The fingerprints of genocidal Iran, which pays Hamas, are everywhere in Israel. British journalist Melanie Phillips, who is currently reporting from Jerusalem, blames not only terrorist organizations, but also the West for what happened in Israel over the weekend.
I am in Jerusalem. When the devout Jews were celebrating Shabbat and the Simchat Torah holiday, an air raid siren began to wail, which was shortly followed by the burst of intercepted rockets over the city. For hours, even more sirens blared. We watched as the sky above the city was filled with smoke trails left by the missile defense system, the Iron Dome. Our breath stopped at the thought that the Iron Dome might fail.
And what was happening elsewhere was infinitely worse, a terrible catastrophe the likes of which we have not seen in the history of Israel. Hundreds of Hamas militants have infiltrated the south of the country, brazenly using jeeps and paragliders to overcome the border fence and Israel's supposedly sophisticated border defenses. These Hamas forces attacked some 22 villages, towns and kibbutzim along the southern border, killing civilians and soldiers while firing thousands of rockets into the southern and central parts of the country.
Israelis were murdered at bus stops, in their cars and in their homes. The militants went from house to house, killing and burning their houses. Dozens of young Israelis attending an all-night outdoor festival were massacred. An unknown number of people were held hostage for hours in the dining hall of Kibbutz Be'eri.
What is even more disgusting is that dozens of Israelis, including the elderly, women and small children, have been kidnapped from their homes or dragged from cars, forced into Hamas vehicles and are now being held hostage in Gaza. This is unimaginable and unspeakable.
Videos of Hamas militants parading stolen Israeli-looking military vehicles, including a tank, have appeared on social media; and at least one dead Israeli soldier was shown being dragged and trampled by crowds in Gaza shouting "God is great".
The hostages mean that the Israel Defense Forces must now enter Gaza in a major ground operation, with all its dire consequences.
They also fear that Hezbollah could now launch its 150,000 rockets from Lebanon, aimed at all of Israel. This is Israel's nightmare, and it will almost certainly get worse. It is wrong to call it terrorism. This is total war against Israel. And this barbaric attack has the fingerprints of genocidal Iran paying Hamas all over it.
It was enough. It is time to eliminate not only Hamas, but also the head of the snake, the Tehran regime.
Almost exactly fifty years ago today, Israel was surprised by an attack from Egypt and Syria on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. This intelligence failure cost the lives of thousands of Israeli soldiers and caused lasting national trauma.
What happened today was much worse. This was not a war between armies or a conflict between terrorists and soldiers. This was a deadly and overwhelming attack on Israeli civilians. Each such attack was therefore a war crime.
How could this happen? It is clear that Israeli intelligence has made a huge mistake. It's hard not to see the connection with the massive anti-government protests of the past nine months, in which Israelis have tried to undermine the economy and even refused to serve in the military reserves.
Due to such a paralyzing infighting, the official bodies may have lost sight of security. What is undeniable is that the intensity and duration of these internal upheavals sent the signal that Israel was weakened.
Many Israelis have wondered in recent difficult months when Israel's mortal enemies would seize the opportunity to exploit this weakness.
Now we have the terrible answer.
And this barbarity was paid for by the USA and the EU. What did they think they were actually going to use all the money they sent to Gaza for "humanitarian" purposes? Now we know the answer.
What did the Biden administration think would be the result of appeasing, paying off and financing Iran, the stalwart of Hamas and Hezbollah? Now you have the answer.
America, the EU and Britain have consistently undermined Israel's attempts to defend itself against attack. Over the past century, the West has fueled the Palestinian Arabs' annihilating terror against Israel by rewarding it with the promise of statehood—while the Palestinians have always made it clear that they only seek it as a stepping stone to Israel's destruction—and punishing Israel for protesting this existential threat.
For decades, the US, the EU and the UK have been forcing Israel to fight Arab aggression in Palestine with one hand tied behind its back. Time and again they pressured Israel to withdraw its forces before they were able to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.
Even as the Biden administration now reverently proclaims that it stands with Israel in its defense against “terror,” the State Department said: “We have called on all parties to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence do not solve anything."
All parties? So does the US think that Israel and Hamas are morally equivalent? So Israel should "refrain" from destroying forces that killed hundreds of civilians in one day - in what the US disapprovingly claims would be a "retaliatory attack"? Should America have refrained from attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 because it was also a "retaliatory attack"?
Whenever Israel has launched military operations in Gaza - which it does only when attacks from there have become unbearable - Western "progressives" complain that the response is "disproportionate". In their disgusting way, what they mean by that is that they haven't killed enough Israelis.
Are today's terrible numbers of victims now making them think twice? Let's not poison him.
If Israel moves hard into Gaza - which it must do out of moral obligation - the usual suspects in the media and the "progressive" classes will shout "disproportionate" sooner than we can say "brush off".
This is because the Palestinian cause is the cause of causes for Western “progressives”. Support for the Palestinians is the default position of all liberals. They support people who march with the desecrated corpses of those who have been killed; who kidnapped a teenage Israeli girl to Gaza and paraded her through the streets; people who murdered an Israeli woman, loaded her into a van, then stripped her and humiliated her; who torture kidnapped children.
A very great evil has happened in Israel today. This was done by the Palestinian Arabs and their Iranian supporters. But this blood also sticks to the hands of the USA, the EU and the UK.
