It should be no surprise that Israel has retaliated against Hamas for its savage assault on Israeli civilians; and no surprise that it has done so with extreme measures. Now, once and for all, Hamas shall be destroyed, Israel states, and has pursued the enemy with severity, fury, and righteousness. Israel has indeed loosed its terrible lightning and despite the naive pleas of America to give peace a chance, the Israelis are having none of it. This, as all Israel's military battles, is a fight for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and survival.
There should be nothing hard to understand in such a militant determined position. Since its creation Israel has been attacked by its enemies who have vowed to exterminate the Jews, and to rid their land of the godless, predatory interloper. None have succeeded. From the first war to the current one, Israel has remained immovable. Proportionate response, conciliation, facile, self-serving 'negotiations' have never been considered. The value of one Israeli death cannot be calculated, and Israel's response has always expressed that moral principle. No one can kill Israelis with impunity. Every assault on Israeli territory, soldiers, or civilians will be met at a terrible cost.
This is not a simple geopolitical struggle like that in Ukraine where an aggressive, territorial, and imperialistic Russia wants to expand its reach, solidify its military position, and reintegrate lands which it has always claimed were its own. The Russian-Ukrainian war is bad enough with thousands of civilian and military deaths; and not unlike hundreds of others with self-justifying historical motives for aggression; but the Israeli-Hamas war is existential, vital, and absolute.
Jews have been residents of Palestine for millennia, have ruled, been ruled, occupied, and been occupied - all in the name of survival. The term 'Chosen People' is not taken lightly. It is a Biblical injunction at the very center of Jewish history. It is at the center of the diaspora which has suffered insult, injury, scorn, isolation, and discrimination since Jews migrated from their homeland to Europe.
Religion and secular integrity is no unique to the Jews; but whereas radical Muslims today are only out to expand and destroy - to create an Islamic caliphate from East to West and subject those conquered to the sharia rule of Allah and the iron hand of the conqueror - Israeli Jews, like their forbears, have never been imperialist aggressors, and have fought only to preserve, protect, and survive.
What is it about Jewish history, Israeli socio-cultural sovereignty, and Jewish determination that America does not get? Hasn't it been perfectly clear since 1947 and the foundation of Israel that the Jews have a Middle East destiny? That they belong in Palestine and will never, ever cede ground to those who wish to remove them?
How is it that a nation which had no compunction of firebombing Dresden and incinerating thousands of civilians in a carpet bombing never before seen in warfare; which leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs not instinctively and immediately understanding of Israel's justifiable need to destroy the enemy? How is it that the country which encouraged Sherman's bloody, retributive march to the sea - never again was the message to Georgia and South Carolina; never again will you ever rise up against the Union - not totally supportive of Israel's war?
American lost its resolve in Vietnam where despite the Rolling Thunder bombing of the North it was more concerned with 'the hearts and minds' of Vietnamese civilians than defeating a principled, unwaveringly loyal and determined enemy for whom civilian lives were insignificant compared to the fight against American imperialism. The Vietcong were merciless in their barbaric control of South Vietnamese villages. American 'pacification' was a trifle compared to the savagery of the enemy. The United States had never come against such will, such determination, and such amoral purpose.
Yet American never learned its lesson and drifted into a no-casualty mentality of war. The goal was not just victory, but victory without a cost. Field generals must be sensitive to the lives of enemy civilians as innocents not complicit actors. American military casualties are factors in determining the prosecution of the war. Combat has become a complicated calculus of cost-benefit and risk analysis.
Israel, while of course concerned with limiting its military casualties, has no such limitations. The civilians of Gaza are as complicit as 'ordinary Germans' during the Holocaust. There is no such thing as an innocent Gazan. Civilians stood by as Hamas built tunnels, armed themselves, and attacked Israel with rocket fire perennially.
Calls for ceasefires, peace negotiations, and 'talks' are nothing less than European and American support for Hamas. In a show of uncanny disingenuousness, the UN, the tool of European Palestinianism says that Israel must stop. University presidents, boards of directors, administrators, and professors have encouraged the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic demonstrations on their campuses. They too have bought the 'decolonialization' line, ignored history, and lionized the aggressor, Hamas and the Palestinians.
Only the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Geert Wilders has been outspoken and forthright about the militancy and seditious aggressiveness of Islam. He, unlike the rest of European leaders and their American counterparts, has been unafraid to state that Islam is a dangerous, expansionist, non-integrationist religion, and enemy of the West. Israel is a beacon of light in the Middle East he said in one of his earliest speeches as Prime Minister - a vibrant liberal democracy, a European nation in the midst of Islamic medieval barbarism. He gets its, America still does not.
Israel will prevail as it always has, no thanks to its supposed allies. It will listen only to its own conscience, its own ethos, its own history, and its absolute belief in the righteousness of the Jewish state.
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