On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched a brutal assault on Israel. As 5,000 rockets slammed into civilian targets, terrorists massacred at least 1,200 Israelis, wounded about 3,500, and took 251 hostages. They raped, eviscerated, mutilated, beheaded, tortured, and incinerated their victims. At least 75 hostages have died, and about 20 remain in captivity.
Prior to the attack, 137 UN member countries recognized Palestinian statehood. Apparently unbothered by Hamas’ savagery and distressed by Israel’s aggressive military response, 10 additional nations recognized Palestine after the attack. In the last month, Australia, Britain, Canada, and France provisionally joined them. Led by France, the European Union and 18 countries signed declarations criticizing Israel for defending itself and signaled that they too are poised to recognize Palestine. The United States is the last permanent member of the UN Security Council refusing to go along.
International support for a two-state solution obstructs ceasefire talks and “encourages and rewards” terrorism, Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded, while senior Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad observed that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack brought the Palestinian cause to the forefront, and “is why all the countries are starting to recognize a Palestinian state.” Israel’s chutzpah in defending itself is the other reason.
John Spence, the world-renowned chair of urban warfare at West Point, observes that no military fighting force has ever done more to avoid civilian casualties than Israel. Savvy Hamas propagandists falsely claim that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli hospital (struck by a Hamas rocket), killed Palestinians lining up for food (denied by aid groups, and disproved by video of terrorists firing on their own people), and starved Palestinians (tragically advanced by exploiting a genetically frail child).
There is almost no attention to the continued calls by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to exterminate the world’s 20 million Jews, the sexual abuse and torture of hostages, an emaciated Jewish hostage forced to dig his own grave, UN confirmation that 89% of aid is intercepted by Gazan mobs and terrorists, or ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.
Though Israel may be faulted for some of its choices, by historical and contemporary standards, Israel’s war of defense is righteous and moral, and would be seen as such for any other country. Israel has compromised its objectives and endangered its troops to protect and feed Gazan civilians who endorse these atrocities, while Hamas uses Gazans as human shields and bases its military in and under hospitals, schools, and residences. Israel’s provocative plan to temporarily take control of Gaza City will be accompanied by a significant increase in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid.
As the world turns on Israel, the facts become another casualty of war.
Jews fighting back horrifies classic antisemites, as well as modern progressives who incongruously place Israel and Jews at the top of the colonial-oppressor hierarchy. Their Marxist dogma even attracts liberal Jews with Netanyahu derangement syndrome (Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Ezra Klein, to name a few).
The world holds 192 members of the United Nations to one standard, and Israel, the only majority Jewish nation, to another. According to UN Watch, since 2015 the General Assembly has adopted 173 resolutions condemning Israel, compared to 78 resolutions against all other countries combined. The UN Human Rights Council has never criticized China. It has condemned Iran 16 times, Russia 11 times, and Israel 112 times. Israel is the only nation ever condemned by the World Health Organization.
When U.S. seamen were pressed into service by the British in the early 1800s, the United States invaded Canada. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, the world exploded in a war that left 10 million soldiers and 8 million civilians dead. After the attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,403, the U.S. entered the Second World War, a conflagration that ultimately claimed the lives of 60 million people around the globe, including 20,000,000 from disease and famine.
After 2,977 civilians were killed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States sent half a million troops to the Middle East and engaged in a 20-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan. American war dead exceeded 7,000, with another 50,000 wounded, many of them grievously. The total number of Iraqis and Afghans killed in those two countries runs into the hundreds of thousands.
It’s a grim story, but an old one. From shelling Tripoli in the Barbary Wars, carpet bombing civilians in Dresden and Tokyo, nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to thermobaric bombs in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, allied counterstrikes inflicted heavy civilian losses, including mass starvation of tens of millions of civilians.
But in May 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end most military operations in Gaza. German officials – and New York’s antisemitic, democratic socialist mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani – have threatened to arrest Netanyahu.
The global demonstrations against Israel, violence against Jews on U.S. campuses, and Israel’s diplomatic isolation are rooted in rampant antisemitism and Marxism. But for Donald Trump and evangelical Christians, the world could lose the birthplace of Western civilization and the only democracy in the Middle East. If that happens, believe the aggressors: The United States is their next target.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.