prime Minister Shimon Peres--one of the all-time darlings of the Left--as someone who played a major role in Israel's embrace of flawed postmodern military doctrines.

I am puzzled and upset when Israel almost immediately announces after a terrorist attack, in triumphant fashion, that it knew where the terrorist lived and has now destroyed the terrorist's house after first evacuating the inhabitants. If Israel has such in depth knowledge about where her enemies are, then why doesn't Israel destroy her enemies and end the war without allowing so many of her civilians to be slaughtered? Israel's actions makes no sense unless you buy the twin delusional notions that (1) peace is possible with an enemy who has sworn to stop at nothing to destroy you and (2) limited reactions to terrorist murders provide effective deterrence. The tragic reality is that (1) Israel's enemies will kill or be killed because they have pledged their lives to their goals of subjugating Israel followed by subjugating the rest of the non-Islamic world and (2) such "deterrence" not only has no military effect but it also has a negative public relations effect, because media outlets much prefer to show a destroyed house owned by Arabs/Muslims than the victims of Arab/Islamic terrorism.

Israel also brags about using "precision-guided munitions" that can target one person while leaving other people in close proximity unharmed. Israel seems to be blissfully unaware that no one is impressed by her "precision-guided munitions." Her enemies scoff at Israel's softness while simultaneously complaining to credulous media outlets that Israel is committing "genocide."

Israel should abandon postmodern military doctrines that have repeatedly failed to yield desired results, and embark on a better, bolder path:

1) Scrap all of the "precision-guided munitions" and revert to using good old-fashioned "dumb" bombs. Israel's enemies would then directly pay the heavy price of attacking Israel, and they would know that Jewish blood is no longer cheap.

2) Stop bragging about military successes (real and imagined). Move in silence. Don't let the enemy know what to expect, and don't tell the enemy afterward what you did or did not do.

The harsh reality is that Israel and the West will either defeat the Islamists, or the Islamists will force the world to submit to Islamic law. This war will not be ended by negotiations or concessions, and it certainly will not be ended by delusional postmodern military doctrines focused on "effects" and deterrence.

Baratz concludes: "When do you need the military? For the moment that deterrence fails. So the military shouldn't be allowed to think about deterrence. It should live by the assumption that deterrence has failed and now it is required. As long as the enemy understands that your military is capable of winning, they are deterred. It's a byproduct of your actual war abilities. You do not deter your enemy by persuading him and by psychological effects."

In Israel Must not Underestimate Hezbollah the Way that Israel Underestimated Hamas, I warned, "I fervently do not want to be the prophet of Israel's destruction, but Israel's destruction is possible if Israel underestimates or ignores the threats posed by Iran, a weakened but not defeated Hamas, and a weakened but not defeated Hezbollah. I warned for many years about the threat posed by Hamas, and I was proven right. I have also warned repeatedly about the threat posed by Iran in general and Hezbollah in particular, and I hope that Israel has learned from her previous grievous mistakes and will act decisively to defeat her evil enemies."

Trump Should Think Twice Before Claiming Credit for this Disastrous Deal

Soon to be U.S. President Donald Trump is taking credit for the reported Israel-Hamas deal that will apparently result in cessation of hostilities in Gaza for at least six weeks, the release of 33 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza (some of whom may be dead), and the release of hundreds--if not more than 1000--Arab terrorists, many of whom have blood on their hands and publicly stated murderous intentions in their minds. Trump portrays himself as the ultimate deal-maker, and he asserts that this deal is the first step toward bringing peace to the Mideast--but the reality, as I explained in Israel Must Not Repeat the Mistake of Releasing Terrorists, is that this deal is a painful, humiliating defeat in the life and death battle versus Islamist terrorists whose goal is to subjugate the non-Muslim world (which they refer to as Dar-al-harb): "If this deal takes place, it will be an unmitigated disaster not only for Israel and the Jewish people, but for the West, because this will represent a tremendous victory for Hamas specifically and Islamic terrorists in general; it will demonstrate that terrorism works, that Israel is weak, and that if you resist Israel long enough then Israel will surrender."

In Is this the best deal they could come up with?, Gary Willig wrote:

Hamas' leaders are dead. Its battalions are smashed. 20,000 of its fighters are dead, with thousands more injured or in prison. Its rocket arsenal has been reduced to a few hundred at most. Its ally Hezbollah is in shambles and unable to help it anymore. Its masters and sponsors in Tehran are reeling from losses throughout the region, the destruction of their air defenses, and an economic crisis that will make rebuilding from this war far more difficult for Hamas than previous conflicts. Hamas has 5 days until the deadline set by the next American President to release its hostages or there will be "all hell to pay."

With everything that is going against Hamas, this is the best deal Israel and the US could come up with?

David M. Weinberg details the disastrous and sordid history of Israel's lopsided hostages for terrorists exchanges in Terrorist releases in exchange for hostages threaten even more Israeli lives (emphasis in original):

Every deal involving the release of terrorists has led to more bloodshed, planned and carried out by these released terrorists.

There are no exact statistics on this (because unsurprisingly the security establishment refuses to release such statistics), though estimates range from 10% to 50% of released terrorists swiftly return to hard-core terrorist activity with devastating effects.

The 1,150 Palestinian Arab prisoners released by Israel in the 1985 so-called Jibril deal, in which three Israeli soldiers who had been taken hostage in Lebanon by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were released, proceeded to fuel the First Intifada, which ran from 1987 to 1993 and lead to the deaths and injuries of Israeli and other citizens. According to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, about 10% of the released Palestinian terrorists returned to active terrorist duty.

Then came the Oslo Accords, when Israel mistakenly allowed at least 60,000 Palestinian Arabs from "abroad" into the Palestinian Authority territories, including 7,000 card-carrying PLO terrorists. Between 1993 and 1999, Israel released additional Palestinian Arab terrorists as "gestures" to the PLO, which fueled the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005. These shocking figures were revealed in an Israel Defense and Security Forum report from last year.

In 2004, Israel released more than 400 Palestinian Arab prisoners and some 30 Lebanese prisoners, including leaders of Hezbollah, for one civilian captive—Elhanan Tannenbaum—and the bodies of three IDF soldiers. The Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah followed not long after.

The 2011 deal for Gilad Shalit was the worst; more than 1,000 terrorists were released in exchange for the 25-year-old IDF soldier, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Hamas-led attacks and atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023. In fact, almost the entire Hamas command structure involved in planning last year’s Simchat Torah assault on Israeli towns and cities, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed on a single day, was made up of terrorists released in the Shalit deal.

Joe Biden's foreign policy consisted of one disastrous decision after another, including but not limited to his funding of the the PLO's "Pay for Slay" Jew-Killing program, but Donald Trump is not starting his second term well; his bragging about his role in the upcoming Israel-Hamas deal indicates that Trump pressured Israel into accepting unfavorable terms so that he could claim a foreign policy "success" that will turn out to be disastrous for Israel and the United States.

It will give me no pleasure to say "I told you so" when the terrorists released by Israel in this deal kill Israelis, Americans, and other innocent civilians. This deal will also inspire more terrorism in the United States along the lines of the recent attack in New Orleans, because terrorists will sense and exploit the weakness now being displayed by Israel and the United States.

Israel Must Not Repeat the Mistake of Releasing Terrorists

It has been reported that Israel is close to reaching a deal with Hamas stipulating that Israel will release hundreds of terrorists--including convicted killers--in exchange for 33 hostages. Allegedly, the price for each released female Israeli soldier will be 50 terrorists. If this deal takes place, it will be an unmitigated disaster not only for Israel and the Jewish people, but for the West, because this will represent a tremendous victory for Hamas specifically and Islamic terrorists in general; it will demonstrate that terrorism works, that Israel is weak, and that if you resist Israel long enough then Israel will surrender. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blasted the proposed deal as a "catastrophe for the national security of the State of Israel. We will not be part of a surrender deal that would include releasing arch-terrorists, ending the war, and erasing the achievements that cost us so much."

In the wake of Hamas's October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack, I explained the Islamic concepts of Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb, and I defined what victory must look like for Israel: 

1) Hamas is eliminated as a functioning terrorist, military, and political entity.

2) Hamas' state sponsors--including but perhaps not limited to Iran and Qatar--must pay reparations for the killed, for the injured, and for the destruction of property.

3) All hostages held by Hamas must be released immediately and unconditionally.

