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Two years ago, Hamas launched a sneak attack into Israel from Gaza with the sole purpose of murdering as many civilians as possible — young women, infants, elderly, it didn’t matter.
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The invaders filmed themselves engaged in this vile rampage of murder. Over 1,200 people, including 47 Americans, were killed that day. The terrorists dragged away another 251 innocent people back to Gaza. Those lucky enough to survive the ordeal were tortured and humiliated, often locked in the homes of Palestinians. The nefarious, sadistic glee and nihilism of the spectacle should have mortified any decent human.
For many Jews, it was also a traumatic event, the largest massacre since the Holocaust. In the long arch of history, such occasions are par for the course. The only difference these days is that Jewish blood no longer comes cheap, a fact that endlessly irritates millions around the world.
And, so, Oct. 7, 2023, birthed two distinct storylines.
The first one finds Israel stronger than ever. Oct. 7 was a massive blunder by Israel’s greatest foe, Iran, which both helped fund and likely plan the attack. The mullahs may have been able to delay the expansion of the Abraham Accords, but they lost on every other front imaginable, as Israel has completely transformed the Middle East.
The Iranian military has been thoroughly embarrassed. With our help, the Israelis set back the mullahs’ nuclear program years, if not decades.
Hamas’s rule in Gaza has been decimated — its days of launching significant missile attacks aimed at civilians are over for the foreseeable future. Soon, its days of martyring its own people as a way of appealing to useful idiots in the West will end as well. The prospects of a genuine “two-state solution” are virtually nonexistent, despite the performative recognition of European states.
Hezbollah, the Hamas ally and Iranian proxy militia illegally holed up in southern Lebanon, has been decapitated. Lebanon finally has a chance to regain control of its nation. Hezbollah’s fall precipitated the end of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, another ally of Iran. The leadership of the Shia Houthis, an illegitimate destabilizing force within Yemen, has also been weakened.
The Middle East is always simmering in tribal and religious tensions. The oil-rich mullahs will retool, no doubt. But right now, it is a far safer place than it was on Oct. 6, 2023.
Yet, on the anniversary of the massacre, the New York Times contends that Israel is “more isolated than ever.” Israel has a public relations problem, that’s for sure. But the country also continues to trade with over 150 nations. It is closer to its Sunni Arab neighbors than ever. The United Arab Emirates is far more important to Israel’s future than Denmark.
Israel’s economy has also shown remarkable resilience, remaining a leading innovator in high-tech and defense industries despite fighting a multifront war. Israeli GDP per capita is higher than that of Hamas-appeasing nations such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, far higher than the European Union average. Israel does this without massive deposits of fossil fuels and under constant pressure from the world.
Israel’s victory is also a stunning defeat for Washington’s foreign policy blob, which has forever cleaved to the idea that the Islamist government in Iran must be placated for peace and that the only road to stability is to create another Arab state in Samaria, Judea, and Gaza.
On the other end of the policy spectrum, the scaremongering predictions of the isolationist and pro-Islamist “new right” were proven comprehensively wrong as well.
Most importantly, as Israel’s detractors in Europe and North America surrender to illiberalism, Israel, with all its external threats and domestic squabbling, stands up for the West. The second storyline that emerged from Oct. 7 bodes poorly for the future.
Far from goodwill, Oct. 7 unleashed a torrent of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Jewish violence and paranoia. A well-financed propaganda and public relations effort was unleashed against Israel and its supporters. It’s working.
In the hours after the massacre unfolded, even while the Israelis were still fighting the remnants of the Palestinian army in southern Israel and attempting to identify the dead, pro-Hamas protests broke out across the world. And by “the world,” I don’t mean in the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Islamabad, but Harvard University and Times Square, where large crowds held signs with genocidal slogans such as, “From the river to the sea,” and, “Globalize the Intifada.” In short order, these sentiments would be quite popular in Western circles, fusing the causes of many progressives, Islamists, and so-called nationalists.
Within weeks of the killing, Democrats were criticizing Israel and calling for the terrorists to be rewarded with a state.
What was once considered to be outlandish bigotry spread by the likes of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) or fringe white supremacists on the Right is now normalized online, and increasingly elsewhere. Both Tucker Carlson and the “Squad” can agree that Jews are hypnotizing the world for evil.
Polls find that many voters, particularly young ones, have turned on the Jewish state. It has become trendy to flirt with ancient tropes about Jews, casting them as fifth columnists. Mass propaganda efforts have convinced young people that Israel is engaged in “genocide” and starvation; that it controls our government through the boogeyman Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC, a milquetoast pro-Israel American organization that spends approximately 500 timez less than Qatar trying to influence U.S. culture and politics; that it assassinates presidents and aids pedophiles; and that it uses space lasers to change the weather.
In the end, we have likely created a generation of voters who have been hoodwinked into making common cause with Islamists.
It’s likely that once the war in Gaza ends, progressives will move on to the next emotionally charged cause and trade in their keffiyehs for another symbol of illiberalism and violence. Yet, it is also almost surely the case that once President Donald Trump leaves the White House, the United States will no longer be the same kind of ally to Israel. Joe Biden and especially Barack Obama worked to sever that relationship with Israel during their presidencies. It is yet to be seen where increasingly isolationist Republicans are headed.
LAWRENCE KRAUSS’S WAR ON WOKE SCIENCE
People often ask me why Israelis don’t do a better PR job. Why not release the horrifying videos of Hamas gleefully massacring and torturing women, children, and elderly people on Oct. 7, 2023? Surely the horror of those images would inspire more goodwill. One suspects there are a number of reasons. First, out of respect for the dead and their families, Israelis do not revel in martyrdom and death. Second, they don’t want “Free Palestine” leftists and Candace Owens rightists to use the videos to spread more unhinged conspiracy theories. Third, antisemites would enjoy and celebrate the videos. Studies show, for example, that Holocaust education doesn’t necessarily make people less inclined to hate Jews, but often more inclined.
Westerners often misunderstand the essence of Israeli political culture. The country abhors victimhood. Its entire existence is predicated on the idea that it won’t become one. Never again isn’t just a slogan. Nothing upsets its enemies more.