The Guardian reports that the presient of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen will soon plead for a ‘humanitarian pause that will lead to a sustainable ceasefire.’ She is well-known for her unintelligible gibberish, but if I dissect the phrase ‘sustainable ceasefire’ correctly, she’s going to ask Israel to wrap up its mission entirely. This would allow the jihadists to completely rebuild their military capacities and to continue the perpetual stream of violence against Israel until it is completely destroyed.
And she isn’t alone. For months the diplomatic circles have made it perfectly clear that they use phrases such as ‘Israel’s got a right to defend itself’ as some kind of protocol. What they actually believe, however, is that Israel were simply emoting some nasty revenge with its little war. Sure enough, October 7th was a bad-hair day, but now it is time again to grow up and put up. Biden graciously offers the continuation of the iron dome missile deliveries. How nice.
The condescension is palpable. Those funny Israelis think they have reasons. Bwaohahaha. Religious fools. In reality only some synapses fire through their upper-neck meat and, yet, they believe to think. Of course, the left-wing circles in foreign offices, UN bureaus and in the media know better. Those silly hotheaded Jews feel that they have to do something about Hamas. Feelings. You see? Better they’d sit idly by, block nine in ten missiles with their fancy-schmancy iron dome and replace their dead with some immigration.
Only weeks after the Simchat-Torah massacre the two-state solution was the big talk again as if nobody had noticed the rockets fired out of Gaza year after year and as if the pogrom hadn’t happened. An international recognition of a statehood would accomplish nothing but make it easier to accuse Israel whenever it has to enter Gaza’s territory and stop attacks. Then the enclave would be a sovereign country under attack. And this is what they want. Arabs don’t lack countries of their own. Those who live in the contested territories could also become a part of Israel if they commit to disengage from violence or they could become a separate administrative unit sharing selective administrative structures and installations with its mostly Jewish neighbour under the same condition. But in reality there is jihad, of course, and this reality is hard to swallow.
Inside Israel the eradication of Hamas enjoys massive support even among those who believed otherwise until recently. Maybe those who changed their minds hold the key to understanding the delusion of the diplomatic circles. Maybe we human beings can only be happy when we think higher of others than they actually are. Those who danced at the Supernova Rave festival lived right on the border. They had heard of the indoctrination. They had seen military action or their family and friends had. And yet the madness of it all remained unfathomable. One very generous peace offer after the other was rejected by the “Palestinian” terrorists, but the hope to live a life without fear in exchange for some compromise is an almost irresistible dream.
According to the Oxford Research Group the entire invasion phase of the Iraq War 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein cost only 6,616 civilian lives. This count comes from a pacifist group. Add some decent military men who’d only tried to financially support their families to the tally and also some undocumented victims for good measure and you’ll still wonder why the current Gaza war is so much more brutal even if you consider that the Hamas numbers are completely fabricated. The uncomfortable answer is that in our quest to assuage the ire of the world and to pursue ideas of humanitarianism Israel has to be more brutal than it otherwise would be. Shock and Awe would have left many limbs complete, many human beings alive, and many homes intact. During the Syrian civil war the IDF sent ambulances into the hellhole to get the sick and wounded out of it and into the care of medical professionals. There is no good reason why fuel is funneled to hospitals which, we know, are co-opted as terror shelters. There is no reason why electricity and water wasn’t cut off from the start and why the Hamas leadership wasn’t forced out within a matter of days. Except for one. We want to be seen as caring.
And I support that people do their best to care for others. What do I know, really? Maybe I’m all wrong and there were no shortcuts in this war. Yet, I want to see considered that care is more important than the appearance of care. I do not believe that there is a way to satisfy the critics of Israel. Some may be deluded, some may be fooled, but some will always hate. And this hate is an unprovoked one, an animus that cannot be appeased.
Does Ursula von der Leyen care about the Arabs? Does Antony Blinken? I’m flubberghasted by the ease with which they suggest that the Arabs should remain under Islamist rule forever and ever for the “higher good” of avoiding a phase of de-Nazification. To me this is not merely irresponsible. It is callous. It guarantees that Israel will continue to be forced to sacrifice its young in order to put out jihadi fires and it guarantees that more and more Arabs will lose their health, their property and their lives over many more decades. It also solidifies poverty and despair across Gaza, but this solution, the two-state solution, the solution of letting Islamism reign, is supposed to be the only solution to the Middle East conflict. At least this is what the uncaring say in order to look caring.
Don’t the Arabs have a right to openly investigate and talk about what Hamas and the PLO under the iron fist of the corrupt Fatah have done to them? But this is the wrong question. The uncaring don’t care about them. They care about the left because a de-Nazification would open a can of worms for them. It would reveal that not only Western cultures, but also those angelic other societies have ills that should be cured. And THAT we can’t have. That is a sacrilege on par with Quran burning. The Arabs have to suffer, no matter how much, so that left-wingers don’t have to admit mistakes.
The surprising fighting capacity of Hamas comes from the flow of illegal weapons into Gaza, most of it through Rafah. The border crossing there is guarded by the EU Border Assistance Mission. In other words this was in the responsibility of Ursula von der Leyen. The Arabs are doomed.