10/7- No military objective, no strategic gain
How and why are so many on the Far-Left opposing Israel retaliating against Gaza and giving a free pass to Hamas for killing hundreds of innocent civilians?
Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Usually, I’d begin something like this by saying that if I agree with ANYTHING Hugh Hewitt has said or written, you can rest assured that Hell has frozen over, and the puck drops tonight at 7:05.
In this case, however, his argument that “Evil people commit unspeakable crimes against humanity with horrifying regularity” is impossible to argue with. In light of the 10/7 attack that left hundreds of innocent Jews dead in southern Israel at the hands of Hamas militants, I find it difficult to argue that what happened was anything but Hamas engaging in pure evil.
10/7 was not the action of a righteous army gaining a glorious victory over a worthy adversary. Hamas knew that taking the fight directly to the Israeli Army would be a suicide mission, so they chose the cowardly route. They crashed through the southern border and massacred innocent non-combatants…and soldiers where they could.
But somehow Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on Saturday feels different, in its intensity and immediacy, and not just because the terrorists grotesquely exploited social media to document their atrocities.
The chilling and methodical depravity that stalked infants and the very old, as well as young people joyfully dancing at a music festival, was profoundly disturbing because it was both so purposeful and purposeless: An army of mass murders rampaged in search of victims targeted solely because they were Jews. No military objective, no strategic aim.
Their only objective was to kill and obliterate as many lives as possible. There were no military objectives to capture and hold strategic areas, no missions to complete, save for the savagery Hamas militants conducted the attack with.
Most of those slaughtered posed no threat to Hamas fighters as they moved into Israel. They were unarmed families and young people at a music festival who ; none of these people could defend themselves. But then cowards always attack the easiest targets, right? It’s easy to kill those unable to protect themselves, especially when you don’t think of them as people- just things, subhumans- Jews who don’t deserve to live.
This was as violent an eruption of the ancient evil as we have seen since 1945. However much, over the past three-quarters of a century, we have seen crowds chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” many of us never imagined the existence of would-be Nazi hordes who, given the chance to kill Jews, would kill and kill and kill, and then celebrate the carnage. An army of antisemitic sadists was loosed on the Holy Land, and the consequences have stunned and sickened the civilized world.
We knew there were murderous antisemitic fanatics surrounding Israel and even in the United States, certainly dozens of them and perhaps hundreds. Many have used suicide as a weapon, so deep was their hatred. But the idea that, once the Israeli military responded, some 1,500 terrorist bodies were left in the wake of this bloodletting suggests that many, many more retreated to Gaza with their hostages.
How sad that some have so little to live for that they would willingly die…as long as they can take as many “dirty” Jews with them as possible. Even though they and those they hate are Semites and belong to Abrahamic religions, they’re so convinced of the superiority of their own that they’d kill those on the other side. Because their Mohammed is better than the Other’s Jesus?
The cycle of senseless violence and death is so ingrained on both sides of the divide that the idea of ending it in favor of peaceful coexistence is almost unthinkable. Could Jews and Palestinians learn to live together? Could they ever trust one another enough to put down their weapons and bury their mutual hatred and blood lust deep enough for everyone to live in peace and harmony?
Israel is 75 years old, and it’s been fighting for its survival since Day One. Though the list of sworn enemies has shrunk considerably as Israel has managed to negotiate peace treaties with several of its Arab neighbors, the Palestinians on its doorstep remain a notable and violent exception.
Exactly how many would-be terrorists eager to kill Jews are in Gaza, in southern Lebanon, in Iran, awaiting their chance? Did we really think we could negotiate with a Tehran regime that sponsored, approved and applauded these atrocities? If we did, that naiveté should be gone, washed away in a river of blood.
But we did believe it. Many people I know were convinced of the wisdom of negotiating with Iran. Even the most conservative “peace through strength” conservatives I have known for decades did not imagine that our enemies would be capable of such evil as we have just seen.
Of course. We’re raised to believe that people are inherently good at heart, that no matter how bad or evil one may seem, there’s a core of goodness that can be appealed to. No one is irredeemable, no one is beyond reach.
And then there’s Hamas, whose militants appear to have been brainwashed to such a degree that they cannot see Jews as anything but animals worthy of slaughter. Thus it was that the massacr of innocent men, women, and children was not just a byproduct of the 10/7 attack, it was the mission.
These were not soldiers attacking military targets, but terrorists spilling as much blood as humanly possibly. That was the mission.
Barbarism, yes. The mercilessness of Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Chinese President Xi Jinping is well-known. But we clung to the ideas of deterrence and that the Islamist menace could be contained. We believed that the sort of irrational hatred that fueled Adolf Hitler’s legions of killers was a thing of the past — or at least limited and incapable of producing mayhem on the scale that befell Israel last weekend.
