Israel’s response to terror

Israel is not only fighting to prevent long-term future attacks from Gaza but also to defeat terrorists from overwhelming the Judeo-Christian values Western civilization is built on.

By Nils A. Haug, Gatestone Institute

Hamas, a so-called liberation movement, was voted into power as the governing party by the Palestinian people of Gaza in 2006.

The group immediately engaged in armed conflict with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and his Fatah faction, and forcibly removed them from Gaza, including by throwing at least one official off the 15th floor of a building.

Hamas also undertook a jihad (holy war) against the neighbouring country of Israel by attempting to kill Israelis or drive them away to take control of the land.

Hamas, designated a terror group by Western nations, is an Islamist fundamentalist group whose 1988 Covenant openly supports a Sharia law-based paradisical Caliphate free of non-believers and a world free of Jews (end of Article 7).

Captured non-believers, including Christians, are offered the choice of converting to Islam; being murdered or living among their captors as “dhimmis” – literally, “protected” third-class residents who have to pay protection tax, the jizya, and live under humiliating laws.

“Following the path of Allah means, in the narrowest sense, propagating Islam through holy war,” said the renowned philosopher Franz Rosenzweig as early as 1921.

His observation highlights the crux of the problem: there are two sets of rules. Jihadists fight according to their holy-war rules while Israelis are restricted to Western rules of a “just war,” including, for instance, the Geneva Conventions.

Israel, however, does not act indiscriminately but employs all possible safeguards to prevent or minimize casualties which, under international law, it is obliged to do.

“Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?” wrote John Spencer, urban warfare specialist and chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point.

Jihadists during a war follow a different code of conduct; Israel, as a democratic nation, is committed to broad principles of just war theory and a restricted use of force wherein every military move is carefully, even obsessively, monitored by Western powers.

These constraints can only compromise Israel’s freedom to respond as necessary in a fluid, real-time, permanently hostile environment.

As the terrorists are given a pass, it has become increasingly difficult for Israel to hold the high moral ground they actually merit.

Despite unprecedented efforts to protect the lives of Gaza’s civilians, such as dropping thousands of leaflets and making thousands of telephone calls to warn them to evacuate danger zones while Hamas operatives shot at them to prevent them from leaving, Israel — which Hamas, with the backing of Iran, savagely attacked on October 7, 2023 — is still often wrongly seen as the aggressor.

Israel has also been forced to contend with false claims of civilian casualties by Gaza’s Ministry of Health – which is run, of course, by Hamas.

Despite Israel’s compliance with humanitarian concerns, rules of war, and attempts to avoid Palestinian civilian deaths, the perception remains that Israel should be the one to make concessions for a ceasefire, not Hamas, which should immediately release the hostages it took.

Hamas, like other Islamic groups from a different culture, does not accede to the West’s laws of war – this much is clear from their treatment of hostages.

Freed hostages tell of “cages, beatings and death threats.” Hamas, in violation of the truce agreement, has not permitted the Red Cross to see the hostages. One can imagine how come.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of another of Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah, has warned Israel of a war conducted “without rules or ceilings.”

The conflict therefore becomes one between a Western state, ultimately seeking peaceful coexistence and adhering to the ethics of a just war, assaulted by terrorist groups pursuing total conquest and seeming to be driven by an ideology of unquenchable animosity toward “unbelievers.”

The same intolerance toward people who might prefer a different faith can also be seen in Pakistan, for instance, Indonesia, Iran, Afghanistan, India and throughout much of Africa (here, here and here).

The legitimate home of the Jewish people is Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel).

For nearly 4,000 years, love of this land has cemented the Jews’ sense of identity, social order and security.

In November 2023, Rabbi Leon Weiner Dow declared, “It is we who will define ourselves and our relationship to the land. We do not need to fit your binary categories of ownership.”

In this way, Dow rejected those who demand that Israel weaken its objective of a sovereign nation, in its own land and earning a complete victory over jihadist fanatics, while refusing to relinquish parts of Israel to Palestinians or anyone else.

In criticising the two-State idea, Rabbi Dow perceived the international community’s difficulty in comprehending the deep spiritual ties of the Jewish nation to their ancestral land.

Most Western leaders apparently desire to divide Israel, even further than it already has been divided, into two sectors: one for the Jews and one for the Palestinians — all in the name of human rights, social justice, and supposed fair play.

At its core, these proposals are anti-Zionist and in practical effect, anti-Semitic.

For a start, more than half the land promised to Jews by the 1917 Balfour Declaration was reallocated by the British authorities to what is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Jewish rights to what remains of their historic land is continually denied, along with stupefying proposals that the Jews should be forced to be ruled by the very people desiring their extinction.

