(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Oct. 7) The Hamas massacre of 1,200 people in Israel a year ago today was not just an atrocity but also a clarifying event. No matter what concessions are made to them, the terrorists will continue to murder and terrorize up to and, one suspects, beyond their desired destruction of the Jewish state. They must not be coddled. They must be destroyed and permanently neutralized.
Every time the international community, and more specifically our feckless and addled leader President Joe Biden, talks or acts as if Hamas and its terrorist cousins are legitimate, it undermines the principles of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Not long ago, it was generally understood that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists,” so much so that it was almost a mantra among leaders in the 1980s. Just as there obviously is no moral equivalency between Hamas, or its Iranian sponsors, and Israel, so too must the West not treat them as political equals. Israel stands for civilization, tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law. The terrorists stand for barbarism, tyranny, and arbitrary violence.
To understand the stakes and the developments since last Oct. 7, a thumbnail review of Middle East history is in order. Despite trendy left-wing teaching, Jews didn’t “colonize” what now is Israel. They’ve been there for more than 3,000 years. In 1948, when the state of Israel was founded, it wasn’t through conquest but through declaration by the United Nations. Indigenous non-Jews in almost all the territory were welcome to stay there and promised civil rights, while the U.N. offered a separate territory for Arabs and others, now self-proclaimed “Palestinians,” to create their own state.
Israelis did not evict most Palestinians, and it was not the Israelis who rejected the original “two-state solution.” The Palestinians chose to leave and rejected a state of their own, one that never had before existed, unless it included the entirety of the land from the Sinai to Lebanon and from the Jordan River to the sea, with no Jews allowed. In other words, destroying Israel was their first and most important priority, more important than having their own state and self-rule.
For 75 years since then, Israel has said it wants merely to be left in peace and has acted accordingly…. [For the rest of this comprehensive, definitive editorial, please follow this link.]
