Andrew Roberts: Churchill would have stood behind Israel. We must too
Although the USSR and USA were not fighting the Second World War beside Britain in 1940, and only came into the war as a result of Hitler’s decisions rather than their own in 1941, the British were supported stalwartly by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and other possessions and dependencies around the globe.Hamasticide: Apocalyptic barbarians at the gates of Israel
By total contrast, much of the world has shunned Israel as she fights its battles against Islamist tyranny and terrorism, ultimately for them as well as for herself.
The recent scene in the United Nations where delegates filed out of the General Assembly room rather than even listen to Bibi Netanyahu sums up the situation.
Meanwhile, South Africa has tried to divert attention from the corruption of its own government by making unfounded charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.
At least the neutral nations in 1940-41 were privately hoping that civilisation would destroy barbarism: today they cannot even be counted on to do that.
What Churchill said about Britain’s ability “to ride out the storm of war” has powerful echoes in modern-day Israel.
The performance of the IDF was woeful on October 7 itself but since then it has fought with superb professionalism in destroying and degrading Hamas in Gaza, although of course we still eagerly await the moment when Yahya Sinwar meets the same fate as the Führer in the Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945. Similarly, the failures of the hitherto-much-vaunted Israeli intelligence were apparent for all to see on October 7, yet since then it has carried out the flawless supply-chain “grim beeper” attacks that have done so much to cripple Hezbollah. Churchill would recognise the phenomenon of these early humiliations – with hardly a significant victory from 1939 to El Alamein in 1942, except for the Battle of Britain – turning into later triumphs. The IDF’s steep but highly successful learning curve in Gaza and now southern Lebanon has been impressive, just as it was for the Allied armies in the Second World War.
To paraphrase Churchill in his and his country’s finest hour, Israel is proving herself yet again able to defend her home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what she is going to try to do. It is the solemn duty of everyone who cares about the defeat of barbarism to stand beside her.
Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar used his imagination well, ordering the tearing of children from their mothers’ arms and the killing of mothers in front of their children, inventing every possible way to make the terror more horrendous than that of ISIS, to exterminate in the cruelest manner possible. Sinwar commanded his men to kill babies; to brutally rape women of any age, whether alive or dead; to castrate men and boys; to decapitate; to burn entire families alive along with the symbols of their lives. Thus, he forever epitomized the savagery of his movement, making him the absolute leader of contemporary hatred.Jonathan Tobin: Jewish anti-Zionists can’t be part of our ‘big tent’ community
Sinwar placed Hamas at the head of a worldwide movement for the deconstruction of history that legitimizes rage as the emblem of life. That believes that it must take this action against all of civilization. This movement has decided that the contemporary outcome of history and religion, including the Jewish-Christian civilization and the human rights culture, is advantageous only for those who created [it], and so it is a tool of oppression to be ripped to pieces. The diabolical choice to tear down this civilization permits any means to destroy the “colonialists,” the “imperialists,” the “racists,” the rich, the white men, and above all, of course, the Jews. This concept finds consensus far from Gaza, first in the Muslim world, which places the “Islamophobes” among the oppressors, and along with the students, the LGTBQ movements, the ecological movements that think the Earth will be destroyed by capitalist interests and the Jews.
The United Nations, the Palestinian Authority, and even the Ivy League universities have still not condemned Sinwar’s atrocities. It is a crime whose “context” is what counts, and nobody expected that after a massacre like Oct. 7, the destruction of contemporary civilization would piggyback on an antisemitic atrocity. The plan, unlike that of the Nazis in their time, was to destroy the Jews by publicizing as widely as possible the resolve to make them suffer one by one. Hamas leaders repeated the promise: “We did it, and we will do it again and again and again.”
Once the barbarians entered Israel, they roared down the roads by the hundreds in white pickup trucks and on motorbikes, shooting everyone they encountered, pedestrians and drivers, in the head and chasing those who tried to escape. They were divided into units, some assigned to close public roads, while others headed for the countryside and the kibbutzim. They were systematic, coming back to seize anyone who might have escaped them. They opened the doors of the cars abandoned at the sides of the roads to make sure everyone was dead and finish off the wounded. Then they came together to shout for joy over the bodies of the dead: Itbah el Yehud! Allah hu Akbar! They all shouted with the index finger raised, indicating their blasphemous oneness of God, the primal call of jihadism: “Allah is great.” By cutting off the head of a baby, the murderer was fulfilling the mission of reconquering the land occupied by the Jews, purifying it of the Western and democratic culture.
Historical memory lies at the heart of most Jewish holiday commemorations. During Sukkot, for example, Jews daily welcome ushpizin—“guests” or ancestors, including the patriarchs of Judaism—into their sukkahs, which themselves are a remembrance of the post-Exodus wanderings of the Jewish people in the desert. It is just one example of how identification with the past is very much part of the present. It also emphasizes the collective fate of a people on their way to their homeland, where shelter would hopefully no longer be a function of impermanent huts open to the stars. On Sukkot, we not only invite guests into our homes; it is a way we connect ourselves with that journey to Israel.
But for a small though noisy minority of contemporary American Jews, the fate of other Jews and Israel is no longer a matter with which they concern themselves. As a consequence, it is now more imperative than ever for Jews to stop pretending that one can join those chanting “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada”—slogans that justify and encourage the genocide of the Jews of Israel—and still be considered part of the Jewish community.
Anti-Zionists may be considered Jewish according to religious law as well as mainstream by The New York Times. But in the post-Oct. 7 world, it should no longer be possible to pretend to speak for Jewish values or tradition, or to be part of the Jewish world, while opposing the right of the one Jewish state on the planet to exist and defend itself. That is true whether those who take that position explicitly—as do Jews who join the pro-Hamas demonstrators in America’s streets and on college campuses—or who merely rationalize their efforts from the sidelines or on the platforms provided to them by the liberal mainstream media.