The Pause That Refreshes Resolve

"I recently met with members of the Jewish community in Frankfurt. In the intense, painful talk we had the community representatives told me that their children are afraid to go to school, that they no longer go to sports clubs, that they leave their necklaces with the Star of David at home on the advice of their parents."

"Today, here in Germany. Almost 80 years after the Holocaust."

"They told us that they no longer dare to get into a taxi, that they no longer put return addresses on letters to protect their recipients."

"Today, here in Germany. Almost 80 years after the Holocaust."

"And a Jewish friend told me about his fear, his sheer despair, his feeling of loneliness. The Jewish communities warn their members to avoid certain places -- and for their own safety."

"And this is the reality here today, in Germany, almost 80 years after the Holocaust."

"Hamas does not want reconciliation with Israel, but the extermination of Israel. And this is why it is pivotal to make it clear that Israel's right to exist must not be relativized. Israel's security is our obligation. Germany knows this."

Robert Habeck, Vice-Chancellor, Germany

Where to start... Israel has been attacked. Any country that is under attack responds in kind. That is a universally recognized right. All nations have an obligation to their populations to ensure security is maintained. All countries have standing armies, each has a military whose sole purpose is to ensure the nation's security at times of great existential threat. Israel's military is always on alert, but even that constant measure of expectation failed to save towns, villages and kibbutzim in southern Israel on the border with Gaza from an attack that slaughtered 1,400 of its citizens on October 7.

 

The scale of the savagery is unparalleled, the malice that drove sadistic atrocities where families were burned alive, girls and women gang-raped, infants tortured and murdered, the elderly mown down, and hundreds of Israeli citizens, children, women, the elderly and infirm and soldiers taken as hostages back to Gaza where as war booty they were displayed to an ecstatic public that jeered them and lionized the courage of the terrorists who mounted the bloodbath.

 

Blood is seen splattered in a child’s room following the October 7 Hamas massacre, at Kibbutz Nir Oz, Oct. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Before the day was over, parts of the international community exhaled and lamented that Israel was over-reacting, exacting a disproportionate toll on the poor people of Gaza -- and this before the Israel Defense Forces had even begun to mount their response. And nor have the calls for a ceasefire, a 'pause', stop since then, a full month of portraying Israel as unreasonable in its intention to finally and for all defang the serpent that keeps rearing its poisonous hatred and to disinfect Gaza from its toll on both Gazans and Israelis.

 

For over a decade, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has been slaughtering its Sunni-Syrian citizens, an estimated  half-million people. At no time has the international community condemned Assad, much less did the Arab League step in to alleviate the threat to Sunni Arabs at the hands of Alawite Shiite Arabs. But Israel, gathering its military strength to extinguish a deadly fire whose embers keep flaring into promised Holocausts? Intolerable, not to be envisaged without a groundswell of condemnation.

 

Even Israel's allies in the West are reacting in unforgivably unhelpful interference. While initially asserting Israel's right under the 'rules of warfare' to exact the price that Israel set out to accomplish, calls for a ceasefire which in essence would allow Hamas to regroup, rearm and reassert itself in its commission of death-delivery, while ostensibly delivering humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza, behind which Hamas shields itself from repercussions.

This infographic released by the IDF on November 5, 2023, shows a tunnel underneath the Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip, as well as a nearby rocket launcher. (Israel Defense Forces)

The greater the number of deaths and casualties, the gratifyingly greater the numbers of deliberate murder Hamas can trumpet to the pliable world of the West that Israel is responsible for. Not the terrorist group that sets up its command centres in and beneath hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and mosques, but Israel in its response to the deadly violence targeting its own population. Hamas is rarely held accountable; it is, after all, according to its supporters, responding as victims are wont to, to occupiers of 'their' land.

 

It is Hamas and Islamic Jihad that 'occupy' Gaza. And in their occupation they ignore the needs of the population in favour of amassing a huge arsenal of missiles and rockets to bombard Israel with. The vast underground network of tunnels have a purpose; smugglers' challenge to supply the Hamas operatives and their elite with luxury goods while funneling weapons through from Iran. It is where vast treasuries of weaponry are stockpiled, not where in the event of conflict, Palestinian civilians can seek shelter.

A 'pause' in the Israel Defense Forces' campaign to eradicate Hamas and Islamic Jihad would favour both terrorist groups' interests in evading the punishment they brought on themselves. A pause is simply a euphemism for a ceasefire, and no ceasefire, labelled pause or anything else is in the best interests of Israel's intentions to protect itself from future attacks. And nor does it benefit Palestinians in Gaza to aid in their tormentors' administrative longevity. 

IDF ground forces operate in the northern Gaza Strip, in this photo released for publication on November 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)