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)

Nasrallah's Victims Rejoice at His Demise, While Western Media Outlets Display Their Distorted Moral Compasses

Israel used their elite military intelligence to locate Hezbollah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah, and then killed Nasrallah along with other high-ranking Hezbollah officials who were meeting in a residential area--a standard Hezbollah human shield tactic with the twin goals of (1) dissuading military action by Israel because Israel takes great pains to minimize civilian casualties, and (2) complaining about civilian casualties if Israel attacks. All civilian casualties in this war--on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border--are the responsibility of Hezbollah for committing the dual war crimes of intentionally targeting Israeli civilians and using their own civilians as human shields. To be even more specific, all civilian casualties in this war are the responsibility of Iran, which directs and funds the wars of annihilation that Hamas and Hezbollah are waging against Israel (and will continue to wage until either they destroy Israel or Israel eliminates their capacity to destroy Israel).

Nasrallah is responsible for murdering thousands of people, including U.S. citizens, so a naive but good-hearted person might assume that the world would congratulate Israel for finally bringing Nasrallah to justice. Iranian dissidents, Lebanese Christians, and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon--people directly impacted by Nasrallah's horrific deeds--cheered his demise. In contrast, the usual suspects--mainstream media outlets, delusional "peace" groups, and "useful idiots" on American college campuses--expressed dismay that one of the most evil people on Earth can no longer terrorize anyone. In the ultimate example of the perversion of language that George Orwell termed "Newspeak," The Washington Post praised Nasrallah's "folksy yet articulate manner," while The New York Times emphasized Nasrallah's "roly-poly figure," his "slight lisp," and his "propensity to crack jokes," and the AP noted that Nasrallah "often paused in his speeches to make jokes or break into local dialect." Would you expect a profile of Adolf Hitler to focus on such details while glossing over his war crimes? Many mainstream media outlets are worse than useless, because it is not simply that the information they provide has no value; they are engaged in a pattern of deliberating crafting inaccurate narratives to serve their notion of a "higher truth" that matters more to them than producing objective reporting free of bias.

Meanwhile, President Biden continues to speak with a forked tongue, first praising Israel for taking out a person who has much American blood on his hands but then immediately repeating his demand for a ceasefire. In case you--like Biden--are unaware, it must be emphasized that Hezbollah has clearly articulated their position on ceasefires with Israel: "We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine." It should also be noted that there is already a ceasefire in place in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has been violating that ceasefire for almost a year.

When then-Senator Biden tried to bully then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin more than 40 years ago, Begin declared to Biden, "Don't threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid."

Much of America's "aid" to Israel is spent buying American arms, so the "aid" is as much a government subsidy to American companies as anything else--and Israel's military is doing great work that America is either unwilling or unable to do in terms of eliminating wanted terrorists who have eluded justice for decades. 

Israel must remain steadfast and strong, and fight this war to its natural conclusion regardless of the pressure exerted by Biden and biased media outlets.

A Masterful Review of Robert Spencer's Book "The Palestinian Delusion"

Dr. Anjuli Pandavar's detailed review of Robert Spencer's 2019 book The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process should be required reading for politicians, media members, college students, and anyone who publicly opines about the Middle East. Contrary to the Orwellian-style cancel culture that has become prevalent in the media and on U.S. college campuses, it is not "Islamophobic" to state the truth about the religious theology underpinning the actions of Iran and her terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas' Charter is easy to find online, and it describes in great detail Hamas' inspirations and goals. It is just as easy to find Hezbollah's foundational documents and underlying ideological imperatives, here quoted in pertinent part and expressing the same goals that Hamas has (emphasis added):

Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

After reading the primary source material, it is clear that one has to be either woefully uninformed or antisemitic to pressure Israel to negotiate a ceasefire with an enemy whose sworn purpose is to destroy Israel and who explicitly refuses to recognize any treaty or cease fire with Israel. The reader may accordingly draw appropriate conclusions about President Biden, Vice President Harris, various international leaders, the college professors/college students who chant "Free Palestine," and many media outlets that distort historical truth to promote a preferred narrative.