I was wrong, and I am not alone. The number of people struggling to express their sense of horror that such sinister violence against Jews could be perpetrated in the 21st century is leaving me at a loss for words, unable to focus on anything else.
I think most people in the West wanted to believe that a solution could be found, that serious people could find a way through a seemingly intractable conflict that had already spilled too much blood and caused far too much heartache.
We had to have hope, because where hope fails to flourish and despair takes root, evil becomes fertilizer.
My contempt for the unserious people who destabilized the Congress on the eve of this outrage only grows, and so does my disgust for those who sign petitions and march in apparent support for the perpetrators of this savagery.
Last Friday, as I watch a pro-Palestine march makes its way up Broadway in downtown Portland past my office, it was all I could do to stifle my rage. Those Left-wing lunatics were marching in support of those who slaughtered hundreds of innocents on 10/7. They were giving a pass to those who beheaded babies, executed innocent men, women, and children, and raped women and girls.
How can anyone support a movement capable of such monstrous atrocities? And yet here were hundreds of people marching in my hometown, doing precisely that. It was one of the most disgusting displays I’ve seen in quite some time…and yet, I kept my opinion to myself, because I new that engaging in a debate with a rabid Left-winger in Portland is a pointless act. Few things flourish in Portland quite like Left-wing self-righteousness…and I count myself as one of them. In this case, though, I wanted nothing to do with those who could blame Israel while completely absolving Hamas of any responsibility.
There can never be justification for terrorism and the senseless murder of defenseless men, women, and children. That’s a coward’s way of taking the fight to one’s enemy, and it’s no way to win friend or influence potential supporters.
We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of believing “Never again” actually meant “Never again.” Israel will now wage the war it must, to shatter the very idea that the deep evil driving Hamas can be allowed to thrive. The United States and the civilized world — which of course includes many Muslim nations — must support this effort.
We have seen the madness that consumes Hamas, just as it surely consumes Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force in Iran. It is a madness that they would will upon the world. We have no excuse now to indulge the belief that the Nazi trials at Nuremberg offered a final and binding judgment that all nations would respect. They manifestly did not. Israel will attempt to do so now, and I hope it is with the full support of the United States.
I cannot claim to know what it might take to eradicate evil such as Hamas. It’s not a uniformed army that’s easily identifiable. It lives in the shadows and hides itself in the most cowardly manner- in schools, hospitals, and amongst civilians. The follow no rules, especially the laws of war, and so virtually everything they do is a violation of those laws.
Somehow, Palestinian men must be convinced that there are more profitable and successful ways to live than by pledging fealty to Hamas and living a life dedicated to death and destruction. Hamas grows nothing, it supports nothing positive. Ultimately, it’s all and only about killing and destroying. Everywhere Hamas is, death follows closely behind. There’s nothing good that can come out of Hamas being a fact of life in Gaza, and the sooner the organization is either destroyed or displaced, the better.
I’m not going to claim to be an expert and say that I know what the right thing to do is. I don’t. I’ve lived and traveled in the Middle East, and the only thing I know with any certainty is that terrorism is a way of life, and death can and might be mere moments away. Nothing can be taken for granted.
Even if Israel succeeds in decapitating Hamas by rolling into Gaza, who’s to say that more leaders and a different resistance group won’t pop up in their stead? With more than 2 million people stuffed into the Gaza Strip, there will always be more men willing to step in and accept the mantle of leadership, if not an explosive vest. How does Israel and the West stop that cycle? Can it be stopped?
Israel will do its best to obliterate Hamas, no doubt with the full support of the United States, but those are questions that have been searching for answers for 75 years. Though I try to be an optimist, it’s difficult to see the cycle of violence being stopped in its tracks.
Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.
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This passage right here; "The chilling and methodical depravity that stalked infants and the very old, as well as young people joyfully dancing at a music festival, was profoundly disturbing because it was both so purposeful and purposeless: An army of mass murders rampaged in search of victims targeted solely because they were Jews. No military objective, no strategic aim." Perfectly written and self-evidently accurate. At this moment in time, Israel must do that which it's heart is railing against; which is to exercise caution and restraint. Yes, they need to make Hamas pay, and to some extent they already have. But my fear is that if they go on a full on incursion into Gaza the general good will they have will much of the world will begin to fade, and turn into criticism. It's a very fine line they need to walk, because despite Israel's serious flaws, they're still the good guys in this scenario. I just hope that they have an appreciation about the delicate balance they need to pull off; I'm pulling for them to do it.