Douglas Murray: I witnessed Israel choosing life as it fights against a 'death cult'
Adapted from Douglas Murray‘s speech Monday as The Post columnist accepted the Manhattan Institute’s Alexander Hamilton Award.John Podhoretz: Biden’s Shameful Betrayal
I think, finally, of the extraordinary evening in November last year.
I was at the Schneider Children’s Hospital when the helicopters came returning the first hostages, the first children who Hamas had stolen from their homes in the south.
But when the helicopters emerged in the night sky, the people of Tel Aviv realized what was happening, and every car stopped.
And I noticed there was applause from the citizens, the Tel Avivians, and then there was singing, all the way through the streets of Tel Aviv.
They were singing “Haveynu shalom aleichem”: We brought you peace.
Now there’s millions of stories like this across Israel.
The country rings with them, it resounds with them.
The thing is, perhaps it does require life to become serious again.
Perhaps the students that we see at these destroyed universities, perhaps they just need a dose of reality someday.
I always pray that that day never comes to them because it’ll be the biggest wake-up call anyone has ever had.
But all I would say is that any country should be so lucky as to have a young generation like that in Israel.
They were weighed in the balance since October the 7th, and they’ve been found to be magnificent.
What Israel has been up against is not just a people of death, but a cult of death, a cult, which wishes to annihilate an entire race, and which after dealing with that race has made very clear what it wants to do with Christians, everyone in Britain, everyone in America.
I want to dedicate my acceptance of this award to the people of Israel who in the face of death, choose life.
Joe Biden deserves nothing but condemnation, censure, and withering contempt for his announcement tonight that he will withhold significant amounts of the recently approved aid to Israel should the government begin a full-on siege of the last Hamas redoubt in, around, and under Rafah.WSJ Editorial: Biden Withholds Bombs to Spare Hamas in Rafah
For seven months now, I have defended Joe Biden. On our podcast and on this website, I have repeatedly said that while the president may have felt—wrongly, in my view—that he needed to maintain some rhetorical space from Israel because of the imagined need to keep young people and Arab-Americans in his electoral camp, the actual policies and support he was offering and providing the Jewish state were consistent and solid. For months, for example, he pushed for a significant aid package even as he criticized tactics and strategies employed by the IDF to fight in Gaza. And he supplied important logistical support to protect Israel—first by deploying ships to the Lebanese coast to deter Hezbollah and then in the air campaign that rendered the direct Iranian attack all but harmless.
That was then, this is now. That aid package he fought for? He’s now blocking much of it himself—and is promising to do worse in days to come. That support for Israel? He is now pursuing policies that are designed to keep Hamas alive. This long-time friend of Israel? At an incredibly critical moment, he is giving Barack Obama a run for his money as a singularly destructive American “ally.” We’re told the decision to act this way came last week but that Biden wanted to keep it quiet until he delivered his speech commemorating the Holocaust.
That disgraceful and two-faced effort to earn emotional plaudits from speaking strongly about the greatest historical tragedy of the Jewish people even as he was working to cripple the Jewish state suggests Biden possesses a level of chutzpah that would make even the man who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court for being an orphan say “Now you’ve gone too far.”
The Biden Administration confirmed this week it is blocking the delivery of weapons to its main ally in the Middle East.
The message from the White House is that Israel shouldn't have large bombs or small bombs, dumb bombs or smart bombs, and let it do without tank shells and artillery shells too.
Now isn't a good time to send the weapons, you see, because Israel would use them.
U.S. officials explain that the goal of the embargo is to prevent a wider Israeli attack on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah, home to Hamas leaders, hostages and four military battalions.
If Israel can't complete its invasion of Rafah, Hamas wins.
No matter how fiercely the President trumpets his "ironclad" support for Israel, his denial of weapons now puts the Jewish state in danger.
Israel is at war, assaulted on multiple fronts. Denying it U.S. arms is an invitation to its enemies to take advantage, in hostage talks and on the battlefield.
It hasn't been four weeks since Iran attacked Israel directly, in the largest drone attack in history, plus 150 ballistic and cruise missiles, while Hizbullah fires dozens of rockets each day, depopulating the north of Israel for seven months and counting.
Israel needs to be ready now, and its enemies need to know the U.S. stands behind it. That's why Congress approved military aid to Israel in April, 79-18 in the Senate and 366-58 in the House.