What accommodation, however, can there possibly be between two conflicting core narratives, in which one party seeks the ideal of martyrdom — “We love death as our enemies love life” — while the other desires to live in peace, without constant threats to its existence?

Hamas’s control of Gaza is a case in point.

Led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, Israel acquiesced to US and international pressure to expel all Jewish inhabitants from Gaza: the territory was to be handed over to full Palestinian control.

This short-sighted compromise of Israel’s rights created a security vacuum which gave Hamas and other like-minded jihadists an even greater opportunity to prepare for the total annihilation of their Jewish neighbours.

This objective was partially implemented on October 7, 2023, with horrific consequences.

The question also then arose as to what constituted a fitting response by Israel to Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel’s innocent civilians of all ages, ethnicities, and faiths — from babies to grandparents with disabilities, Asians, and even Muslims on that day.

This issue, one of “proportionality,” has led to significant complications for Israel in its response to terror.

At the International Court of Justice, for instance – the jurisdiction of which Israel has never recognised – Israel was wrongly found guilty of failing to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.

Genocide clearly has never been Israel’s agenda — which, to the contrary, cannot be said of Hamas, Iran and other allied jihadists.

The latter groups force innocent Palestinian citizens into situations in which they could be killed, presumably in the hope that Israel would be blamed, as it usually — falsely — is.

Hamas, by contrast, goes out of its way to embed itself within the civilian population, such as dressing like them, to make it impossible to distinguish terrorists from civilians.

If civilian deaths occur, Hamas creates local “heroes” – “martyrs” — and blames Israel — therefore, the more deaths the better.

Civilian deaths, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar explains in a letter dated April 11, 2024, are “necessary sacrifices” to “infuse life into the veins of this nation (Gaza), promoting it to rise to its glory and honor.”

Israel is not only fighting to prevent long-term future attacks from Gaza, but also to defeat terrorists from overwhelming the Judeo-Christian values that have been achieved over centuries with much sacrifice.

Collateral damage, which invariably leads to the question of proportionality — how much firepower is needed to achieve a specific military result — is judged on anticipated outcomes.

It is not proportionate, for example, to use a bomb to kill a butterfly. Whenever possible, the possibility of civilian loss is assessed beforehand with the best available intelligence.

Israel has actually been singled out for implementing “More measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other nation in history.”

If civilian lives might be endangered, Israel will abort an operation. In the congested environment of Gaza, and Hamas resolutely endangering Gazan citizens, collateral damage will inevitably occur.

Between intention and outcome concerning lives lost, an important distinction must be made, one that defeats allegations of genocide.

Many Western leaders who have significant Islamic populations in their midst might believe it in their political self-interest to criticize Israel’s response despite any validity.

Among these leaders constantly and unjustly attacking Israel are those representing various United Nations agencies, the European Union, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Norway’s Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and seemingly anyone in Ireland.

Others that come to mind, unfortunately, are US Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The UK is not much different.

In November 2023, Conservative Party Home Secretary Suella Braverman was summarily sacked after expressing the “heretical” opinion that “Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.”

In an ethically compromised era, speaking the truth can be a risk, as noted by the American author and former politician Dr. Ron Paul, who concluded that “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”

Despite world leaders proclaiming that the Jewish nation would “Never Again” be subjected to ethnic cleansing, the same leaders compromise Israel’s attempts at securing their homeland by calling for a premature ceasefire or cessation in military action, or by imposing restraints purportedly to curtail civilian casualties.

They ignore the murderous revelation by Hamas spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, who, on October 24, 2023, vowed, “We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again. The Al Aqsa Flood attack is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”

It is this environment of Jew-hate and death threats that confront Israel daily.

Meanwhile, the international community “fiddles” while the Middle East “burns,” and imposes sanctimonious restraints on Israel’s to prevent it from being able to defend itself.

Israel is the “only country in world,” the British journalist Douglas Murray pointed out, “who are never allowed to win a war, which is a reason why wars keep occurring.”

Biden and his ministers of state try their utmost to impose unacceptable cease-fire agreements upon Israel.

Fortunately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “the Churchill of the Middle East,” will have none of it.

Israel stands firm against prematurely ceasing military action: their ultimate aim is not only to destroy Hamas’s military capability and to rescue remaining hostages, but to defeat terror for the future of the Free World.

“It doesn’t matter what the gentiles say,” David Ben-Gurion remarked. “It only matters what the Jews do.”

Israel’s survival impacts the survival of Western civilization — the principles, ethics, and Judeo-Christian values upon which the culture and societies are founded. If these are lost or given away, the alternatives will be devastating for everyone.

As Professor Leon R. Kass put it in November 2023:

“It is left to little Israel to make the first stand against radical evil and the new axis of nations dedicated to the demise of the West. With resolve, courage, and dedication, but, alas, with much more sacrifice, Israel will show the way.”

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