ISRAEL HAS A RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF...

But Not Like This.

Same story, different war. The images of the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza are flooding the media and telling a story. None of those images are more telling than those of babies brutally and cruelly murdered by Hamas. Not even hundreds of young adults murdered at an outdoor music festival or entire families in their homes compare to the savagery wrought on babies by Hamas. Even the images of woman brutally raped and murdered or captured and held hostage equals the sheer evil directed toward babies.

The attack on Israel by Hamas aided and abetted by at least Iran and Hezbollah we are learning has been years in the making and make what is happening in Israel premeditated murder. And since the Jews are a cultural group it is also a hate crime. The Hamas savagery of indiscriminate attacks on the Israeli civilian population continues even today, even now. I know this because I just received another notice from the Jerusalem Post app of Hamas launched rockets heading for civilian targets.

What is the goal of Hamas? What is it that they hope to achieve? Land? No. Money? No. Hamas’ goal, its purpose for this cowardly attack on Israel is much less complex than either land or money; it is the elimination of Israel - its people and its land. That’s it. This is not just a hate crime it is a genocidal effort.

Israel is fighting for its existence and its response to this particular attack by Hamas is equally brutal but it is not directed at the civilian population of Gaza. But because of Hamas, the political entity in power and the terror group, civilian Palestinians are in peril and have high risk of death.

Hamas has a history of hiding it military assets in public places including apartments, mosques, hospitals, schools and universities, and office buildings. It is not surprising that as Israel degrades the military capability of Hamas to attack them that Palestinian civilians are losing their lives. After all, the purpose of human shields is to protect cowardly militants and terrorists.

Israel is preparing for what will be a long and difficult ground operation in Gaza. More than 300,000 hardened Israeli troops are ready to end Hamas; not the Palestinian civilian population but the Hamas, the terrorists. Israel has warned more than one million civilians to leave northern Gaza for their own safety. Hamas’s response is not to facilitate their move to safety but to tell them — ‘stay put’. The United Nations has told Israel that asking civilians to leave their homes to seek safety is unreasonable because they have no place to go. Therein lies the problem because if you are a Palestinian — even a civilian — no one wants you. Not Jordan and not Egypt which have closed their borders to escaping Palestinians. The Biden administration is warning Israel to avoid harming civilians. Hamas is telling them to stay in harms way.

As I have recently written, the support of the United States and others for Israel will be strong — in the media and then it will not. The United States and others will begin to demand that the death toll of innocent Palestinians goes beyond self defense. The media will show you graphic images of the suffering that Israel is inflicting on Palestinian civilians and here they are. But at the of the day they will blame Israel and victimize Hamas and that has begun.

In the meantime, rather than provide for their citizens Hamas has called for a global “day of rage” in protest of the Israeli ‘brutality’.

The world has a problem and it is not Israel.

Union, Kentucky

13 October 2023