Israel has fought Hamas--and Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis--for over a year and has failed to accomplish any of the above goals while losing over 800 soldiers in combat. It is not enough to kill a few top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and to kill or capture several thousand foot soldiers, because doing so did not eliminate Hamas as a functioning entity, did not punish Hamas' state sponsors, and did not secure the unconditional release of all hostages.

Israel has a pathetic history of turning not quite victory into total defeat. In 2011, Netanyahu signed off on a deal with Hamas, releasing over 1000 terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas. One of those released terrorists was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of Hamas's October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack during which Hamas killed more than 1200 people and took more than 250 hostages. One lesson that Sinwar learned while he was incarcerated in Israel is that Israel will pay almost any price in exchange for hostages, and that is a major reason that the October 7, 2023 attack included plans to take hostages. Sinwar terrorized Israel in three ways on that day (and ever since, even after Israel belatedly eliminated him): 

1) Hamas not only raped, tortured, and beheaded victims but Hamas livestreamed these horrors to inspire their followers and break Israel's spirit while proudly displaying the barbarism at the heart of radical Islam.

2) Hamas committed mass murder to devastate the Jewish people with a one day death toll not seen since the Holocaust.

3) Hamas took hostages to use as bargaining chips for the release of thousands of terrorists.

The title of Caroline Glick's column about the Shalit deal--"A Pact Signed in Jewish Blood"--says it all, and she wrote some prescient words about Israel's colossal blunder (emphasis added):

Untold numbers of Israelis who are now sitting in their succas and celebrating Jewish freedom, who are driving in their cars, who are standing on line at the bank, who are sitting in their nursery school classrooms painting pictures of Torah scrolls for Simhat Torah will be killed for being Jewish while in Israel because Netanyahu has made this deal. The unrelenting pain of their families, left to cope with their absence, will be unimaginable.

This is a simple fact and it is beyond dispute.

It is also beyond dispute that untold numbers of IDF soldiers and officers will be abducted and held hostage. Soldiers now training for war or scrubbing the floors of their barracks, or sitting at a pub with their friends on holiday leave will one day find themselves in a dungeon in Gaza or Sinai or Lebanon undergoing unspeakable mental and physical torture for years. Their families will suffer inhuman agony.

The only thing we don't know about these future victims is their names. But we know what will become of them as surely as we know that night follows day.

Netanyahu has proven once again that taking IDF soldiers hostage is a sure bet for our Palestinian neighbors. They can murder the next batch of Sinais and Gals, Noas and Ruths. They can kill thousands of them. And they can do so knowing all along that all they need to do to win immunity for their killers is kidnap a single IDF soldier.

There is no downside to this situation for those who believe all Jews should die.

In 2011, Glick predicted the hostage crisis that has taken place in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and it must be emphasized that the current proposed deal will ultimately not be about rescuing 33 hostages but rather about condemning hundreds--if not thousands--of people to be slaughtered. 

It is heart-rending to read the pleas to Netanyahu "Leave no hostage behind," because Netanyahu is compounding the insanity underlying previous lopsided deals by not even bringing every hostage home with this proposed deal. Minister Orit Strock (Religious Zionist Party) declared, "There are prices that should not be paid, certainly not before everything in the world changes, just before we can fight again without any restrictions. Just before the end of Biden's term, to come and make a deal whose exorbitant price suits a period that is almost over--it's not an achievement, it's an injustice and a lack of national responsibility. We need to cry out these things, we need to awaken these things. We need to talk about the hostages who, as it seems now, will be left behind. I call on all my friends in the government, do not ignore this price. Be brave enough to say no to this agreement."

There are still approximately 100 hostages (or bodies) being held by Hamas; what happens to the dozens who are not included in this deal? Netanyahu is betraying Israel and the Jewish people, and in one fell swoop he is poised to wipe out whatever hard-earned gains Israel made on the battlefield, because Hamas' leaders lounging in luxury in Qatar* do not care about the Hamas foot soldiers Israel killed in Gaza; those foot soldiers are just cannon fodder to Hamas, which also not only does not care about Arab civilian suffering but uses (and exaggerates) that suffering for propaganda purposes. 

Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack exposed Israel's strategic and tactical vulnerabilities, and this proposed exchange reveals Israel's political weakness: Israel consistently permits her enemies to fight limited liability wars in which her enemies never suffer significant, permanent consequences for their actions. Israel should make it clear that the response to terrorism and war waged against her will not only be total victory on the battlefield but also the enactment of permanent political and demographic changes--Israel should annex Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and Israel should complete the population exchange initiated in 1948 when the Arab and Islamic states expelled almost 1,000,000 Jews. We have seen for over 100 years--dating back to before the rebirth of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel--that a large number of Arabs and Muslims will never accept peaceful coexistence with the Jewish people, so we have passed the point where the obvious solution must be enacted: Jews (and any Arabs/Muslims who will live in peace with Jews) living in Israel, and Arabs/Muslims who are unwilling to peacefully coexist with Israel living in any one of their more than 20 Arab/Muslim sovereign states spread out from Morocco all the way to Pakistan (a legacy of Arab/Muslim colonization of Africa, the Mideast, and Asia).

No self-respecting nation suffering what Israel suffered at the hands of Hamas would leave Hamas intact in Gaza--or leave Gaza under Arab/Muslim control--in the wake not just of the October 7 atrocities but in the wake of 20 years of Hamas atrocities. Israel tried the experiment of letting the Arabs/Muslims rule in Gaza, and the result of that experiment proved that the experiment should never be repeated. Israel must control Gaza to be safe, and Hamas must lose Gaza as a consequence of losing a war that Hamas started.

Imagine if Israel had never given up the land that she captured in self-defense in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. The Arabs/Muslims would be much less inclined to attack Israel if they knew that losing the ensuing war would mean permanently losing land. That is the way that normal nations wage war. Israel has tried to live by a "purity of arms" concept that is neither acknowledged nor respected by the rest of the world that slanders Israel as a genocidal apartheid state--but it is better to be slandered while controlling land and having peace than to be slandered while losing land and having no peace.

The Islamic terrorists boast that they will defeat Israel (and then the West, mind you--never forget that) because "We love death more than you love life." The  foundational documents for Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly state their goal to destroy Israel; unless Israel comes to grips with the reality that this is a kill or be killed situation, Israel's survival is in deep peril. 

*--As I noted in a recent article, it is imperative that President Trump confront Qatar for sponsoring Islamic terrorism and no longer perpetuate the lie that Qatar is a helpful mediator.

President Trump Must Confront Qatar for Sponsoring Islamic Terrorism

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is doing a major international public service with the Qatar Monitor Project (QMP) documenting the threat that Qatar poses not just to Israel but to the United States and the entire West (footnotes omitted):

Qatar is a big winner in the Syrian revolution, having supported the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani (formerly ISIS and Al-Qaeda and now Muslim Brotherhood) who has a $10 million bounty on his head. This is Qatar's classic game: support the Islamist terrorists and then present itself as a mediator, liaison, and even peacemaker – the arsonist playing firefighter. As in Afghanistan, as in Egypt in 2010, and as in every Muslim country.

In every Muslim country where there is a battle between the Islamists and the secularists, Qatar supports the Islamists, as in Gaza supporting Hamas for years, building its military might and enabling October 7. And now, guess what – they are back in the saddle as mediators.

Who brought them back to the negotiations after the secular pro-U.S. president of Egypt threw them away? The U.S. – the country that has suffered more than any country from Qatar's duplicity and hidden subversive, anti-U.S. activities, including the 9/11 attacks.

While the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were mainly Saudis, recruited to Al-Qaeda as individuals, the mastermind of the attacks, Khaled Sheik Mohammad (KSM), was a former Qatari government employee at the Ministry of Electricity and Water in the capital Doha, who frequently was allowed to embark on terrorist missions in the world (see below). And when, in 1996, the FBI came to arrest him and told only the Emir, KSM disappeared within hours.

All of this has been substantiated in American intelligence and judicial documents, including KSM's confession.

Indeed, President-elect Trump threatened those holding hostages in Gaza with "all hell to pay" if they are not released by January 20. But this threat was not directed to any specific address and therefore devoid of any practical result. Had he directed it to Qatar, the patron of Hamas and the enabler of October 7, it would have helped, because without Qatar, Hamas is doomed. And Hamas will listen to Qatar's demands.

But since he did not point to the culprit, Qatar, but on the contrary brought Qatar back to the negotiations as an honest broker who tells him, together with a choir of "pundits" – former and current lobbyists of Qatar – that the pressure should be directed against Israel – the hostages are doomed.

