Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are backed and lavishly funded by Iran, belong to the same family as the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and dozens of other groupings that continue to be murderously active in Africa and large swathes of Asia. They share their hatred of Jews, Christians and anyone else who refuses to submit to their version of the Muslim faith. When given the chance, they delight in slaughtering them. It would therefore be reasonable to assume that the Western democracies would not only approve of Israel’s attempt to annihilate Hamas and Hezbollah but would also be sending troops to help her get the job well and truly done.
After all, this is what they did when the Islamic State seized control of big chunks of Iraq and Syria and proceeded to massacre or, if merciful, enslave not just unbelievers, such as the Yazidis, but also Muslims the fanatics regarded as insufficiently pious. Horrified by what was happening, the Western powers felt obliged to do whatever was necessary to put an end to the “caliphate.” In Mosul, they did just that and shrugged off the heavy price paid by the civilian population of that Iraqi city; about 9,000 died.
In contrast, they have shown themselves to be most reluctant to fight against Hamas and Hezbollah. Though many countries officially regard them as terrorist organisations, their political leaders clearly think that dealing with them should be entirely up to Israel. They also think that Israel should behave with “restraint.” From the point of view of many experts on crisis management and the like, killing Hezbollah’s boss Hassan Nasrallah – a man formally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of North American soldiers and many Europeans, as well as the terrorist attack on the AMIA building in Buenos Aires 30 years ago in which 85 people died – was a bit excessive because it “raised tensions” in the Middle East and, they said, would make his followers hate Israel even more.
Day after day, reports from Washington tell us that members of Joe Biden’s administration, especially those that once worked for Barack Obama, are fed up with Benjamin Netanyahu, a man whose shocking unwillingness to pay proper attention to advice coming from US strategists greatly riles them. To their bewilderment, the Israeli prime minister believes that the survival of his country and its inhabitants is more important than Kamala Harris’ election campaign which, it seems, is finding it hard to keep hold of the Muslim vote in Michigan, a key “battleground” state. If her statements are anything to go by, Kamala, whose mother is a Hindu Brahmin, really does think that Israel is entitled to defend herself against aggressors, though she must be well aware that this does not go down at all well in the allegedly progressive circles she frequents.
Politicians in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other European countries also want the Israelis to take a far softer approach towards the terrorist armies, financed by the ferocious clerics of Iran, that are determined to exterminate them. They fear the impact of events in the Middle East on their local versions of “the Muslim street” which, needless to say, is enthusiastically supported by anti-Western leftists. Whether the news coming from the front is, from their point of view, good or bad, they react by staging raucous demonstrations. A year ago, many greeted with jubilation the bloody massacre perpetrated by Hamas, in which well over a thousand Israelis were killed, large numbers of women were savagely raped and mutilated, children were trussed up and burned alive and hundreds of people were taken hostage; they thought it meant Israel was weak and that the holocaust they dreamed of would soon take place.
When Israel struck back in Gaza, they immediately protested on behalf of the civilians they expected Hamas to use as human shields. Had the group’s leaders wanted to save them from the bombs they knew would soon start falling, they would have declared victory, decamped to Qatar and told the Israelis to look for them there, but as they understood that, thanks to the dislike of Israel that is widespread in Western media outfits, they would be benefitted by the death of non-combatants, they remained behind and did their best to ensure that there would be as many of them as possible.
Israel may be fully capable of defeating Hamas and Hezbollah, but Iran will be a tougher nut to crack; in the coming days and weeks, the military questions so many are asking could receive an answer. However, the existential threats that have been hanging over Israel since 1948 will not go away until most of the Muslim world comes to the conclusion that it would be utterly futile to dream of the extirpation of “the Zionist entity.” Unfortunately, for this to happen, a thoroughgoing cultural revolution would have to take place in the Muslim world. From the very beginning, the followers of Mohammed have had it in for the Jews, whom they see as even viler creatures than the Christians, though, perhaps, not quite so despicable as the idolatrous Hindus they came across later when extending their conquests.
Westerners often profess themselves surprised by the Muslim propensity to see things that happened many centuries ago as recent, almost contemporary, events. This tells us rather more about the historical amnesia that afflicts the West than about the rest of the world because it is surely natural for people enmeshed in a particular tradition to remember with nostalgia times when their forebears could claim to be leading the world and bitterly regret what came afterwards. Argentina’s golden age, to which Javier Milei’s government would like to return, came to an end barely 100 years ago, but in Islam the rot began to set in many centuries earlier.
Until the aftermath of World War II, most Muslims assumed that the good old days would never return and that the future, like the present, would belong to the all-powerful West so they had better adapt to what was coming their way. But then the West lost confidence in itself as internal movements that trenchantly criticised the values that underpinned it gathered strength. In response, an increasing number of Muslims convinced themselves that the past, their past of war, astonishingly easy conquests and the subjugation of large populations of unbelievers, could be made to return. Unless almost all of them cease to believe that this is possible, not only Israel will continue to be under siege.
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