The late Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, once wrote, “In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Today, they are hated for their nation state.”
Israel is indeed a first-world nation-state, as well as global technology leader, military power, liberal democracy and more. But do these miracles mean the Jewish State lacks the right to exist and defend itself from genocidal enemies?
Anyone with a moral compass, or who hasn’t been stuck in graduate school, understands that Hamas’ thugs are the villains in the latest conflict. Yet recent weeks clearly highlighted how depraved the leftist moral compass actually is, here and abroad.
Notorious anti-Semite Ilhan Omar unsurprisingly kicked the hatred off by deeming defensive Israeli air strikes against military targets “acts of terrorism.”
The Minnesota congresswoman’s pro-Hamas comrade Rashida Tlaib made a pathetic racial comparison, by claiming what Israel is “doing to the Palestinian people is what they continue to do to our Black brothers and sisters here.”
Who are “they”? Never mind. My dad long ago warned not to reason with crypto-fascists.
Self-loathing radicals like Bernie Sanders can’t stop fomenting ignorance and hatred, either.
It’s sad to see the American Left analogizing 1619 Project balderdash onto the international stage.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once observed, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence; if the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”
Call that simplistic, but it’s mostly true.
Four years of relative Middle East peace has recently been interrupted only four months into President Joe Biden’s tenure, as Hamas bombs Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.
As of Sunday night, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had fired more than 3,200 rockets over seven days, the highest daily rate of rocket fire Israel has faced in its history.
“The threat is real. Millions of Israelis are living under fire. We will continue to defend ourselves,” the IDF tweeted Sunday.
They also noted nearly 500 of those rockets misfired and crashed into Gaza, causing around 20 Palestinian casualties. So, one in seven Hamas rockets hurts their own people.
This is sad, and the timing is telling.
In 2017, former President Donald Trump, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo allowed U.S.-led forces to crush ISIS, while curtailing Iran’s terror-exporting by hurting its finances. Perhaps the biggest achievement was the 2020 Abraham Accords, an improbable peace breakthrough establishing diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Unfortunately, the new U.S. regime didn’t value the historic progress and immediately let Iran out of its penalty box. Biden apparently seeks a return to former President Barack Obama’s failures of showering Tehran with money, while allowing the rogue regime to enrich uranium to dangerous levels.
The Trump administration proved suppressing Iran could cause Arab governments to formalize ties with Israel. This intrepid approach also confirmed what many predicted: Israeli-Palestinian peace cannot occur when Iran and their Hamas proxies are solely focused on Israel’s destruction.
Realizing Washington has returned to outdated assumptions about how to manage the region, Netanyahu’s nation conducted a brilliant deke late last week. The IDF intentionally misled Hamas to send fighters into tunnels — known as the “Gaza Metro System” — intended to protect them and entrap Israelis; instead of invading, Israeli artillery hit these areas, taking out Hamas with limited risk to themselves.
What’s clear in 2021 is America and its Arab and Israeli allies fear an ascendant Iran aiding Hamas terrorists. And judging by the Arab League’s lack of military support for Palestinians, most realize debunked clichés about settlements or “two states” will only prolong conflict.
Does Team Biden get it? So far they’ve espoused banal moral equivalence between the Israelis and Palestinians. And thanks to the usual media malfeasance, one wonders how long that will even last.
How about unequivocally standing with Israel in their quest to defeat the same Islamist tyrants that hate America? Or would that anger the Democrats’ pro-Jihadist wing?
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