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Pandavar's review: 

The "delusion" in the title refers to multiple delusions: that of a Palestinian nation; that the "Arab-Israeli conflict" is a simple struggle over land; that the so-called "peace process" is a series of negotiations; that Judea and Samaria — what the Jordanians dubbed "The West Bank" during their occupation — and Gaza (and the Golan Heights) are "occupied territories"; and that the Muslim Arabs are the wronged party. Along the way, many lesser and shorter-lived delusions are referred to, both directly and indirectly...

The United Nations and its agencies come in for a well-deserved pummelling in The Palestinian Delusion, for they are shown to be little more than instruments of jihad, right down to the inculcation of Jew-hatred in the Muslim children in UN schools, and those children's early indoctrination into aspiring to be jihad mass murderers. A child in a UN school shares his endearing aspirations: "Stabbing and running over Jews brings dignity to the Palestinians. I'm going to run them over and stab them with knives." If The Palestinian Delusion has one loud and clear message, it is Get real!

The blatant, relentless and ritualistic discrimination against and legal abuse of Israel at the United Nations are also thoroughly treated, not least the outrageous "inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war," contrived especially for Israel after it drove Jordanian troops back out of Judea and Samaria, Egyptian troops back out of Gaza (and all the way across the Suez Canal) and Syrian troops off the Golan Heights, after these countries' aggressive war of 1967, intent on wiping out Israel.

It has been a basic principle ever since men made war, that if an aggressor loses a war, that aggressor loses such territory as the victim had managed to conquer from it. The book makes clear that it is the first time ever that it is demanded of a country attacked that it returns territory conquered from aggressors in self-defence. Of course, should Israel accept this ridiculous and suicidal principle, any of its many hostile neighbours will have every incentive to try again next year in the full knowledge that they will never lose territory, and the old Islamic pattern of annual jihad war will be restored. The Palestinian Delusion strengthens the view that the United Nations has outlived its original purpose. That is putting it mildly.

Pressuring Israel to agree to a cease fire that her enemies have no intention of honoring is a recipe for disaster and suffering, not a blueprint for peace. What is the solution? The solution is not a reality that Leftists want to face, but one that Israel's enemies fear: Israel fighting until complete victory is obtained, thus denying her enemies the opportunity to keep contesting limited liability wars in which Arab/Muslim conquests are permanent but Israeli victories are temporary advances immediately wiped out by international pressure or voluntary Israeli concessions. Israel has tried "Land for Peace" since the 1978 Camp David Accords, and the result has been that Israel gave up a lot of land but obtained very little peace.

Dr. Pandavar concludes:

The key to success of Israeli military force is permanent insecurity for Arab Muslims, the only condition that Islam recognises as a valid excuse for suspending jihad. The surest way of accomplishing such permanent insecurity is by Arab Muslims permanently losing territory every time they attack Israel. The entire point of jihad is the violent subjugation of the entire world "until all religion is for Allah." Every part of the earth that is now subjugated, or was once subjugated, is "Muslim land" and the greatest humiliation for those on jihad is to lose Muslim land. Humiliation equals defeat. This is why those advocating for Israel annexing and Jews closely settling Gaza and Judea and Samaria are correct.

Leftists will scream that this smacks of racism, nationalism, or some other "ism" that they have determined to be inimical to human progress--and Islamists will applaud the bleatings of their useful idiots--but decades of Mideast history have illustrated the key to success, if Israel is brave enough to take it. It is important to understand and acknowledge the extent to which the concepts of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-harb (see the fourth article in Further Reading for more details) drive the actions of Israel's enemies. "Land for Peace," "Two State Solution," and "Free Palestine" are propaganda slogans that have no relevance regarding the Mideast, because the root cause of the conflict is the fundamental Islamic precept that non-Muslims must be subjugated, driven out, or killed. That is a brutal reality that many people refuse to face, but refusing to face reality does not change reality.

Further Reading: 

Professor Louis Rene Beres Lucidly Explains Why Israel's Justified Military Responses Are Not Terrorism Even if Civilians Are Killed (September 21, 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)

The Implications of Hamas' Surprise Attack Against Israel (October 7, 2023) 

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

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.

