The horror

Today marks the second anniversary of the largest and most monstrous massacre of Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust.  After the men of Hamas breached Israel's border with Gaza, they went on a rampage of almost unprecedented barbarity, murdering more than twelve hundred people -- mostly Jews but also including Arab Israelis and people from many other countries attending a local music festival.  Many of the killings were preceded by rape, mutilation, and torture.  This sadism, and the ostentatious inhuman glee and relish with which the Hamas men committed these acts, was something beyond even what was seen among most Nazis during the Holocaust.  And if Hamas had had the ability to kill six million instead of twelve hundred, they certainly would have.

As with the Holocaust itself, there are already voices trying to deny or minimize the reality of the atrocities of that attack.  Here is a site which exists to compile and preserve documentation of what happened.

October 7 2023 marked the great divide between a new Before and After.  Much of the thinking which had been prevalent about the Israel-Jihadist conflict before the attack became irrelevant in the new reality; many old illusions fell away.  In particular, all the talk of a "two-state solution", of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, went from being an immoral delusion to simply not being part of any serious conversation on the issue any more.

I addressed that issue in this post three months after the attack.  In 2023 the Gaza strip was already, in effect, a miniature Palestinian state, since Israel had withdrawn from it years before.  October 7 showed us what kind of threat a full-size state in the West Bank, just a few miles from Israel's largest city and surrounding the capital on three sides, would pose.

To me as a Westerner, almost as disturbing was the immediate reaction that erupted on the campuses and streets of some Western countries, including the US -- a wave of virulent anti-Israel demonstrations and rallies.  At that point Israel had not yet taken any retaliatory action -- these demonstrations were not about the counter-attack against Gaza, because that counter-attack had not yet begun.  The marchers were purely celebrating Hamas's atrocities.

My initial reaction has been fully vindicated.  The contemporary revival of the ancient evil of Western anti-Semitism, which had been festering in the dank dark corners of the internet for some time already, burst into the open after October 7.  For centuries the West had persecuted Jews, with pogroms, expulsions, massacres, and other brutalities, culminating in the Holocaust.  After the shock of that ultimate horror, anti-Semitism finally became thoroughly disreputable and repudiated in the West -- but now, eighty years later, the Holocaust is passing out of living memory, and the ancient monster is awakening again, fangs and claws dripping with hate, ravening for blood as it ever was before.

The so-called pro-Palestinian movement takes zero interest in the Houthi war in Yemen (which has killed many times more people than the conflict in Gaza), nor in the militant Sunni Syrian regime's attack upon Syria's Druze minority (only Israel came to their rescue).  No marches or flotillas for those.  This movement is entirely focused on targeting Israel.  It is the modern incarnation of that centuries-old evil.

The mainstream media have, as usual, failed to do their job.  Not only are they showing their usual tendency to both-sides every conflict, but they report casualty figures issued by the "Gaza Health Ministry" (part of Hamas) uncritically, presenting jihadist propaganda as fact -- and ignoring the standard jihadist practice of putting terrorist facilities in civilian areas, forcing civilians to act as human shields.  The leftist political blogosphere, too, has utterly failed (except for a few Jewish blogs on Tumblr) to condemn or even acknowledge the infestation of Jew-hatred among elements traditionally viewed as left-wing.

In reality, I can hardly imagine any other country, confronted with a provocation like October 7, showing the degree of restraint that Israel has shown during its counter-attack in Gaza.  Israel is doing to Gaza what the US and British air forces did to German cities during World War II, and for the same reasons, but with far less bloody results.  There were cases where just one single bombing raid on this or that German city killed more than the few tens of thousands that Hamas claims have been killed in Gaza during the whole two-year conflict.

Western governments have reacted to the conflict with ignorance and naïveté.  In the current situation, a ceasefire and negotiated deal to end the conflict before Hamas is completely destroyed would be as insane as a similar "peace process" in early 1945, allowing the Nazi regime to survive and ultimately rebuild, would have been.  Yet this is the default approach in Washington and the main European capitals.  I am no fan of Netanyahu, but Israel is lucky to have a leader who strives to ignore the pressure and do what needs to be done in spite of it.

See also other bloggers' posts on the attack anniversary here, here, and here.  As a permanent addition to your blog reading, I can recommend Unsolicited Opinions, which specializes in detailed, rational responses to various matters involving Israel and anti-Semitism.  Ketzele and Elder of Ziyon are also worth reading -- their rhetoric can be harsh, but no more so than the situation justifies.  For some general background on Israel, see my post here.