Israel’s long war

Billed as a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom,” the Nova Music Festival will take place on October 6, 2023. Participants from more than two dozen countries will gather in Israel’s Negev desert, just three miles from Hamas-ruled Gaza, to sing, dance and celebrate peace all night long.

At dawn the next day, Hamas terrorists used bulldozers and bombs to breach Israel’s high-tech fence that was supposed to secure the border. When they reached the festival site, they began slaughtering, raping, mutilating and kidnapping concertgoers, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is greatest!”

On a visit to Israel earlier this month, I wandered through this battlefield, now a makeshift memorial. On a small forest of poles hang pictures of the more than 360 victims, most of them young, and in these photos smiling and full of life. Flowers and Israeli flags surround them.

I also visited Be’eri, a nearby kibbutz, a farming community where the Gazan invaders gleefully tortured, shot and burned alive men, women, children, infants and babies.

October 7 was the bloodiest day in Israeli history, the worst massacre of Jews since the Nazi invasion of Europe. Within hours, jihadists and their secular allies blamed Israelis and/or Jews for Hamas’ crimes and atrocities.

They insisted that Hamas was responding to the Israeli “occupation” – ignoring the simple fact that the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, territory they had captured from Egypt in the 1967 defensive war.

In 2007, Hamas took complete control of the area after waging a brief war to oust the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas then began importing weapons and ammunition – most of which were supplied by the Iranian government – ​​and building the expensive and elaborate underground fortress where Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas bosses are believed to be holed up, presumably surrounded by chained hostages.

Above ground, Hamas fighters have mingled with non-combatants and are serving as human shields.

That this is a key element of Hamas’ war strategy was confirmed by the publication of secret messages Sinwar sent last week to his compatriots outside the Gaza Strip. Dead Gazans, he told them, were “necessary sacrifices” in the long war to destroy Israel and exterminate Israelis.

Many critics and enemies of Israel refuse to acknowledge this reality. On June 8, Israeli commandos carried out a daring rescue of four hostages in broad daylight from two civilian buildings in Nuseirat, a town in the center of the Gaza Strip.

Joseph Borrell, the European Union’s foreign minister, called the operation a “massacre”. How dare the Israelis return fire on those who tried to kill them while they were liberating their citizens! In fact, the head of the Israeli mission was fatally wounded by heavily armed Hamas terrorists.

The Washington Post headlined, “More than 200 Palestinians killed in Israeli hostage raid in Gaza.” The Post is one of many media outlets that parrot all the numbers cited by Hamas without attempting to verify them or distinguish between civilians and fighters. (The Israeli military estimates that about 100 Gaza residents were killed or wounded, most of them armed men.)

BBC newsreader Helena Humphrey asked Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces officer, whether Gaza residents should not have been warned of the impending rescue operation. (The BBC went beyond the parody.)

While the media continues to focus on Gaza, there are other fronts in this war. Most significantly, Hezbollah, Tehran’s strongest foreign legion, has been firing rockets and drones from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, the Galilee and the Golan Heights since October 8. The attacks have increased sharply in recent days.

This makes it clear to any reasonable observer that “ceasefire agreements” and “peace agreements” with Tehran’s proxies are useless or, worse, deadly traps.

Recall that Hezbollah waged its last major war against Israel in 2006. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 demanded a “complete cessation of hostilities” by Israel in exchange for the establishment of a zone from the Lebanese border with Israel to the Litani River “free of armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Lebanese government” and UN forces. It also called for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

But the 10,000 UN troops tasked with demilitarizing southern Lebanon merely watched as Hezbollah hid thousands of rockets in mosques, hospitals, schools and homes. And the US-backed Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) acted as Hezbollah’s auxiliary troops.

Hezbollah’s attacks have forced more than 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes, farms, villages and towns. Hezbollah’s rockets have sparked fires that have destroyed thousands of hectares of forest.

Another full-scale war with Hezbollah would cause many deaths and great destruction in Israel. And Lebanon, already a failed state thanks largely to Hezbollah, may never recover.

However, it is difficult to understand how the Israelis can allow a proxy of Tehran to turn parts of their small country into uninhabitable fire zones.

Last note for today: On June 10, the UN Security Council adopted a US ceasefire proposal for Gaza, and Biden administration officials then asked Mr. Sinwar to agree to it.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that Gaza residents are “suffering every day” and added – with determined naivety – that if Mr Sinwar had their interests at heart, he would come to a solution to end the matter.

It should come as no surprise that Mr Sinwar rejected the proposal. He expects President Biden to press the Israelis for further concessions – or end the war as Mr Biden ended the conflict in Afghanistan: by surrender.

Currently, the Israelis continue to fight Hamas in Gaza while preparing for a possible all-out war against Hezbollah. And at some point they will have to settle scores with the patron of both terror groups, the jihadist and genocidal regime in Tehran.

Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for The Washington Times.