Moreover, instead of helping in the negotiations, Qatar is leaking false information about a deal cut, just to disrupt the Egyptian efforts, without the U.S. even understanding what Qatar is doing.

President Biden's foreign policy decisions have been disastrous across the board, from the appeasement that emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine to funding the PLO's despicable "Pay for Slay" Jew-killing program to pressuring Israel into not achieving a decisive victory against Hamas to his defining moment: the triumph of the Taliban in the wake of his chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. President Biden not only failed to confront Qatar but he depicted Qatar as a helpful mediator. President Biden is not the only one to blame for Qatar's emergence as a major financier and supporter of Islamic terrorism, but matters became worse during his Administration, culminating in Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel.

QMP notes, "For decades, Qatar has been the foremost global sponsor of Islamist terrorist organizations and movements, both Sunni and Shia, across the Muslim world. These organizations and movements seek to topple non-Islamist regimes and replace them with Islamist ones – and have succeeded in places like Egypt and Afghanistan."

The success of President Trump's foreign policy will be determined in no small part by the extent to which he fixes (or least mitigates to the greatest degree possible) all of the disasters that President Biden created or made worse, and a major component of President Trump's agenda must be to confront Qatar and expose Qatar's malevolent actions that threaten the West.

Israel Must not Underestimate Hezbollah the Way that Israel Underestimated Hamas

Prior to Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel, the Israeli military/political "concept" was that Hamas was either incapable of such an attack or afraid of the consequences of launching such an attack; in either event, Israel need not worry about Hamas doing anything more than "minor" terrorist attacks that "only" killed or wounded a few people. Any sensible person reading those words immediately understands many reasons why such a "concept" is both flawed and dangerous, including (1) a nation should not accept as a matter of course that a terrorist group will regularly launch fatal attacks on her territory, and (2) it is reckless to assume that a terrorist group that speaks of launching a massive attack is not planning to launch a massive attack given the right conditions. Israeli hubris after the Six Day War paved the way for Israeli vulnerability at the start of the Yom Kippur War, and the "concept" about Hamas displayed similar hubris.

Israel is now at great risk of falling prey to such hubris yet again. Hezbollah (which can also be spelled Hizbullah) is, like Hamas, an Iranian-funded terrorist group with global reach and global aspirations; for Iran and the terrorist groups funded by Iran, fighting Israel is just one battle in a much larger war. The Islamist quest to not only destroy Israel but to kill Jews worldwide can only be understood in the context of the concepts of Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-harb:

The barbarism at the core of radical Islam will not be cured by any concession made by Israel short of complete dissolution of the Jewish State--and even if that tragic outcome happened, radical Islam would not be placated but would instead turn its full attention toward the United States and other democratic countries that are part of the Dar al-harb--the portions of the world that radical Muslims have yet to conquer, with the emphasis on "yet": they believe that such conquest is promised to them by Allah, and they will not rest until they achieve such conquest, transforming all of the world into Dar al-Islam (territory governed in strict accordance with Islamic law, which means--among other things--no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no independent judiciary, and very limited rights for women and any other minority group not favored under Islamic law). 

Israel has had some success in diminishing Hezbollah's capabilities in the past year or so, but Israel should not rest on her laurels or feel safe until the job of destroying Hezbollah is complete. It is no secret that for quite some time Hezbollah has been planning a massive invasion of Israel from the north that, if successful, would dwarf the scale of what Hamas did in southern Israel. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has done a tremendous job of compiling in great detail a massive amount of evidence regarding Hezbollah's goals and capabilities. Unmasking The Religious Dimensions Of Hizbullah's Decades Of Planning For An October 7-Style Invasion And Massacre Of Jews is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the grave danger facing Israel. The opening sentences of the report are chilling to read:

Since the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war, Hizbullah has been speaking openly, in Arabic and in explicit detail, of its plan to carry out a future massacre in Israel. Hizbullah's plan, two decades in the making, was to begin by invading the Galilee using missiles, rockets, and drones, along with advanced technology, intelligence, and surveillance, and with a tunnel network far more extensive than Hamas's. Yet Hamas's October 7 attack turned out to have preempted what Hizbullah had been planning – plans that were confirmed by documentation found by Israeli forces in their counteroffensive in southern Lebanon.

Self-proclaimed "progressives" and other "useful idiots" in the West and elsewhere falsely assert that they and their Islamist brothers in arms are anti-Zionists but not antisemites, and they falsely claim that Israel is an evil colonizer of Arab lands. The reality is that Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism, and Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel. Further, there is a deep religious dimension to the war against Israel, as discussed in MEMRI's report:

In its communications, Hizbullah often refers to the seventh-century slaughter of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula by the army of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, during the seventh-century Battle of Khaybar. In fact, Hizbullah considers all its current strikes against Israel to be part of its "Operation Khaybar" in revenge for the killing of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. An October 1 post by the Hizbullah Al-Electroni account featured a 25-second video warning, in Hebrew and English: "The Khyber [i.e. Khaybar] Gate will be uprooted twice, and the field will testify that we are the people of decisiveness."

A video released in February 2023, further highlighting Hizbullah's framing of its current battle against Israel in religious terms, showed the elite Radwan Force simulating an invasion of northern Israel. The narrator quoted the Old Testament in Hebrew: "If there is a serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. Exodus, 21:24-25." The video concluded with a verse from the Book of Jeremiah: "From the north, disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land [Israel]. Jeremiah 1:14."

This theme, and this verse from Jeremiah, also appeared in an October 2020 video on Hizbullah's media outlet Al-Manar. In it, a Hizbullah official stressed that the next phase of the "resistance" would include two "blades" – Hizbullah missiles and legions of fighters who will storm the enemy's barracks and settlements – in an operation named "The Gates Of Khaybar Will Be Smashed Again."

It is notable that Hizbullah supporters in the West – in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and elsewhere – have revived the historic Muslim call to kill Jews in chants threatening local Jewish communities: "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return." This occurred at a September 29 vigil for Nasrallah in Dearborn, Michigan, where it was heard; the crowd chanted "Death to Israel" for good measure.

The slogans "Free Palestine!" and "Land for Peace!" are not calls for righteous action but rather calls for disarming and weakening Israel as a prelude to destroying Israel. Hezbollah makes no secret of its goal to destroy Israel, which means that the people chanting "Free Palestine!" and "Land for Peace!" either want Israel to be destroyed or are brainwashed and have no idea what they are talking about. 

MEMRI's report describes Hezbollah's detailed plans to destroy Israel: 

Days after the September 17-18 detonation of Hizbullah operatives' pagers and other communication devices across Lebanon, came Israel's elimination of the top tier of Hizbullah's leadership, including, on September 27, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. He was killed deep in his bunker, as he and senior Hizbullah officials were reportedly finalizing their plans that would likely have gone into action for the Jewish New Year on October 2 or for the anniversary of October 7. In its Lebanon ground offensive, which began September 30, Israel has found in the tunnels – that North Korean experts are known to have helped construct – anti-helicopter missiles, anti-tank missiles, mortar shells, ammunition, weapons, and explosives, as well as motorcycles, for Hizbullah's "Conquer the Galilee" operation.

Hizbullah believed that its invasion would bring about Israel's destruction. In interviews, and in Arab media and social media posts, Hizbullah officials, including Nasrallah, his deputies, and senior commanders, detailed the organization's goals and aims.

According to these statements, as noted, Hizbullah's plan would begin with the Galilee. In 2019, Nasrallah explained: "Part of our plan, both theoretically and in practice... It is a plan for which we train, and prepare... We have prepared this plan. It is complete. Yes, part of our plan for the next war is to enter the Galilee."

In August 2023, two months before October 7, Hizbullah operations officer "Hajj Jihad" underlined that the plan for the Galilee operation had been in the works for over 15 years. Calling it "one of the most important plans prepared by the Islamic resistance," he added that when the war starts, "we will see Israeli soldiers deserting their posts, and fleeing." He underlined that "the Islamic resistance that will wage this war" will not conduct it "like we have done it in the past" because "in the 17 years since 2006, we have been diligently preparing for this war."

It should be noted that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000--under the disastrous leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Barak--emboldened Hezbollah, and paved the way for Hezbollah to develop into a terrorist organization with global reach. Barak did not have the necessary wisdom or courage to properly secure Israel's northern border, so now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must finish that most important task.