Harvey Mansfield Laments the Decline of Higher Education, and Succinctly Summarizes the Difference Between a Liberal and a Progressive

The June 1-2, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal includes an interview titled The Long View of Higher Ed's Decline. Harvey Mansfield, the subject of the interview, may go down in history as the last conservative professor at Harvard. The entire interview deserves careful study, but two of Mansfield's points should be emphasized:

1) The combination of lowered admission standards and grade inflation throughout our higher education system has had a negative impact not just on the quality of college education but also the competency of the work force; when objective standards are discarded, excellence is no longer desirable or even measurable.

2) Mansfield provided a succinct summary of the difference between a liberal in the classical sense (an all but extinct species now) and the progressives who have taken over the Democratic Party: a liberal acknowledges America's flaws, but considers America to be redeemable and is proud to be an American; a progressive has a "loathing for his country. It goes beyond embarrassment to real dislike of America, and in a way, therefore, of themselves, because after all they're Americans."

Conservatives are often labeled "anti-intellectual," but an essential part of the intellectual life is the search for objective truth, and the willingness to engage in robust debate is part of that search. If you are so convinced that you have discovered the absolute truth that you are no longer willing to even listen to opposing views then you are not an intellectual, no matter how many college degrees you have. The extent to which progressives deride the value--or even the existence of--objective truth is jarring, and their unwillingness to consider opposing views is a major threat to our way of life: it has become commonplace for Left-controlled colleges to either refuse to let conservatives speak, or else to enable "protesters" to disrupt conservatives who are allowed to speak.

Three years ago, I noted that Critical Race Theory has infiltrated our education system to disastrous effect: 

If you are not familiar with Critical Race Theory, it is not difficult to find the source material and understand its Marxist, anti-democracy, anti-freedom, and anti-American underpinnings. Here is a good summary from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, a 2001 book from Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic: "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." 

I graduated from law school and passed the Ohio bar exam, which means that I am quite familiar with both the strengths and limitations of our justice system. I know from firsthand experience that our system is flawed, but that it is also the best such system in the world. I do not want to replace it with a system based on a Marxist theory that seeks to undermine "the liberal order...legal reasoning...and neutral principles of constitutional law." Those sound principles that Critical Race Theory seeks to subvert and destroy are what separates this country from such failed and failing states as the Soviet Union, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Cuba. 

Proponents of Critical Race Theory recklessly assert that without Critical Race Theory we cannot have a fair and honest reckoning with our past. That is false, but very much in keeping with the narrow, binary thinking of the proponents of Critical Race Theory: according to them, everything is either racist or antiracist, so if you oppose Critical Race Theory then you must be a racist who refuses to acknowledge evil acts and suffering that are woven into U.S. history. I reject such binary, simplistic, and incorrect thinking.

The undermining of "the liberal order...legal reasoning...and neutral principles of constitutional law" is a foundational principle for self-proclaimed "progressives," including those who conducted violent insurrections on college campuses targeting Jews in general and Israel in particular. It is neither a surprise nor a secret that Iran is funding these campus insurrections; the fact that self-proclaimed "progressives" gladly take money from an Islamist theocracy that persecutes not only Jews but also women, homosexuals, and other minority groups demonstrates that the insurrections are not about justice for Gaza (or justice anywhere) but rather about destabilizing and overthrowing American democracy. The self-proclaimed "progressives" are deluded enough to be believe that they are fighting the evils of colonialism, which makes them the proverbial "useful idiots" serving Islamists who could not care less about--and, in fact, oppose--the "progressive" agenda.

As Mansfield noted, the decline of higher education results in a general societal decline. We see this in the work force in general, and in particular in the Left-dominated media outlets that shape public opinion in ways that threaten our freedom and our way of life. 

Perhaps nowhere is the general societal decline more evident than in our government. Former World Chess Champion turned political activist Garry Kasparov astutely noted that the United States used to be about striving for excellence, but recent Presidential elections have been about choosing the lesser of two evils. We see that yet again in this election cycle, with Republican Donald Trump--whose character flaws are well-documented--facing a Democratic Party in search of an identity and a competent candidate: first the Democratic Party attempted to prop up an obviously senile (in the practical if not clinical sense) Joe Biden, and after that misguided effort failed they anointed Kamala Harris, whose pronouncements and policy positions align with the morally bankrupt "progressive" agenda that is a major threat to Western civilization. This election is not about excellence and it is not about saving democracy; it is about choosing the lesser of two evils, and hoping that in four years both parties will present us with better options.

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.