When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, the country joined World War II and ultimately ended that global conflict by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.
When the U.S. was struck by hijacked airplanes on 9/11, our forces invaded Afghanistan, which had harbored the terrorists, and a decade later killed Osama bin Laden.
Now Israel, after horrifying terror attacks by Hamas that have killed at least 900 of its citizens, is vowing to destroy the organization that took over Gaza 16 years ago.
During the first day of the Hamas attacks, more Jews were killed than on any single day since the Holocaust.
Israeli soldiers head south near Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
I am not going to argue that Bibi Netyanyahu’s government hasn’t made mistakes, or that ordinary Palestinians living in dirt-poor Gaza don’t have legitimate grievances, but the sheer brutality of the Hamas assault, the publicizing of gruesome scenes and the celebration of murdered Israelis should be nauseating to any civilized person.
The carefully planned massacre of 200 young people at a music festival. The raping of women, the kidnapping of families with children and an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and then boasting of such atrocities by circulating the footage.
How, then, can The New York Times continue to describe the attackers as militants? Would the media use such a euphemism if, say, assassins killed that many people at a concert in Nashville?
How, for that matter, could Antony Blinken have tweeted that while speaking with Turkey, he urged "advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately." A cease-fire by the country that was attacked just days ago?
Palestinians celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Eslaiah)
"Utter cowardice. Would you have called for a cease-fire after Pearl Harbor? Probably," said Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.
The secretary’s tweet was deleted, but given that this is the second time such a State Department post was taken down, that suggests there are strong elements in the department that are not strongly behind Israel.
Keep in mind that some on the left blame Israel for everything that goes wrong in the Middle East. Thirty-one student organizations at Harvard say they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" – a viewpoint that led former Harvard president Larry Summers to say he "is sickened."
Some members of the Squad are primarily expressing sympathy for the Palestinians, more than 600 of whom have been killed, and refusing to criticize Hamas.
But I don’t want to get dragged down into domestic politics, whether it’s Donald Trump saying this never would have happened if he were in charge to those blaming President Biden for the $6-billion unfreezing of Iranian assets, not a penny of which has been spent. (Biden, unlike the Times, calls Hamas a terrorist organization.)
At the same time, everyone knows the Iranians helped Hamas plan the carefully choreographed attack, which was confirmed by the Wall Street Journal’s sources.
President Biden does refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization. (Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The American media are overwhelmingly pro-Israel, as is the U.S. political establishment. When Israel uses excessive force or screws up (as in the colossal intelligence failure that preceded the attacks), that gets reported too. But Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, while organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah refuse to recognize its right to exist.
With Netanyahu calling up 300,000 reservists and vowing a "siege" of Gaza while cutting off all electricity, food and water, this war will not be over any time soon. But what did Hamas expect to happen? Israel has overwhelming military force and the terrorists knew many in the Gaza Strip would be killed once the retaliatory strikes began.
It was back in 2005 that Israel voluntarily abandoned its 21 settlements in Gaza and withdrew its troops from the strip. The idea was to grant Gaza the right to self-governance, within limits, but things deteriorated when Hamas took over two years later.
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The West has given substantial amounts of aid to Gaza, including more than $1 billion from Qatar in the last decade alone. As Tom Friedman observes, such funding could have been spent on schools, infrastructure and other efforts to improve the economy. Instead, much of it has gone to building tunnels and the 3,000 rockets that Hamas has fired at the Jewish state in recent days.
However this conflict unfolds, it’s hard to imagine that either side will have benefited from the worst attack on Israel in half a century.
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