23 Sep 2024

(An Israeli friend sent this to me, and I was so impressed, I’d like to feature it here as a guest column this week. JF)

Israel’s Bravery

18 September 2024

By Allister Heath, The Telegaph

Robbed of its moral bearings, bereft of any sense of right and wrong, incapable of distinguishing heroes from villains, the West can no longer celebrate when good triumphs over evil.

Israel’s brilliantly audacious booby-trapping of thousands of Hezbollah pagers, followed by the blowing up of the terror group’s walkie-talkies, is a stunning fillip for the forces of civilisation worldwide.

A tiny nation of just 9.3 million, of which 7.2 million are Jewish, living in a country the size of Wales, reeling from the worst anti-Semitic pogroms since the Holocaust, Israel is leading the war against barbarism, its young conscripts doing a job that would once have required intervention by a Western coalition acting as global policeman.

The fact that so many in Britain, Europe and America, especially the young, no longer take Israel’s side in this existential combat exemplifies our cultural, intellectual and ethical degeneration.

The Biden administration is obsessed with preventing “escalation”, even though that is what is required if Iran is to be stopped from gaining the means to wage a nuclear World War III. All too predictably, America, seemingly determined to ensure the survival of every regional terror group, appeared upset at the successful attack on Hezbollah. David Lammy, our foreign secretary, is delivering speeches claiming climate change is a worse threat than terrorism; in a rational world, Lammy would be privately congratulating his Israeli counterparts for the most successful surgical operation ever conducted against a terrorist organisation, with few civilian casualties, and pledging Britain’s help.

Instead, Keir Starmer has turned against Israel, banning the sales of some weapons – a policy that Germany appears intent on following – and refusing to oppose lawsuits against the Jewish state, in an unforgivable moral inversion.

Labour has placed Britain on the side of those nihilists masquerading as human rights lawyers who negate the essential distinction between victims and aggressors, between rule-bound, democracies desperate to minimise civilian casualties, and bloodthirsty dictatorships for whom their people are pawns to be sacrificed.

Hezbollah is funded and controlled by the Iranian regime, an obscurantist, fascistic, millenarian tyranny that persecutes minorities, women and dissidents. Violating human rights and plotting war crimes is Hezbollah’s raison d’être: its 150,000 missiles point towards civilian centres and, like Hamas and Iran itself, it seeks Israel’s liquidation, guaranteeing the massacre, expulsion or subjugation of Jews. Hezbollah has forced some 63,473 Israelis to flee their homes since October 7. This is unsustainable and explains why a major Israeli response is looming; obscenely, this will trigger widespread condemnation of the Jewish state.

Western foreign policy is a mishmash of cowardice, delusion and contradictions. Iran is a threat to the world; its alliance with Russia is deepening. Turkey, led by the despot Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has threatened Israel with invasion, yet remains part of Nato. Qatar, which puts up senior Hamas terrorists in luxury hotels, is a major non-Nato ally of the US, home to a crucial Western military base and a major investor in London. Egypt, a recipient of US aid, has tolerated myriad tunnels to southern Gaza, refused to let in any Palestinians and, bizarrely, is not held responsible for supplying Gaza with provisions, that task falling to Israel. None of the three latter regimes face sanctions: global ire is reserved for Israel.

One reason Western elites have become so Israelophobic is that, infected by wokery, they increasingly loathe Europe’s and America’s history and traditions, and view the Jewish state as a standout example of a Western model they reject.

Winston Churchill would be convicted for crimes against humanity today, as would Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman. D-Day would be ruled illegitimate because so many French civilians died during the Battle of Normandy.

Democracies might as well not bother with nuclear weapons, for detonating one, even in retaliation for an unprovoked attack, would be deemed a war crime. I’m in favour of much stricter rules than those governing World War II, of doing everything possible to protect civilians, but this is madness.

The Just War is a foundational principle. States have the right to defend themselves. Every civilian life lost as collateral damage is a tragedy, but pacifism is a deluded utopia that fails to grasp the reality of the human condition. It is madness to criminalise all warfare, and despicable to focus on that conducted by democracies and ignore that advanced by our enemies.

It is equally stupid to entrust so much power to legal activists. Much historic anti-Semitism has been ratified by kangaroo courts, including during the 1930s. The Trial of the Talmud took place in France in 1240, with rabbis forced to defend religious texts against trumped-up accusations of blasphemy and obscenity.