Two important points must be emphasized:

1) If Hezbollah launches a mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel, no one--including Israeli leaders--can dare say that there was no way to predict or know that this could happen. The information is readily available publicly, which means that Israeli military and political leaders no doubt have access to even more information. When Netanyahu set free more than 1000 terrorists in 2011, I criticized Netanyahu and every minister who supported the deal: "These 26 Israeli Cabinet Ministers have signed death warrants for countless innocent Jewish men, women and children--and when the Hamas murderers execute those death warrants Benjamin Netanyahu and these 26 Ministers should be held accountable for setting terrorists free." I did not know when Hamas would attack, but I knew that Netanyahu and the other ministers had set the stage for such an attack to happen.

2) The Israeli government has a legal and moral responsibility to destroy Hezbollah (and Hamas) in order to protect her civilians and her sovereignty; any Israeli politician who is unwilling to fulfill that duty should immediately resign from office. Over a decade ago, I warned about a defeatist mentality in Israel that could lead to Israel's destruction: "The Rabin-Peres-Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon-Olmert plan--surrender land to bloodthirsty enemies, set child killers free so that they can kill more innocent, defenseless children, force children to cower behind concrete desks as deadly rockets pummel schoolyards and become giddy when an anti-missile missile that costs $100,000 shoots down one of a nearly endless supply of cheap rockets--falls just a bit short of Churchill's standards."

I fervently do not want to be the prophet of Israel's destruction, but Israel's destruction is possible if Israel underestimates or ignores the threats posed by Iran, a weakened but not defeated Hamas, and a weakened but not defeated Hezbollah. I warned for many years about the threat posed by Hamas, and I was proven right. I have also warned repeatedly about the threat posed by Iran in general and Hezbollah in particular, and I hope that Israel has learned from her previous grievous mistakes and will act decisively to defeat her evil enemies. 

The U.S. Should Defund UNIFIL and UNRWA

I previously explained that The United Nations is Antisemitic, Worse Than Useless, and Should Be Disbanded. Two of its constituent organizations are particularly despicable: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). I discussed UNRWA in depth in The Pathetic "Progressive" Response to Hamas' War Against Israel:

During Israel's War of Independence, several hundred thousand Arabs fled from Israel, exhorted by Arab military leaders to temporarily evacuate in order to make way for the planned massacre of Israel's Jewish residents. These Arabs expected to triumphantly return to a land with no Jews but instead Israel defeated the combined armies of her Arab neighbors. In most wars, the losing side is responsible for resettling its refugees or else a de facto population exchange occurs (few people talk about the fact that, at the same time that hundreds of thousands of Arabs voluntarily left Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Arab countries, with most of those Jews fleeing to Israel). Not only did the Arab countries refuse to resettle their Arab brethren who they had exhorted to leave Israel but the so-called Palestinian Arabs are the only group in the world that has an entire UN organization devoted exclusively to their particular concerns: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). All other refugee crises in the world are dealt with by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. At the end of 2012, the UNHCR listed listed 45.2 million displaced people worldwide, the largest such number since 1994. The biggest single displaced person crisis in the world is focused in Pakistan, a result of decades of war, tyranny and instability in that region. The disproportionate attention paid to a fictional Palestinian nation and a real--but eminently solvable--Arab refugee problem not only does injustice to both Israel and the refugees in question (who have been exploited as political pawns by Israel's enemies for decades) but it also hinders efforts to solve other more severe refugee crises.

It is bad enough that there is an entire UN organization focusing on refugees of a fictional nation, people who share a common language, culture and religion with most of the other Arab countries in the Mideast and who should have been accepted by those countries decades ago, much like Israel welcomed Jewish refugees from Arab countries--but what really makes the UNRWA completely disgusting is that the UNRWA is complicit in war crimes committed against Israel. Three times in the past month, Hamas rockets have been found at UNRWA facilities. The first time that rockets were discovered in a UNRWA facility during the current conflict, the UNRWA handed over the rockets to Hamas, a flagrant violation of the UNRWA's purported neutrality.

Note that I wrote the above passage in 2021, two years before Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel. UNRWA actively collaborated before, during, and after October 7, 2023, further demonstrating the extent to which the organization has been completely corrupted by Hamas.

UNIFIL is just as bad as UNRWA, and Eugene Kontorovich persuasively argues that Donald Trump should make a campaign pledge to defund UNIFIL:

Created in 1978 to monitor an Israeli withdrawal in a long-forgotten skirmish with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the UN "interim" force has remained and grown, with a mission creep inversely related to its record of success. UNIFIL failed to prevent or ameliorate the Second Lebanon War in 2006, which Hezbollah began with a cross-border raid to take Israeli hostages and continued with a heavy rain of rockets on Israel...

Hezbollah has placed its armed positions within sight of UNIFIL observation posts. Yet the UN peacekeepers have done nothing to stop Hezbollah as it has turned southern Lebanon into an armed camp from which to attack Israel...

On Oct. 8, 2023, the magnitude of UNIFIL's failure became clear when Hezbollah joined Hamas' attack on Israel. Hezbollah's missile fire has continued all year, killed dozens of Israeli citizens, and made much of the tiny country's north uninhabitable. 

Now that Israel has finally moved into Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah, UNIFIL is getting in the way--knowingly providing the terrorist group cover...

U.S. taxpayers pay nearly 30% of UNIFIL's $550 million budget--essentially subsidizing indirect assistance to Hezbollah. But unlike other dysfunctional UN organizations, which are structured to be unaccountable and weather reform, UNIFIL is easy to fix. Its mandate must be reauthorized every year, or it simply ends...

UNIFIL's current mandate expires in August 2025, and there is no rational basis for reauthorizing it.

Yonah Jeremy Bob notes that Hezbollah--emboldened and financed by Iran--has spent 17 years making a mockery of UN Resolution 1701 that prohibited Hezbollah from operating in southern Lebanon:

Imagine a generation of children growing up believing that it is normal living among weapons of war. This is the monster that Hezbollah built across dozens of villages in southern Lebanon. I saw it first-hand on Oct. 10, riding in a convoy of Israel Defense Forces humvees. The IDF asked me not to identify the village lest it endanger their operations.

Almost half the village was destroyed by a mix of room-to-room battles and the Israeli military's exploding Hezbollah weapon stockpiles. IDF soldiers in tanks or bulldozers rumbled from house to house to catalogue weapons Hezbollah had buried, then demolished the homes. The terror group had hoped to tap its infrastructure in southern Lebanon to invade northern Israel in a replay of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack...

As Israel tears apart Hezbollah's presence in southern Lebanon, it is also wiping out the West's view that this is an Israeli problem that can be solved by diplomacy alone. Since the invasion of southern Lebanon began on Sept. 30, the IDF has showered the West with evidence of weapons and materiel hidden in every third or fifth house...

The West should be raining fire and brimstone down on Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, for making a farce of United Nations Resolution 1701. That resolution, adopted in 2006, said that Hezbollah couldn't operate in southern Lebanon.

The West can no longer deny that Hezbollah is out of control and must be restrained, preferably by diplomacy but if necessary by force. Yet the West's priority seems to be reaching a cease-fire so it can go on ignoring the dangers of these Middle Eastern actors...if the West presses Israel into a cease-fire that merely reverts to Resolution 1701--which has been ignored for 17 years with no consequences--all of Israel's successes will have been for nothing.

Rendering Israel's unprecedented successes versus Hamas and Hezbollah into nothing is precisely the tragically misguided policy being followed by President Joe Biden and fully endorsed by Vice President/presidential candidate Harris. After Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel, Biden gave lip service to supporting Israel and then consistently took steps to restrict Israel's ability to defeat Hamas (and Hezbollah). Biden declared that if Hamas diverted humanitarian aid to their coffers then "it will end," but instead Biden has publicly insisted that Israel keep providing aid that he knows is sustaining Hamas--and thus prolonging the suffering of Hamas' hostages, including American citizens. Biden keeps bleating "Ceasefire!" with full knowledge that a ceasefire would not end Hamas' war to destroy Israel but would only give Hamas time to rebuild and reload. If Israel had listened to Biden then Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah would still be alive sowing mayhem and destruction. 

Israel is defeating Hamas and Hezbollah despite Biden, not because of him--and if Harris is elected, the Mideast and the rest of the world will be set on fire in a way that will make the last four disastrous years of Biden's rule look like a pleasant walk in the park.

