By Douglas Murray
Saturday,
October 05, 2024
There
are sources in the Jewish tradition that warn against exultation at the
downfall of one’s enemies. But I am not Jewish, and so I have exulted greatly
these past two weeks.
If
you follow most of the British media, you may well think that the past year
involves the following events: Israel attacked Hamas, Israel invaded Lebanon,
Israel bombed Yemen. Oh and someone left a bomb in a room in Tehran that killed
the peaceful Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Of
course all this is an absolute inversion of the truth. Hamas invaded Israel, so
Israel attacked Hamas. Hezbollah has spent the past year sending thousands of
rockets into Israel, so Israel has responded by destroying Hezbollah. The
Houthis in Yemen – now so beloved of demonstrators in the UK – sent missiles
and drones hundreds of miles to attack Israel, so Israel bombed the Houthis’
arms stores in Yemen. And Hamas leader Haniyeh, who was born under Egyptian
rule and died in Tehran, never brought the Palestinian people anything but
misery.
On
7 October last year Israel was surprised by a brigade-sized invasion of
terrorists into its territory. These terrorists raped, murdered and burned
their way as far inside Israel as they could get. How this intelligence and
military failure was possible is something that Israelis still have to work
out. But the first answer is because they face a fanatical, ideological
opponent which wants to destroy them. Hezbollah joined in the action on 8
October. All these attacks were funded and orchestrated by the Revolutionary
Islamic government in Iran, which as I write this is sending hundreds of
ballistic missiles at Israel from Iran – strikes that have so far proved a
failure.
Hamas
still holds a hundred Israelis hostage inside Gaza, but the Israeli government
has managed to bring half the hostages home already. For many people in the
first days of the war, it seemed impossible that even one hostage would be able
to come back to their families alive. So this is no mean feat in itself. Aside
from saving the hostages, the other most important thing for Israel has been to
strike and destroy the proxy armies of Iran who wish to make the whole of
Israel unlivable for Jews.
All
this time the governments in Britain and America have given the Israelis advice
which mercifully they did not listen to. Earlier this year, Kamala Harris
warned that the IDF shouldn’t go into Hamas’s Gaza stronghold in Rafah. As she
wisely said: ‘I’ve studied the maps.’ Fortunately the Israelis did not listen
to Kamala’s beginners’ guide to Rafah. They went into the Hamas stronghold,
continued to search for the hostages, continued to kill Hamas’s leadership and
continued to destroy the rocket and other ammunition stores that Hamas has
built up for 18 years.
Next
came the complete destruction of Hezbollah, which has the blood of hundreds of
Americans and other nationals on its hands, as well as that of Israelis. Not to
mention the fact that this foreign army of Iran has immiserated Lebanon for 40
years. The Christians of that country have dwindled to a minority as these
Shiite fundamentalists have taken a once thriving country and turned it into
yet another ayatollah-dominated hellhole.
Then,
in a series of attacks which historians are already studying, everything went
kaboom for Hezbollah. First thousands of its operatives were targeted all over
Lebanon and Syria. Having decided that phones were not a safe means of
communication, the terrorists had recently reverted to pagers, but someone
managed to get into the supply chain, put a small amount of explosive in every
Hezbollah device and then blew the balls off the people who were hoping to
destroy their neighbours. Then Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies also suddenly
detonated. Much of Hezbollah’s leadership – including those involved in the
killing of 241 American marines in their barracks in Beirut in 1983 – met up in
person to discuss all this, during which they too were killed in a strike.
The
British and American governments among others had told the Israelis that there
should be no escalation. But fortunately they weren’t listened to. The Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had gone to New York to address the various
despots and kleptocrats on First Avenue; so the ultimate leader of Hezbollah,
Hassan Nasrallah, thought that this would be a safe moment to get together with
the few remaining members of his organisation. Before going on stage in New
York and observing the traditional walkout of ‘diplomats’, Netanyahu ordered
the final strike. While he was up there, Hassan Nasrallah went to meet his
maker.
By
this point, there is nobody left in Hezbollah. They’re all gone. All of the
leadership, every one of their commanders, while their lower-level operatives
are trying to get their testicles reattached in the hospitals of Beirut. It’ll
be wall-to-wall wreath-laying for the Hamas and Hezbollah fanboys.
But
there it is. The wisdom of the international community is that ceasefires are
always desirable, that negotiated settlements are always to be desired, and
that violence is never the answer. As so often, these wise international voices
have no idea what they are talking about.
Israel’s
enemies have spent the past year trying to destroy it, as they have so many
times before. But it is they who have gone to the dust, with the regime in
Tehran the only thing that is, for the time being, still standing. Absent that
terror regime, and not just Israel but the whole of the Middle East has a
bright future. Sometimes you need war to make peace. Sometimes there is a price
to pay for trying to finish the work of Adolf Hitler. Who knew?
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