We’ve no doubt that even casual observers of the Middle East are aware that Israel is currently battling, yet again, against the Palestinian terrorist forces Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As the terrorists hide behind innocent Palestinians, they have unleashed a hailstorm of rockets at Israeli civilians. Hamas and its ilk are war criminals, they are evil and they are cowards. In today’s Action Update, we’ll discuss how we got here, why we got here, and what we can expect in the coming days.
How We Got Here: Weakness
As a forthcoming op-ed in Newsweek from CUFI founder and Chairman Pastor John Hagee notes, Hamas started launching rockets at Israel about five weeks after the US announced that it would be restoring aid to the Palestinians and their allies at UNRWA and would be re-opening negotiations with Iran.
Rather than interpreting Biden’s actions as an intentional effort to extend a hand to American and Israeli adversaries, Hamas (and for that matter its Iranian backers) interpreted Biden’s actions as a display of weakness. We got here because Hamas felt it could get away with attacking Israel because very rapidly America’s enemies no longer feared American diplomatic might.
Why We Got Here: Lust for Power
Hamas and its enablers in the west will tell you that this all started with a housing dispute in east Jerusalem. It didn’t. In fact, an east Jerusalem based Palestinian human rights activist penned an op-ed clearly stating that such wasn’t the case and explaining why Hamas really started this conflict. Eid’s piece does not equivocate. The title of the op-ed is “This has nothing to with Sheikh Jarah,” (Sheik Jarah is the name of the neighborhood in which the housing dispute is taking place).
Eid goes onto to say, “As a Palestinian living in Jerusalem, I am frustrated and angry — and I can only blame Hamas.”
And he concludes quite directly, “This dispute is not actually about four houses in East Jerusalem. This is about Hamas seeing a chance to seize the narrative and increase its own influence and control over Palestinians in Jerusalem.”
In short, Hamas started a war with Israel because they thought it would make them more popular amongst east Jerusalem Palestinians. They’re likely wrong about that, but for them it was worth the risk, after all, the only cost has been a thousand few rockets and the lives of innocent Palestinians and Israelis – none of which matters to Hamas.
Where Are We Headed?
Israel will not allow Hamas to rain rockets down on Israeli cities and towns. They have and will continue to respond to this terrorist menace until a significant blow has been delivered to Hamas and its allies. The Europeans as well as anti-Israel activists and elected officials in the US will try to force a cease fire before Hamas’s military infrastructure is effectively felled. But thus far, the Biden administration has resisted efforts by the international community to cover Hamas’s diplomatic flank. While we feel we wouldn’t be here without certain missteps by the administration, we credit President Biden for holding the diplomatic line at this moment (though we recognize this could change without warning). We also welcome the
administration’s decision to resist far-left attempts to deny Israel the munitions it requires to fight the terrorists.
No one can definitively say how this current conflict ends. But with absolute certainty we can say that the Jewish people have endured worse and not just survived but thrived. The wannabe revolutionaries who attack Israel on social media, participate in a poorly attended rally, and then go to Starbucks to celebrate the two hours they just spent shouting anti-Israel invective will not destroy Israel. The terrorists who hide in civilian populations so they can go out and fire rockets at Israel to terrorize innocent people won’t destroy the Jewish state either. The children of Israel have survived Pharaoh, Haman and Hitler. They’ll survive Hamas as well.
