Radical Islam has for many years used intimidation to increase its sway over moderates and has now turned its sights on the West, with democracy as its tool to advance an ideology and shape the future, countries like oil-rich Qatar have poured money into the pockets of politicians, and elite universities.
Freedom and Democracy, though sometimes flawed are the world's best options. There are no Arab democracies, only ruthless dictatorships even when a democratic system appears to be in place, as in Tunisia and Iraq.
When it comes to Israel, the false narrative that is being used has solidified a perception of reality that ignores historical truth.
From 'occupation' to October 7
The word 'occupation, is thrown around when describing the situation in Gaza, before the massacre of October 7. but in 2005 Israel pulled out of the Strip, under a policy of "Gaza first", to see what would happen if the Palestinians have autonomy without any Israeli presence in the strip. The Palestinian Authority Within 2 years Hamas overthrew the PA government in a short coup, killing many, and torturing others, including famously throwing opponents off buildings to their deaths.
Hamas targeted Israel's south with rockets, produced with materials smuggled in and began building an extensive tunnel system to facilitate their smuggling. How would the residents of Texas or California have dealt with 20 years of rocket attacks from Mexico causing death, injury and damage to their property? What would America have done?
It is hard to estimate the amount of money that went into building Gaza's tunnel system. It was built with a vast investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to be used for attacks against Israel. Terrorists popped up through shafts, to launch rockets, while tunnels were built near the border, to facilitate incursions into Israeli communities.
The funding for the massive project came from Iran and Qatar, funds that were delivered as aid, and taxes collected from Gazan workers who were employed in Israel making higher wages that were available in the Strip. while a tax on smuggled goods brought in from Egypt made the leaders of Hamas, rich. Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Matzuk, and Khaled Mashal became billionaires, no less, stealing money from their own people, and living in mansions in Qatar. It pays well to be a "freedom fighter" these days...
As for the West Bank, most of it is administered by the PA. Israel maintains a military presence there to prevent a scenario like the one we experienced on October 7. Without Israel's presence there, the PA would have been toppled a long time ago, and replaced by a Hamas regime.
School books in Gaza and the West Bank contain straightforward antisemitism, including all the "classic" images from Joseph Goebel’s Nazi propaganda. This is to foment hatred against the Jews. Generations of children have been raised with lies.
On October 7 Hamas terrorists targeted civilians, killing, torturing, raping, and gang-raping women and girls, and decapitating babies in front of their mothers. Burning people alive, in an orgy of sadistic, evil, sinister, satanic behavior. Many of their victims were residents of Kibbutzim near the border who hoped and believed in peaceful relations with their neighbors. But the Hamas charter of 1988, does not allow for that. It calls for the total destruction of Israel, using violent means.
The radical Islamists want no Jews and no Christians to exist in Palestine. The Christian population has been on the decline in Palestinian areas and only in Israel do they enjoy protection from persecution and terror. In the beginning of the 20th century, Christians made up 20% of the population and are now only 5%.
If this is not ethnic cleansing – then what is? Even in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, their numbers have dropped to only 30% and continue to fall. The Jihadists have a saying: "After Saturday comes Sunday", which means that once they were done with the Jews, they would turn to deal with the Christians.
"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there will be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there will be no Israel," said Golda Meir. War is a terrible thing, and people are killed and wounded in it. We didn't start this war, it was the monsters from Hamas, backed by the Iranian dictatorial regime.
And although the civilian suffering in Gaza has been great, the figures of dead and wounded, provided by Hamas, are questionable. The IDF operates on humane principles and aims to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas is using those civilians as human shields. They have for years, launched their missiles and rockets at Israel from near their schools, hospitals, and mosques - knowing that Israel would not attack such places.
Israel's practice was to warn civilians to escape before bombing their area. In the war, the IDF sought to evacuate civilians to safe areas although it was putting its own troops in harm's way when alerting Hamas to their arrival. The terrorists would then booby trap buildings that would explode when the forces arrived.
This we absolutely cannot afford. I knew a young soldier, an ex-student of mine and a wonderful young man, who was killed in a house that was known to have an entrance to a tunnel, but there was a bomb that exploded upon the soldiers entering the house.
This young man was the grandson of a renowned heart surgeon who used to go into the Gaza Strip and operate voluntarily on children there. When his grandson died, many families from Gaza called him personally to offer their condolences.
Many houses, apartments, hospitals, mosques, and Universities, were packed with guns and ammunition, including under kids’ beds and anywhere you could imagine, Former British military colonel Richard Kemp described what he saw when he accompanied IDF troops into many of these places.
When the Western coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 after 9/11, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people were killed, and millions were dislocated from their homes. Then the attack was justified by a claim that the Iraqis were hiding W.M.Ds, weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to be true.
During the Syrian civil war, hundreds of thousands were also killed, and about 14 million became refugees, about half of them displaced within their own country and the rest leaving for Lebanon or elsewhere.
Many of the "liberals" and" "Progressives" of the world who protest about Israel, have not protested about these massive killings. They ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas. They say nothing of the Gaza civilians who lived in fear of the violent Hamas regime and who knew that speaking out against it would result in their execution.
Boaz FrenkelHamas is not Islam. Their atrocities are absolutely against what is written in the Koran and they have nothing to do with real Islam. They use its name only. Anyone supporting Hamas is not being pro-Palestinian. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and has shown its “capabilities”. By supporting these radical Islamists, they are strengthening evil in the world.