October 7 was Israel’s 9/11. It was also an eerie and tragic instance of history repeating itself. The timing of the attack, which was during the Simchat Torah holiday, isn’t lost on anyone. Fifty years ago, Israel was also caught on its heels when Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack in what became the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that lasted two bloody weeks.
One thousand Hamas terrorists poured into Southern Israel from Gaza, kidnapping, raping, and murdering innocent Israelis. In some cases, whole families were wiped out. The death toll is at least 700 people. The assault was peculiar in its sophistication, which had many turning their attention to Tehran, with Iran being the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism and whose dedication to the destruction of Israel is well-known. A massive rocket barrage provided cover for the air, sea, and land assault on Israel; terrorists paraglided into the country. The question is, how did Israel not see this coming?
While not an immediate concern since the nation is on a war footing, it is an unprecedented intelligence failure by Shin Bet and Mossad. I’m not going to entertain conjecture as to why so many areas along the Gaza border were breached in what appears to be a ghastly cross between the 9/11 attacks, Pearl Harbor, and the Tet Offensive. Israel has declared war for the first time since the Yom Kippur conflict, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of reservists as the nation braces for a multi-front war; Hezbollah has attacked northern Israel.
The calls for a ceasefire have come from the usual suspects: pro-Hamas leftists whose statements and propaganda are soaked in anti-Semitism. These aren’t fringe voices; some are elected members of Congress. To compound the viciousness of these attacks is the endless stream of liberal commentators on CNN and MSNBC who excuse the barbarity.
“The situation is hopeless, so what choice did these people have?” is a common talking point. Only the left would consider bad living conditions as a justification for hordes of people to commit or condone mass rape and murder. If the level of destitution is just right, you can do whatever you want—that’s liberalism concerning this issue.
Israel shouldn’t heed these calls and ignore all overtures for a truce or ceasefire. Jerusalem has tolerated this nonsense for too long; this isn’t the first time Israel has had to invade Gaza because it’s a Jihadi oasis. These people chose to foster and commit terrorism. This attack should be the last straw, with Israel voiding the 2005 agreement and reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip to prevent its use for future terror operations. Don’t stop until every inch of that land is under Israeli control. Keep tanks and troops deployed there and move in intelligence assets and offices to mop up the rest of the radical Islamic terror element.
The wild card here is Iran—what are they going to do? As for the Biden administration, their actions have forced Jerusalem to go at this alone, at least for now. Sure, Biden didn’t press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when Bibi said he was going into Gaza, which has at least 100,000 troops, tanks, and heavy equipment ready for a ground assault. Israel’s air force has been pounding the strip for days. Joe also said anything Israel needs, she will get, as expected. The problem is that our fingerprints are sort of on the trigger. We gave Iran $6 billion in unfrozen assets, which they used to fund this attack. The writing is all over the wall, which Guy mentioned in his lengthy piece on this new war:
…the Biden administration's truly atrocious foreign policy helped enable this attack, and has deliberately strengthened and empowered the Iranian regime, of which Hamas and Hezbollah are clients. Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, and the regime's fingerprints are all over this attack. The Iran apologists (and much, much worse) inside the Biden administration and the Democratic foreign policy establishment make endless excuses and serve up feeble spin. An initial statement put out by the administration read like a stand-down order for Israel, before it was deleted. Anonymous Biden officials refused to admit Iran's role in the horror, urging no rush to judgment, even as Hamas was openly thanking Iran for its help, and Iran's tyrannical leader was publicly cheering on the murders. Iran did this, Hamas and Iran boasted. Let's not jump to that conclusion, the Biden administration replied. Their fixation on engaging and appeasing Iran is profoundly wrong-headed and deadly. The Wall Street Journal landed an exclusive on the depth and centrality of Iran's involvement in the attack:
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The administration is also in overdrive trying to root out the "misinformation" that they effectively funded this attack on one of our closest and most important allies by recently granting Iran access to $6 billion in previously-frozen assets. They take us for fool…
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Money is fungible. When $6 billion gets pumped into Iran's coffers through one door, a lot of cash is freed up elsewhere to finance terror and death, and shoots out another door. This is an indisputable reality. That Iran operates this way is well established. Even Team Biden will occasionally concede this. The regime knows that they will soon enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall, gifted to them by the Biden administration in the form of the most expensive ransom sum ever paid (which also further incentivizes grabbing more American hostages, which they've also done with the Russians). Iran's leaders have explicitly stated that they would do whatever they pleased with this money ("wherever we need it"), and that they view the American "restrictions" as meaningless. After his underlings insulted our collective intelligence throughout Saturday, Secretary of State Blinken gave up the game on Sunday morning…
With these facts, if you’re the Biden team, you must take the position to give Israel whatever she needs and clam up when Netanyahu promised that this upcoming ground invasion will alter the strategic situation forever in Gaza.
Happy hunting, Israel. Don’t stop until Hamas is wiped out in Gaza.