Other bigot-fests masquerading as ordinary trials include the Disputations of Barcelona and Tortosa, the Damascus Affair, the Dreyfus affair that prompted Emile Zola’s seminal J’accuse, and the trial of Mendel Beilis in Ukraine in 1913. It is a well-established model that hasn’t gone out of fashion in far-Left quarters. They no longer explicitly single out religious beliefs or individuals but leverage lawfare to delegitimise what just happens to be the only Jewish state.

The fact that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice have the trappings of a legitimate legal setting does not mean they necessarily embody justice. The fact that their rulings are deemed legitimate by Left-wing elites doesn’t automatically make them such. The fact that today’s blood libels take on the language of “human rights” doesn’t make them less monstrous. The fact that it is possible for a country as unjustly governed as South Africa to lead a genocide case against Israel proves that the entire system is rotten. The case is backed by Iran, Brazil’s far-Left president, Ireland and Egypt: we must have been transported into an alternative, Kafkaesque universe.

Israel is the supreme embodiment of law-bound national, democratic sovereignty, of peoplehood, of matching a nation to a state, of post-imperialism, of capitalism and technology, and of the continued relevance of the monotheistic religions. If you tear down Israel, you destroy the very ideas that underpin the West, the international order implodes and the autocracies triumph.

The stakes are thus unbelievably high. We must support Israel, and allow it to finish the job of annihilating Hamas and defeating Hezbollah.

 

16 Sep 2024

The Unit still reigns

All through the 1970s, Israel’s elite counter-terrorism unit, Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit), battled terrorists. They specialized in airline hijackings. They also operated in cross-border, covert operations, such as against the Arab fedayeen (“freedom fighters”) that operate in Egypt.

Their most famous operation of course was the Entebbe hostage rescue. Benjamin Netanyahu and his two brothers served in the Unit.

These elite troops are still terrorizing the terrorists. This week they pulled off another stunning operation in Syria. The underground missile installation, paid for by Iran, was destroyed. It undercuts Iran’s ability to produce medium-range missiles in the region.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

“The operation took place on Sunday night, with official Syrian media and the Syrian opposition reporting heavy Israel Air Force airstrikes in several areas of western Syria, including near the city of Masyaf, close to the Lebanese border.

“On Wednesday, a Syrian opposition TV channel and Greek Middle East expert Eva J. Kalluriotis reported that the airstrikes were merely a cover for an Israeli ground operation in Masyaf. Three sources familiar with the operation confirmed to Axios that the IDF General Staff Reconnaissance Unit conducted a ground raid and destroyed a precision missiles manufacturing facility.”

Officially, Israel has not taken credit for the raid.

The facility was built in 2018, inside a mountain so that Israeli airstrikes would not be effective. Instead, they are done in by a ground operation right under their noses. I can tell you that Israel has capabilities no one knows about.

The Israelis have monitored this site for five years, and it’s clear that they are preparing for full-scale war with Lebanon/Hezbollah.

The only downside to this spectacular operation was that the Israelis did inform the Biden Regime, which, in my view, cannot be trusted at all. Washington is now a new enemy for Israel.

Expect many more such attacks by the Israelis as they prep Hezbollah for a date with the hereafter.

At the same time, Netanyahu has told the cabinet that a full-scale operation is forthcoming, since they cannot continue a situation where citizens in the north cannot return home.

Meanwhile, Biden Regime envoy Amos Hoschstein is set to visit Israel, after meeting in Beiruit with Lebanese officials. He is urging “de-escalation,” another attempt to thwart Israel. It’s not that these devilish visits are useless, which is what they appear on the surface. In fact, it is a deliberate attempt to get Israel not to win.

Over the past months, I’ve been researching to educate myself about globalists. They are largely motivated by profit. If you think about it, our government has worked hard not to win wars since World War 2. That’s because, as Eisenhower stated, the Military Industrial Complex is powerful. That group is motivated by continuous wars, in order to profit. Politicians like Dick Cheney sit on boards of powerful corporations like Haliburton, which profits from war. In fact, Eisenhower got us out of Korea. Trump and Netanyahu have worked mightily to prevent wars. That’s why they’re so opposed.

Hochstein will be put up at the King David Hotel or the lavish new Waldorf Astoria. He’ll waste time. He’ll pressure Israel. We can’t get these people out of Washington fast enough!

Israel is preparing for the war that will alleviate much pressure on the country. It has needed to be done for two generations. Hamas is destroyed. Gaza is a wasteland for 20 years. Hezbollah is up next. Followed by Iran.

From elite units to war cabinets to very rare leadership, I am confident Israel will emerge from the latest troubles stronger than ever.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

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