It’s time to take off the gloves

On the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War the enemies of Israel and the Jewish People chose another religious holyday to launch their version of the final solution.

Like the Amalekites who attacked the vulnerable Israelites in the wilderness as they made their way to the Promised Land their modern-day incarnations displayed their barbaric intentions for all to see.

An overwhelming desire to murder and maim Jews is at the root of their agenda. This is a fact that no amount of woke political correctness on the part of progressive apologists can cover up. If there had been even the slightest doubt in the past, this latest genocidal attempt should have dispelled it.

The tragedy is that lessons of the past were never learnt and even now in the face of overwhelming evidence, there are still those whose wishy-washy responses stand out.

The time has finally arrived when not only must the facts be clearly and fearlessly articulated but resolute action must be taken to make sure that the terrorists involved can never again perpetrate their murderous objectives.

Mealy-mouthed politicians must be outed, hypocritical experts must be exposed and tendentious media reporting must be countered.

In other words, and in plain English, the gloves need to come off and we need to finish the job once and for all.

Obviously, there will have to be inquiries at the end of this war about the various factors which preceded this conflict and why Israel was once again taken by surprise.

Some vital questions need to be posed in the midst of the ongoing conflict.  If we do not learn from past mistakes and false assumptions the results at the end of this round will be yet another dismal failure which, in turn, will inevitably lead to future misery.

Let’s get a few things straight right from the beginning.

Any inane thought that some people may still have that a Palestinian State is the answer to any strife in the region should be consigned to the garbage bin. It never was going to be a solution but critics have always been derided as warmongers and merchants of fear. Yet, a cold hard understanding of the root causes of the conflict reveals a basic truth. The one and only reason we have arrived at the situation we face today is because of the fundamental refusal to recognize any sort of Jewish legitimacy in the indigenous Jewish homeland.

This rejectionist policy has been at the core of Islamic terror against Jews regaining their sovereignty. No matter what sort of compromise has been proposed it has always been rejected by an Arab leadership which instead preferred to incite their followers to murder and destroy. That in turn led to attempts at aborting Israel’s rebirth and subsequent recurring wars.

Thus was born the pernicious fantasy that each and every disaster suffered by the Arabs of mandated Palestine was as a result of someone else’s crime. This enduring myth, fostered and coddled by revisionist peddlers effectively absolves the Arabs from any sort of responsibility for their own obsessive hatred of any sort of Jewish presence.

While some in the Islamic world have obviously in the meantime managed to face reality, the plain and simple fact remains that those touted as peace partners are still mired in their own manufactured cesspool of hate. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah remain firmly committed to the destruction of Israel and the murder of its citizens. Fatah, the PLO and the PA pretend otherwise. This is a sham as their rhetoric conclusively proves.

As reported by PMW, the official PA daily media proclaimed: “Israel is a bastard State established to realize the will and strategy of its lords from the colonialist capitalist western states.”  “The Jews defile our Jerusalem and holy places.”  Fatah: “Strike the sons of apes of pigs… slaughter everyone who is Israeli”

This follows the massacres of Israelis by Hamas. Can the evil ideology which motivates these people truly be the basis for the establishment of a fake two State solution living in democratic peace and harmony? How detached from reality can one be to still believe this nonsense? Yet the international community continues to burble this mantra even after the barbaric events of the past few days.

The media is a willing propagator of these lies and fables. Murderous terrorists are never described as such. They are laundered as “militants” or “fighters” and elevated to the exalted status of oppressed martyrs fighting for freedom.

Tiptoeing on eggshells in order not to appear too non politically correct has been the failed and preferred option of many. That failed strategy should have been ditched a long time ago in favour of hard-hitting truths. An assertion that “the residents of Gaza are not the enemy but only Hamas,” is a typical example. Of course, the residents of Gaza are the enemy. Who elected Hamas? Who participate in terror if not the residents of Gaza? It isn’t aliens from Mars. Trying to assert otherwise will not gain anyone any brownie points because in the eyes of the UN there is only one culprit.

Experts are now convinced that Iran has had a major hand in planning and training Hamas to launch its terror war. Who funds Hamas?  The answer is Qatar and Iran. Who recently gifted US$6 billion to Iran as ransom money? What do you think the Iranians are going to do with this windfall? There are those who claim that there is no proof Iran had anything to do with the Hamas attack. Yet Colonel Kemp, a respected expert on security, has stated that “Iran and Russia are pulling the Hamas and Hezbollah strings and providing support.”

Russia has openly declared that it wants a closer relationship with Iran. So who do we prefer to trust?

When the first sirens wailed on Shabbat, I predicted that one of the first inanities which would be forthcoming from some apologists, would be a warning about “disproportionate responses.”  Presumably, an appropriate response to the taking of men, women and children as hostages would be, for some, the payment of billions in ransom and the release of incarcerated terrorists. After all, if Iran can get away with it, why not Hamas? Without a doubt their Tehran sponsors taught them how.

Equating the slaughter of 270 youngsters at a rave party by Hamas terrorists and the atrocities that followed with Israel’s retaliatory responses is obscene.

That, however is the normal knee-jerk reaction, and as Israel’s responses ramp up you can expect more asinine drivel. Urging “restraint on civilian targets” when Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah intentionally target Israeli civilians is a mockery.

The morally corrupt UN has already launched its ritual condemnations of Israel with some of the world’s worst abusers of human rights and democracy bleating forth.

Israel has already been asked what sort of a “deal” it would contemplate to get its kidnapped citizens back. As President Herzog made it perfectly clear at his press conference with international media reporters, there is NO contemplated deal. The abducted men, women and children must be released unconditionally. Failing that, as Israel has already made clear, neither the electricity nor the water will be turned on again.

Let’s not beat about the bush. It’s either them or us. Until now we have naively believed that by being benevolent, we could buy peace and quiet and the rest of the world would applaud.

History should have taught otherwise but the peace hallucinators ignored the inevitable. Now that reality has hit them full in the face there is much gnashing of teeth.

We are in a declared state of war.

The only way forward after this lamentable event is to totally defeat the terrorists, demolish their infrastructure and eliminate each and every one of their leaders. That is how Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan were defeated. This is how the masterminds and perpetrators of the Munich Olympic massacres of Israeli athletes met their fate.

We must make it clear to Abbas and his corrupt PA that there is no chance in hell for the establishment of another terror and hate-sponsoring state in Israel’s heartland. Pretending to go along with this international charade is no longer a viable option and would be an insult to those murdered.

Iran must be made accountable and thwarted. Its terror affiliates must be liquidated and its ability to kidnap and threaten the destruction of its neighbours must be degraded.

If all this is “disproportionate” then so be it.

Turning the other cheek and remaining silent in the face of barbarous savagery is no longer an option.

The time for pussyfooting around has long since passed.

Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.