Important Articles Analyzing the Application of International Law to Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon

Far too often, people who lack the requisite knowledge to speak intelligently about both international history and international law nevertheless feel free to offer uninformed and inaccurate commentary about Israel's actions in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) is an association of lawyers advancing legal education about Israel and providing legal support to victims of antisemitism. The UKLFI website includes a wealth of detailed information about what international law stipulates regarding Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and the Mideast in general. 

A good starting point for anyone who wishes to understand the legal status of Israel's borders and the territory commonly referred to as the "West Bank" but properly called Judea and Samaria is Outline of the History and Status of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). It is important to understand how mendacious it is for anyone to make the assertion "Israeli settlements are the primary obstacle to peace"; the settlements are not even illegal, let alone an obstacle to peace! It should be noted that the above article--while excellent in most respects--glosses over the dubious legality (at best) of Great Britain's decision to create Transjordan (which became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) out of the eastern 80% of the Palestine Mandate, a topic that is discussed in an Arizona Law Review article by Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich (see below).

In the wake of Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel, media outlets and even the UN uncritically accepted as factual the unverified Gaza casualty numbers released by the Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry, but UKLFI did a detailed analysis demonstrating that the widely accepted numbers are likely wildly exaggerated numbers: Palestinian casualty figures fabricated (August 12, 2024). Here is the summary of what UKLFI found:

UKLFI CT estimates that by 29 February 2024, about 19,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip, of which 9,000 were combatants and 10,000 were civilians; and that by 31 July 2024, 27,000 Palestinians had been killed of which 12,000 were combatants and 15,000 were civilians. On these estimates, the civilian: combatant ratio in the current war in the Gaza Strip was 1.1:1 in the period to 29 February 2024 and at 1.3:1 in the period to 31 July 2024.

Although every civilian death is a tragedy, UKLFI CT points out that these ratios are an order of magnitude lower than the average civilian: combatant casualty ratio in urban armed conflict worldwide in 2021 (over 8:1) and half of the ratio in the Mosul battle of 2016-2017 by Iraqi and allied forces against ISIS (2.5:1), despite the exceptional difficulty of operating in the Gaza Strip.

Jonathan Turner, Executive Director of UKLFI CT, commented: "It might have been justified for media organisations to avoid coverage of any of the figures on the ground that they are unreliable. However, since the Gaza Ministries' figures for the total numbers of Palestinians allegedly killed have been repeatedly stated in media coverage, it is unbalanced and misleading not to state with similar regularity the figures provided by the IDF of the Palestinian combatants killed. This unbalanced and misleading media coverage is likely to be a major cause of rising antisemitism in the UK and around the world.

A must-read article from a different source than UKLFI is PALESTINE, UTI POSSIDETIS JURIS, AND THE BORDERS OF ISRAEL by Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich. Bell and Kontorovich explain that the international law concept uti possidetis juris (a Latin phrase meaning "as [you] possess under law") "is widely acknowledged as the doctrine of customary international law that is central to determining territorial sovereignty in the era of decolonization. The doctrine provides that emerging states presumptively inherit their pre-independence administrative boundaries."

They then describe how this is relevant to any discussion of Israel's current borders:

Applied to the case of Israel, uti possidetis juris would dictate that Israel inherit the boundaries of the Mandate of Palestine as they existed in May, 1948. The doctrine would thus support Israeli claims to any or all of the currently hotly disputed areas of Jerusalem (including East Jerusalem), the West Bank, and even potentially the Gaza Strip (though not the Golan Heights).

Uti possidetis juris is the international law concept that was applied to determine the borders of the states created in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.

As mentioned above, Bell and Kontorovich point out that a strong argument can be made that the creation of Transjordan (which later became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) from the eastern portion of the Palestine Mandate was illegal (footnotes omitted):

While the British were clearly intent on establishing Transjordan as a separate, Hashemite-ruled state, the Mandate did not authorize the removal of any territory from the Mandate of Palestine; it only allowed for the nonapplication of certain provisions. Thus, while it allowed for the separate administration of eastern Palestine, it did not allow for partition; rather, Article 5 stated that "no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the government of any Foreign Power." The French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon contained an identical Article 5, but also had clear language providing for the establishment of two distinct states in the Mandated area, making clear that Syria and the Lebanon were viewed as two Mandates. Moreover, Article 5 was not included among the provisions of the Palestine Mandate suspended by Britain pursuant to Article 25. Zionist groups pushed this argument quite strongly in the 1930s and 1940s, and insisted on independence for the complete Palestine, including Transjordan. And the British seemed to be aware of the force of this argument, formally insisting throughout the period that the territories were under a single Mandate. 

Having withheld the applicability of certain provisions of the Mandate in 1922 and granting Jordan autonomy in 1928, Britain went the rest of the way in 1946, recognizing the independence of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the termination of the Palestine Mandate there, in 1946. At this point, arguments about the violation of the Mandate could no longer be glossed over. For the last two years of the Palestine Mandate (until May 1948), it did not include Transjordan. Upon the independence of Transjordan, the administrative boundary between it and Palestine became the new international boundary, consistent with the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. This is despite very strong legal arguments against the severance of the territory from Palestine. Thus, while Jewish nationalist parties continued to claim Transjordan throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and Transjordan (and later Jordan) claimed legal rights to territory in Palestine that it captured during its 1948 invasion, neither set of claims received any serious recognition. Indeed, the Jewish authorities of Palestine recognized Transjordan's borders despite any scruple they may have had about its formation.

The entire 60 page Arizona Law Review article is worth reading/studying carefully by anyone who wishes to avoid sounding foolish when talking about Israel, Jordan, the Palestine Mandate, and how international borders are properly determined.

Further Reading:

Nasrallah's Victims Rejoice at His Demise, While Western Media Outlets Display Their Distorted Moral Compasses (October 1, 2024)

Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism (September 18, 2024)

Anti-Zionism is Indistinguishable From Antisemitism Because Israel is the Jewish Homeland (January 5, 2024)

Israel, Hamas, and the Islamic Concepts Dar al-Islam Versus Dar al-harb (October 11, 2023)

Israel's Ongoing Oslo Accords Folly (September 28, 2023)

Who Are the Invaders, and Who are the Invaded? An Analysis of Inversions of Truth (January 12, 2022)

The Fear and Shame at the Heart of Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism (February 17, 2021)

Professor Louis Rene Beres Lucidly Explains Why Israel's Justified Military Responses Are Not Terrorism Even if Civilians Are Killed

For several decades, Professor Louis Rene Beres has brilliantly explained international law to the general public in a manner devoid of excess legal jargon. I have previously cited his commentary regarding Israel's war versus Hamas and his application of the law of war to Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

In "True foundations of anti-Israel terrorism," Beres provides a detailed analysis that distinguishes between the war crimes committed by Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah versus the legitimate military tactics used by Israel:

Listening to the protest slogans shrieked by jihadist supporters in United States universities, a core conclusion should emerge: Witless banalities can never represent the meaningful expectations of international law. Under this universal law, whether codified or customary, one person's terrorist can never be another one’s "freedom-fighter." Though it is correct that insurgencies can sometimes be judged lawful or even law-enforcing, they must still conform to discoverable rules of humanitarian international law.

Whenever an insurgent group resorts to unjust means, its actions constitute terrorism. Even if adversarial claims of a hostile controlling power could be taken as plausible or acceptable (e.g., false Palestinian Arab claims concerning an alleged Israeli "occupation"), corollary claims of entitlement to "any means necessary" would remain false. Hague Convention No. IV states: "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited."

What about Israel and Gaza at this grievous moment in time? To clarify any seeming contradictions, though Israel's bombardments of Gaza are still producing multiple Palestinian casualties, the legal responsibility for these harms still lies entirely with Hamas/Iranian "perfidy" ("human shields"). In law, there is an ineradicably consequential difference between raping and murdering innocent celebrants at a public music festival and the lethal consequences of a state's indispensable self-defense operations.

International law is never just a narrowly intuitive set of standards. Such law always has determinable form and decipherable content. It can never be casually invented or reinvented by enemy states or terror groups to justify variously selective interests. This is most notable when inhumane jihadist terror-violence targets a designated victim state's fragile civilian populations...

Under authoritative international law, terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in apprehension and punishment. As punishers of "grave breaches" under international law, all states are required to search out and "extradite or prosecute" individual terrorists. Under no circumstances are states permitted to regard terrorist "martyrs" as lawful "freedom fighters."

