Hamas' surprise attack on Israel has dealt the Jewish people the most painful blow since the Holocaust, with a growing death toll estimated to be more than 800. Israel's current population is approximately 9,000,000, while the United States' current population is approximately 330,000,000, so proportionately Israel just suffered losses equivalent to more than 29,300 killed in the United States. The official death count for the 9/11 attacks is 2977, so for Israel this ongoing massacre is proportionately equivalent to the 9/11 terrorist attack times 10--and not only have all the bodies not been counted yet, but the war is not over.
The world must accept the harsh reality that radical Muslims mean it when they declare, "We love death more than you love life"--and this harsh reality dictates that President Joe Biden must immediately cease his disgraceful funding of the PLO's "pay for slay" program that incentivizes killing Jewish people. No matter how anyone tries to spin it, the reality is that the United States has directly and indirectly funded the killing of Jewish people, and by doing so has encouraged Hamas and others to kill Jewish people.
No one should be surprised by the depredations committed by Hamas, because Hamas is following a long-established radical Muslim tradition of openly flouting international law and basic societal norms. It is well documented that Syria did not follow the Geneva Convention's provisions for the treatment of prisoners of war, and instead tortured and mistreated many of the Israeli POWs from the Yom Kippur War. Neuroscientists did extensive studies about the long-term effects on Israeli POWs of the torture inflicted by their Egyptian and Syrian captors.
Every member of the self-proclaimed "Squad" that slanders Israel but ignores the human rights violations regularly occurring throughout the world--and all of the supporters of the "Squad"--should read this article and take a long look at the accompanying picture, which represents the true face of Hamas and all of Israel's enemies.
This is a family murdered in cold blood by the barbarians who some have the mendacious audacity to call "freedom fighters":
Do not deceive yourself to believe that this barbaric behavior and the mindset that creates such barbarism represents a small minority of Muslims; throughout the world, Muslims are openly and joyously celebrating Hamas' murderous attacks. Where are the condemnations from Muslim religious leaders not only of Hamas' actions but also of the celebrations of Hamas' actions? When someone tells you that jihad does not really mean holy war but it refers to spiritual awakening, just watch videos of Hamas slaughtering young and old alike--and watch videos of Muslims around the world celebrating the slaughter--to remind yourself of what jihad really is. We've seen glimpses of jihad in the West--and it is not "Islamophobic" to state the truth about the jihad that Iran openly promotes--but the nightmare unfolding in Israel now will become the norm around the world if Israel is left to fight this war alone or, even worse, if the world sides with Hamas.
Most people who commit barbaric acts try to cover up or deny what they have done. Hamas makes gleeful videos, and Muslims around the world cheer. There have been marches in the United States with people celebrating the murder of hundreds of Israelis. Anyone who thinks that this is normal or justifiable behavior is sick. The way that people react to Hamas' outrageous massacre of innocent civilians who were targeted because they were Jewish (even though not everyone killed was Jewish) is a vivid illustration of how deeply entrenched antisemitic thoughts and attitudes are.
While there is no reason to be surprised by Hamas' actions, our sadness should be matched
only by our anger, and that anger must be transformed into a collective determination of the entire civilized world to
acknowledge the true nature of the enemy. Israel is on the front line of this war at the moment, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the fate of Western civilization is at stake. Those who rationalize, justify, and excuse Hamas' heinous acts send an unmistakable signal that Western civilization lacks the necessary moral clarity to understand the nature of this war and lacks the necessary willpower to win this war.
As the videos and eyewitness accounts of Hamas' horrific killing spree in Israel are disseminated, no person with a beating heart and functioning mind can deny the deep sickness at the core of what the radical Muslims have built in Gaza--mirroring the deep sickness at the core of what radical Muslims have built in Iran, Syria, and throughout the Middle East. People who rampage into the homes of innocent civilians to commit murder and then celebrate their "accomplishment" by filming videos of the aftermath of the carnage are not people who can be negotiated with, reasoned with, or placated.
They are people who state that they love death, and have proven that they will kill as many people as they can until they are killed. If Israel does not completely destroy Hamas then this war will be not only a failure but a dark farce, with the blood of hundreds of innocent people shed in vain. Since Israel began withdrawing her military forces from Gaza in 1994, Gaza's leading export has been terrorism, and the primary mission of Gaza's schools has been to indoctrinate a generation of Muslims to hate Jews and to believe that the fastest path to a joyous afterlife is to kill Jews; Gaza's Muslims are neither interested in creating a functional state that can be a productive member of the international community of nations nor do they even appear capable of creating such a state. The folly of the Oslo Accords' notion of "land for peace" was doomed from the start, and should never be repeated; there is "peace for peace" and there is "war for war," but any country that gives up the tangible (land) while hoping to receive the intangible (peace) is foolish.
Israel must demonstrate to Hamas and the world that "Never again" is a rallying cry, not just a slogan, as I wrote in 2021:
Thomas Friedman once shamelessly dismissed Israel as "Yad Vashem with an air force." In one vile sentence he missed the point of both Yad Vashem--The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, based in Israel's eternal capital Jerusalem--and of the Israeli Air Force, which has defended the Jewish State against its genocide-minded neighbors for over 70 years. Yes, it is Israel's neighbors who are the spiritual heirs to the Nazis, and large portions of the Arab/Muslim world have longed expressed open admiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
The world stood by and let Adolf Hitler's Nazis murder six million Jews, but as long as Israel exists that will never happen again; when the world did nothing after terrorists hijacked Air France Flight 139 and made a point of separating the Jews and the Israelis from the other passengers at Entebbe in 1976, the Israeli Air Force accomplished a daring rescue mission. What would have happened to those Jewish hostages had there not been a Jewish State with an air force? We already know the answer.
No person can answer the question of where was God during the Holocaust, but Nobel laureate/Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel declared "After the Holocaust I did not lose faith in God. I lost faith in mankind." Put another way, if it can be said that absolute power corrupts then it also must be said, in the words of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, that "powerlessness corrupts most of all."
Yad Vashem exists to remind the world what the Nazis did to the Jewish people during the Holocaust so that such an atrocity will never happen again, and the Israeli Air Force exists so that the Jewish people never again experience absolute powerlessness. Understood in those terms, it is not surprising that those who deny that the Holocaust happened also deny the Jewish State's right to exist: Iran seeks to both deny and repeat the Holocaust.
One last point: it makes neither political sense nor military sense for Israel's leaders to talk about declaring war or about the unprecedented response that they will deliver. Hamas declared war against Israel a long time ago, and Israel can only win this war with appropriate, decisive military action, not by talking about taking military action. Well done is infinitely better than well said. The murdered, the injured, and the mourners deserve no less than total victory such that Hamas never fires another bullet, launches another rocket, or films another video celebrating their murderous rampages.
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