International law is emphatically binding for the United States, which incorporates this set of norms as the "supreme law of the land" at Article 6 of the Constitution, and also for Israel, which remains guided by immutably Jewish principles of a Higher Law. As a further matter of history, legal authority for the early American republic was derived in large part from William Blackstone's Commentaries, a magisterial work that owes much of its clarifying content to the peremptory or "jus cogens" principles of Torah.

The Biden-Harris administration has disregarded the legal obligations Beres describes in the last paragraph quoted above, notwithstanding the recent belated announcement that the United States has pressed charges against Hamas leaders for planning, supporting, and perpetrating the October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel. That announcement could be termed "too little, too late," because Hamas leaders have already killed many hostages who could have been saved had Biden-Harris unequivocally called upon Hamas to surrender, and because Hamas interpreted the Biden-Harris moral equivalency policy to mean that Hamas can win the war against Israel with American help.

International law is often invoked by people who are ill-informed--or deliberately deceptive--and who seek to demonize Israel while exonerating Iran and Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups. If such anti-Zionist and antisemitic slanders were not so dangerous, it would be amusing to observe people who first whine (falsely) that Israel is carpet bombing civilian populations, and then whine that Israel is targeting Hezbollah-issued pagers.

What do these people want, for Jews to just meekly go to the slaughterhouse without fighting back? Sadly, that is exactly what they want, with self-proclaimed "progressives" forming a bizarre "useful idiot" alliance with Islamists.

Beres provides an essential antidote to the nonsense spewed by Israel's enemies. Additionally, Elizabeth Samson analyzed the legality of the synchronized explosions of Hezbollah's pagers and walkie-talkies:

The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), to which Israel is party, addresses the question of intent in military operations and defines relevant terms. Protocol III of the CCW prohibits the use of weapons primarily designed to set fire to objects or cause burn injuries against civilians, outside an incident that has a clear military objective, and Amended Protocol II covers booby-traps and improvised explosive devices and distinguishes between military and civilian targets.

CCW Amended Protocol II, Article 2, defines "booby-trap" as a device which can kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act, and "other devices" to include manually-emplaced munitions and devices such as improvised explosive devices designed to kill, injure or damage and which are actuated manually, by remote control, or automatically after a lapse of time. Here, an example of an illicit booby-trap device would be the explosives disguised by the Soviet Union to look like toys that they then dropped on Afghan villages in the 1980s to kill and maim Afghan children...

Israel's targeting of Hezbollah through pagers—purchased by Hezbollah for terror operatives to use in waging an asymmetric war—were solely "military objectives" and not "civilian objects" in accordance with the definitions outlined in the CCW.

Incidental loss of civilian life, while unfortunate, is the byproduct of a terror group choosing to operate among innocents. Waging war from civilian territory leaves those who seek to fight terrorism little choice but to fight on the terrain the terrorists lay out. Hezbollah has made all Lebanon its battlefield, without regard for civilian life. Israel has no choice but to bring the war home to them, and it did so legally. Diplomats and UN officials demean themselves and the organizations they represent when they purposely ignore law and dishonestly and for political purposes only betray its letter and spirit.

Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism

It is important to emphasize that Anti-Zionism is Indistinguishable From Antisemitism Because Israel is the Jewish Homeland. It is absurd to assert that a person can hate Israel and deny Israel's right to exist but not hate Jews. Further, the denial of a nation's right to exist is a unique form of hatred directed only at the Jewish State and not at any other nation no matter how heinous that nation's actions.

In To Break the 'Moral Spine' of the Jews, Eliot Kaufman discusses the recent ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi preventing UCLA from allowing protesters to deny access to the school's facilities to Jews who refuse to denounce Zionism. Kaufman notes that Judge Scarsi "focused on free exercise of religion," but Kaufman argues that "the marginalization of Jewish students demands our attention for other reasons." Kaufman describes what the UCLA protesters did:

They set up barriers and checkpoints, forcibly blocking students from parts of campus unless they deemed Israel guilty of the vilest crimes; rejected Zionism, or Israel's right to exist; and endorsed the protesters' political program. These are Red Guard tactics, anathema to the academic spirit. They call academia's bluff. What university that still believed in its mission would tolerate them?

Self-proclaimed "progressives" spew a lot of rhetoric about threats to democracy and threats to our freedoms, but the widespread, violent protests targeting Israel as well as individual Jews are a significant threat to democracy and our freedoms--and this hatred originates predominantly from a paradoxical yet toxic mixture of Leftist poshlost propaganda and Islamist ideology. It is disappointing that media outlets that purport to be bastions of democracy ignore or minimize the violence directed toward Jews on college campuses and elsewhere.

Fair criticism of specific Israeli policies is not anti-Zionist or antisemitic, but "fair" is an essential word in that phrase. It is demonstrably false to assert that Israel's conduct versus Hamas and Hezbollah violates international law, yet President Biden and Vice President Harris repeatedly imply--and sometimes overtly state--their disapproval of Israel's tactics, and both publicly clamor for a ceasefire that would represent a huge victory for Hamas while helping Hamas to fulfill its stated aim of repeating "again and again and again" the October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack. Denying Israel's right to self-defense against Hamas and Hezbollah--terrorist groups financed by Iran, a sworn enemy of both the United States and Israel--is anti-Zionist and antisemitic. It is apparently difficult for many lifelong Democrats to accept and understand the depths of the anti-Zionism that animate Biden's Mideast policies; don't be fooled by the agitators in Dearborn who assert that Biden is not sufficiently pro-Hamas: Biden loosened the financial shackles on Iran while also funding Palestinian Authority's "Pay for Slay" program that rewards Arabs for killing Jews. Those policies are not only anti-Zionist to the core, but they run counter to the United States' best interests.

It should also be noted that at a broader level beyond the anti-Israel policies enacted by the Biden Administration, Biden and Harris lack understanding of both military tactics and effective diplomacy, as demonstrated by--among other things--Biden's chaotic and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, a historically significant blunder that Harris recently endorsed as "courageous and right." It would be right to say that Biden's feckless foreign policy decisions gave Vladimir Putin the courage to believe that he could invade Ukraine without a serious U.S. response, and it would also be right to say that Biden's bumbling similarly emboldened Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to attack Israel.

As is generally the case, a foreign policy grounded in anti-Israel thinking is not effective in any sphere, nor is such a policy beneficial for the United States' long term interests here and abroad. Democracies should be working together to curb the power and influence of totalitarian regimes such as China, Iran, and Russia. Biden's policies have strengthened those regimes--and Hamas and Hezbollah--resulting in a corresponding weakening of the United States and a heightened vulnerability for Americans around the world.

America Owes Israel a Debt of Gratitude--if not $5 Million--for Delivering Justice to Hezbollah Terrorist Fuad Shukr

In The U.S. Owes Israel $5 Million, Gil Troy notes that the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Fuad Shukr, who they listed as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" because of--among other heinous acts--his pivotal role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Shukr was the leader of Hezbollah's precision missile project, whose crowning "achievement" was killing 12 children and young adults and wounding over 40 people on a soccer field in the Golan Heights on July 27, 2024. On July 30, Israel provided the best possible information about Shukr: He is dead, courtesy of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Troy makes the case that the U.S. owes Israel $5 million.

Unfortunately, we live in a world in which an Israeli hostage rescue operation is derided as "deadly" but Hamas' crimes against humanity before, during, and after their October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack in Israel are minimized, ignored, or--grotesquely--praised.

Troy writes that in the wake of the 1983 Beirut bombing, President Ronald Reagan initially made the mistake of not retaliating, and even redeploying U.S. forces from Beirut to U.S. Navy ships off the shores of Lebanon. This emboldened America's enemies, and led to 1985 being a "banner year" for terrorist attacks according to a now declassified CIA report. Fortunately, Reagan corrected course, and after the infamous 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking--during which PLO terrorists executed wheelchair bound American Jew Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard--he sent four Navy F-14s to intercept the hijackers, who had escaped to Egypt and were flying to Tunisia. Reagan declared, "You can run, but you can't hide." In 1986, Reagan ordered airstrikes in Libya in response to a terrorist attack linked to Libya at a West Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. A subsequent CIA assessment concluded that terrorism decreased in 1986 as a result of the West's "unprecedented military, diplomatic, and economic retaliatory measures."

If President Biden and the U.S. government are not going to pay the $5 million reward to Israel, the least that they can do is stop making counterproductive and false statements that hinder Israel's efforts to not just protect herself but also protect American interests. After Biden's shameful abandonment of Afghanistan, the world knows all too well that his administration is weak, and that under his rule America is an unreliable and untrustworthy ally. 

History demonstrates that terrorists are deterred only by the exercise of power against them, not by restraint, and certainly not by capitulation. The notion that killing terrorist leaders is an obstacle to peace is a dangerous perversion of reality. Every time a terrorist leader is killed we are one step closer to the dismantling or surrender of that terrorist leader's terrorist group.

Herta Muller's OPEN LETTER is a Cry From the Heart in Regarding the West's Feeble Response to Hamas' Depravity

"Queers for Palestine" makes about as much sense as "Chickens for Kentucky Fried Chicken," but a decades-long inversion, perversion, and subversion of the core values of Western civilization has accelerated in the wake of Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel.

Herta Muller, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, has written a powerful essay detailing how far the West has sunk, drawing parallels with the moral collapse that made possible the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany: Herta Muller — OPEN LETTER should be read in full, but I will quote and comment on a few choice excerpts:

Since October 7, I have been thinking again and again about a book about the Nazi era, the book "Ganz normale Männer" by Christopher R. Browning. He describes the annihilation of Jewish villages in Poland by the Reserve Police Battalion 110, when the large gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz did not yet exist. It was like the bloodlust of the Hamas terrorists at the music festival and in the kibbutzim. In just one day in July 1942, the 1,500 Jewish inhabitants of the village of Józefów were slaughtered. Children and infants were shot in the street in front of their houses, the old and sick in their beds. All the others were driven into the forest, where they had to strip naked and crawl on the ground. They were mocked and tortured, then shot and left lying in a bloody forest. The murder became perverse.

The book is called "Ganz normale Männer" (Quite Normal Men) because this reserve police battalion did not consist of SS men or Wehrmacht soldiers, but of civilians who were no longer considered suitable for military service because they were too old. They came from completely normal professions and turned into monsters. It was not until 1962 that a trial began in this case of war crimes. The trial records show that some of the men "got a huge kick out of the whole thing." The sadism went so far that a newly married captain brought his wife to the massacres to celebrate their honeymoon. Because the bloodlust continued in other villages. And the woman strolled around in the white wedding dress she had brought with her, among the Jews who had been herded together in the market square.

I agree with Muller that a comparison of Hamas with the Nazis is apt; the only difference between Hamas and the Nazis is that the Nazis possessed the necessary military/industrial complex to carry out genocide against the Jewish people on an unprecedented scale. If Hamas had similar capabilities they would do what the Nazis did to the Jews; indeed, Hamas' leaders have publicly pledged to repeat the October 7 massacre "again and again and again."

Muller is concerned not only with Hamas' depravity, but with the extent to which the West overtly sympathizes with Hamas' depravity:

I lived in a dictatorship for over thirty years. And when I came to Western Europe, I could not imagine that democracy could ever be called into question in such a way. I thought that in a dictatorship, people are systematically brainwashed. And that in democracies, people learn to think for themselves because the individual counts. Unlike in a dictatorship, where independent thought is forbidden and the forced collective trains people. And where the individual is not a part of the collective, but an enemy. I am appalled that young people, students in the West, are so confused that they are no longer aware of their freedom. That they have apparently lost the ability to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship.

On December 5, 2023, I described an alarming phenomenon that has happened since October 7: Hamas has exposed the moral bankruptcy of self-proclaimed "progressives": 

In general, it is crystal clear that "intersectionality," "antiracism," and "social justice" are empty slogans that do not apply to Jews. Hamas kills Jews because they are Jews, and the self-proclaimed "progressives" support Hamas based on a perverse and twisted worldview that condemns all white people as oppressors while excusing any actions committed by non-white people as justifiable "resistance." In this twisted worldview, Jews are classified as white even though white supremacists/Nazis reject the notion that Jews are white (and the reality is that individual Jews may be members of any racial group, and the Jewish community as a whole cannot correctly be classified as white or any other race)...

...As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explained in their 2001 book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, "Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law." 

People and groups who attack the "very foundations of the liberal order" are fundamentally incapable of distinguishing between a terrorist group like Hamas that tortures children, rapes women, massacres civilians, and takes civilians hostage and a democratic nation like Israel that is fighting a defensive war. Civilian hostages held captive by Hamas are not morally equivalent to terrorists arrested by Israel, convicted in a court of law, and sentenced to prison sentences, but many media outlets act as if there is no difference between Hamas terrorizing civilians and Israel lawfully detaining terrorists and criminals.

Instead, self-proclaimed "progressives" divide the world into oppressors and oppressed--much like intellectual lightweight Ibram X. Kendi divides the world into racists and antiracists--with the oppressors almost always being white. Oppressed people are permitted to do anything in service of "resistance," while oppressors have no rights. The liberal order speaks of basic rights such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The self-proclaimed "progressives" look at murdered Jews and feel joy that the resistance has been successful.

Muller rues the extent to which many people accept Hamas' inversions of historical truths:

I have the impression that the strategy of Hamas and its supporters is to make everything Israeli, and therefore everything Jewish, unbearable to the world. Hamas wants to maintain anti-Semitism as a permanent global mood. That is why it also wants to reinterpret the Shoah. The Nazi persecution and the rescue flight to Palestine are also to be called into question. And ultimately, the right of Israel to exist. This manipulation goes as far as to claim that German Holocaust remembrance only serves as a cultural weapon to legitimize the Western-white "settlement project" of Israel. Such ahistorical and cynical reversals of the perpetrator-victim relationship are intended to prevent any differentiation between the Shoah and colonialism. With all these stacked constructs, Israel is no longer seen as the only democracy in the Middle East, but as a colonialist model state. And as an eternal aggressor, against whom blind hatred is justified. And even the desire for its destruction.

As I noted in Applying the Law of War to Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah, Leftist support of Hamas is not about helping Gazans or creating a peaceful Palestinian state that could coexist with Israel: "The sad reality is that the people who are protesting the loudest about Israel's alleged war crimes do not care at all about the alleged war crimes victims; the protesters hate the Jewish people, and seek to cloak their antisemitism as 'merely' anti-Zionism--but anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from antisemitism because Israel is the Jewish homeland. It should be noted that being Jewish does not mean that you cannot be antisemitic, and there are some Jews who hate their own heritage and their own people--in short, they are traitors: instead of expressing concern for the October 7 victims and their families, these traitors give aid and comfort to Hamas' rapists, kidnappers, and murderers." 

It is easy to feel discouraged, but we have to cling to the hope--the belief--that Love of Life Will Triumph Over Lust for Death: "Our enemies declare that they love death more than we love life. That is why they will lose. Life and love are more powerful than any death-loving cult. History has shown this time and again. Long after those who love death attain that which they most fervently desire, those of us who love life will bury our dead, wipe away our tears, and rebuild our lives."

Applying the Law of War to Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah

Many of the rioters on college campuses and in public spaces appear to be mindless and faceless cowards who have been emboldened by the weak response to their illegal tactics; when they appear on camera they are incapable of coherently explaining exactly what they are protesting and what they are trying to achieve. They are mindless because they chant "From the River to the Sea" even though many of them could not find Gaza on a map; they are faceless because they choose to wear masks to hide their identities, in contrast to legitimate protesters who proudly show their faces. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a famous and glorious dream: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." In contrast, these rioters are working to create a living nightmare world in which Hamas is glorified and Jews are demonized. They hide their faces to avoid being held accountable for their actions until they can eliminate anyone who opposes their fanatical goals.

However, it should be noted that some of Israel's slightly more sophisticated enemies have specific talking points, including the false allegation that Israel is committing war crimes. Upon close examination of that false allegation, it becomes evident that anyone who believes that has no formal legal training, and no foundational understanding of the relevant principles of international law regarding what is permissible during a war.

Professor Louis Rene Beres is a scholar of international law, and he often uses the phrase "International law is not a suicide pact," an apt description of Israel's legally protected self-defense rights.

In a May 30, 2024 article in The Wall Street Journal titled "Israel, Hamas, and the Law of War," attorneys David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey--both of whom worked at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel's Office--discuss at length the proper application of international law to Israel's wartime conduct in Gaza. In particular, they focus on the principles of distinction and proportionality, noting that international law forbids a country from intentionally targeting civilians and from making attacks resulting in civilian deaths and damage to civilian property that are disproportionate to "the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained." 

The required distinction between military targets and civilian targets does not stipulate that any civilian casualties are proof that a war crime has been committed. It is illegal to deliberately target civilians, which has long been the modus operandi for Hamas, culminating in Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel; in contrast, Israel has gone to great lengths to avoid hitting civilian targets, to the extent of putting the lives of Israeli soldiers at risk. It is also illegal to deliberately put civilians in harm's way, which is another war crime committed regularly by Hamas, which utilizes "human shields" both to discourage Israeli attacks and as fodder for propaganda. 

The law regarding proportionality is often misunderstood; media outlets regularly compare the inflated and unverified casualty totals from Gaza with Israel's casualties to imply--or even directly state--that the larger number of casualties in Gaza proves that Israel has committed war crimes. However, international law does not mandate proportional casualty totals; proportionality refers to the lethality of the attack in proportion to the legitimate military goal of the attack. Here, Hamas has vowed to repeat October 7 "again and again and again," which means that Israel legally can take the necessary measures to render Hamas incapable of ever committing such an attack again; to the extent that Israeli operations against Hamas result in civilian casualties, as long as Israel is not intentionally attacking civilian targets those casualties are the responsibility of Hamas as both the initial aggressor and as a party that deliberately deploys human shields.

The article does not specifically mention Hezbollah, another Iranian-sponsored terrorist organization that commits the same kinds of war crimes that Hamas commits--and Hezbollah's forces are more numerous, better trained, and better armed than Hamas' forces. If Israel does not eliminate Hezbollah as soon as possible, Israel will pay a terrible price later--a price that will make October 7, 2023 seem minor in comparison. Permitting Hezbollah to become so powerful is one of the greatest strategic errors in Israeli history; hopefully, it will not prove to be a fatal strategic error. Israel's neglect of the threat posed by Hamas should serve as a lesson and a warning. Just a few days before Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel, I decried Israel's Ongoing Oslo Accords Folly, and I declared, "The core unresolved issue is not 'land for peace' nor is it autonomy; it is the unrelenting quest to destroy Israel that is fomented by various Arab/Islamic states and the terrorist groups (including the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and others) that they sponsor. There is zero chance that Israel giving up land will resolve that issue, and the Oslo Accords are just one example of the folly of assuming otherwise."

The sad reality is that the people who are protesting the loudest about Israel's alleged war crimes do not care at all about the alleged war crimes victims; the protesters hate the Jewish people, and seek to cloak their antisemitism as "merely" anti-Zionism--but anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from antisemitism because Israel is the Jewish homeland. It should be noted that being Jewish does not mean that you cannot be antisemitic, and there are some Jews who hate their own heritage and their own people--in short, they are traitors: instead of expressing concern for the October 7 victims and their families, these traitors give aid and comfort to Hamas' rapists, kidnappers, and murderers.

The Correct Way to Deal With Violent Insurrections on College Campuses

Over the past few weeks, many of the most prominent U.S. colleges have permitted violent insurrections to take place on their campuses. These violent insurrections have targeted Jews in general, and also specifically Israel, the Jewish State. Jewish students have been assaulted verbally and physically, and have been physically blocked from accessing the educational facilities that they have paid to use. It is inconceivable that such violent insurrections against women, Blacks, homosexuals, or any other minority group would be tolerated, but college administrators far too often lose their moral compasses and their backbones when Jews are targeted. Instead of fulfilling their duty to provide access to education for all students, college administrators issue vague, nonsensical pronouncements about free speech.

This is not about and has never been about free speech. No one is disputing that, subject to the same time/place considerations that apply to any exercise of free speech, students have a right to peacefully express their views--but chanting hate-filled slogans, openly wishing for the murder of people based on their religion, ethnicity, or political viewpoint, and denying access to educational facilities are not permissible exercises of free speech rights: such actions are violent insurrections that should be dealt with accordingly.

In the 1960s, many U.S. college campuses faced disruptive protests about the Vietnam War and other issues--but, perhaps because Jews were not the targets, college administrators understood their responsibilities and acted swiftly. For example, here is an excerpt from a letter by Theodore Hesburgh--then the President of Notre Dame--that was published in The New York Times:

Now to the heart of my message. You recall my letter of November 25, 1968, which was written after an incident. It seemed best to me then not to waste time in personal recriminations or heavy-handed discipline, but to profit from the occasion to invite this whole university community--faculty, administration and students--to state their convictions regarding protests that were peaceful and those that threatened the life of the community by disrupting the normal operations of the University and infringing upon the rights of others.

In general, the reaction was practically unanimous that this community recognizes the validity of protest in our day--sometimes even the necessity--regarding the current burning issues of our society: war and peace, especially Vietnam; civil rights, especially of minority groups; the stance of the University vis-à-vis moral issues of great public concern; the operation of the University as a university.

There was also practical unanimity that the University could not continue to exist as a society, dedicated to the discussion of all issues of importance, if protests were of such a nature that the normal operations of the University were in any way impeded, or if the rights of any member of this community were abrogated, peacefully or non-peacefully.

I believe that I now have a clear mandate from this University community to see that: (1) our lines of communication between all segments of the community are kept as open as possible, with all legitimate means of communicating dissent assured, expanded, and protected; (2) civility and rationality are maintained; and (3) violation of another's rights or obstruction of the life of the University are outlawed as illegitimate means of dissent in this kind of open society.

Now comes my duty of stating, clearly and unequivocally, what happens if. I'll try to make it as simple as possible to avoid misunderstanding by anyone. Anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or non-violent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist. They will be told that they are, by their actions, going counter to the overwhelming conviction of this community as to what is proper here.

If they do not within that time period cease and desist, they will be asked for their identity cards. Those who produce these will be suspended from this community as not understanding what this community is. Those who do not have or will not produce identity cards will be assumed not to be members of the community and will be charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace on private property and treated accordingly by the law.

After notification of suspension, or trespass in the case of non-community members, if there is not within five minutes a movement to cease and desist, students will be notified of expulsion from this community and the law will deal with them as non-students.

There seems to be a current myth that university members are not responsible to the law, and that somehow the law is the enemy, particularly those whom society has constituted to uphold and enforce the law. I would like to insist here that all of us are responsible to the duly constituted laws of this University community and to all of the laws of the land. There is no other guarantee of civilization versus the jungle or mob rule, here or elsewhere.

We can have a thousand resolutions as to what kind of a society we want, but when lawlessness is afoot, and all authority is flouted--faculty, administration and student--then we invoke the normal societal forces of law or we allow the university to die beneath our hapless and hopeless gaze. I have no intention of presiding over such a spectacle. Too many people have given too much of themselves and their lives to this University to let this happen here. Without being melodramatic, if this conviction makes this my last will and testament to Notre Dame, so be it.

Imagine the immediate, positive impact if the leaders of our "elite" colleges issued such a statement.

Imagine the impact if President Joe Biden made such a statement instead of having his "good people on both sides" moment that media outlets have chosen to ignore.

Imagine the impact if the editorial pages of The New York Times and other bastions of Leftist rhetoric made such a statement.

The profound failures of our colleges, our President, and many of the most prominent media outlets to condemn antisemitism and anti-Zionism is sobering, as is their failure to make a clear distinction between permissible free speech and impermissible violence.

Any Jewish person who is still clinging to "progressive" political views should very carefully note how quickly the public discourse shifted in "progressive" circles after Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack against Israel; at most, Israel received a few days of tepid expressions of sympathy before the talking points became vile antisemitic and anti-Zionist outbursts, attacking not just specific Israeli policies but the right of Jewish people to live in peace and the basic right of Israel to exist. Israel is the only country in the world whose basic right to exist is questioned; no matter how many horrific things China, Iran, North Korea, and other totalitarian regimes do, no one questions that those nations have a right to exist. There are no mass protests on college campuses about China committing genocide or Iran's war mongering/sponsorship of terrorism or North Korea's human rights violations. 

The area extending from Morocco to Pakistan is a vast swath of Arab/Islamic fanaticism and totalitarianism. Israel, the only nation in the region that has free speech, equal rights, and legitimate elections, is unfairly rebuked while the real war crimes and real war criminals are ignored or even praised.

The fear and shame at the heart of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is breathtaking to behold. Israel's success in liberating herself from British colonialism and building a free and open society should be viewed as a model for other nations to emulate, but instead Israel is slandered while our political leaders, our educators, and our media members are either silent or complicit.