Oct. 7, 2024, marked one complete year since the Jewish world was turned upside down. The barbaric incursion of hordes of Gazan terrorists butchered more than 1200 Israelis and took hostage 250 people from more than 25 nations. In response, Israel has been involved in a multifront war with enemies determined to destroy it. Make no mistake: This is not a battle aimed at the creation of a Palestinian State. Hamas, in its Charter, and Iran since its founding as a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in 1979, repeatedly state that their goal is the elimination of the Zionist State. Such rhetoric should not be ignored. On September 16, 1919, Hitler issued his first written comment on Jews. He defined the Jews as a race and not a religious community and characterized Jews as a “race-tuberculosis of the peoples.” Hitler stated that the ultimate goal of the German government should definitely be to remove the Jews altogether.
Hitler’s machinations against Jews were never actively opposed by the Western powers. The result was the Holocaust, World War II, and the death of 6 million Jews and nearly 40 million people overall. The cost of the West’s lethargy was catastrophic. The Khomeinis, Sinwars, and Nasrallahs of the world are Hitler effigies. Aside from their hatred of Jews and Israel, they do not hide their enmity against the West and Western values. Imam Khomeini and the current Iranian Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, have labeled the United States and Israel as the Great Satan and the Little Satan, respectively. In Islam, Satan is associated with the origin of evil. Logically, those who believe this dogma would want to remove the United States and Israel from the world. It is, therefore, not surprising that the radical Islamists virulently attack both the United States’s policies and Israel as an entity. The U.S. is a superpower that cannot be taken on militarily. Consequently, Iranian led terrorists direct their violence against the Jewish State.
The pro-Palestinian protest movements in the U.S. and western Europe mirror the fundamental tenants of the ideological battle being fought by Iran and the West. Fueled by a predominantly liberal Western media that trumpets the tenants of moral equivalency and cancel culture, young impressionable college students embrace positions that, if successful, ironically, would end their freedom of speech and freedom to congregate in public. They are guided in their quest by academics who are either anarchists, ignoramuses, or antisemitic. In Iran, Masha Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died while in detention for violating the head scarf ban. Protests against the Khomeini morality police precipitated by Amini’s death were ruthlessly dispersed. According to the BBC, nearly 20,000 people have been detained, hundreds murdered or sentenced to incarceration, and seven executed for peacefully protesting the regime.
Instead of rising in support of the Iranian public, American and European college students have stridently and often violently attacked the right of a small democratic Jewish State to exist, accusing Israel of being a colonialist entity despite the more than 3000-year history of Jewish people on the land of Israel. It is perhaps not surprising that often the pro-Palestinian protests deface public property and burn the American flag. Concurrently, both anti-Israel and anti-America rhetoric is chanted, and protestors justify the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists who wantonly mow down citizens at bus stops and train stations. Antisemitic incidents in the US and Europe have risen to historic highs, increasing by more than 1000% in some countries. Yet the media, for the most part, ignores this scourge. Apparently, the liberal left is not troubled by the plight of Jewish citizens in their countries.
On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel putatively in support of Hamas. This was one day after the Hamas massacre in the Gaza envelope communities and before Israel invaded the Gaza Strip to recover hostages in the hands of the Palestinians and to destroy Hamas. Subsequently, during a period of 11months, Hezbollah continued to fire mortars, anti-tank missiles, drones and rockets in support of Hamas, with over 7000 projectiles fired into Northern Israel. Sixty to seventy thousand Israeli citizens were forced to flee from their homes. The North of Israel became essentially a ghost region. Finally, despite concerns expressed by its Western Allies and warnings of a conflagration, Israel responded with targeted attacks that killed most of Hezbollah’s leadership. Many of its fighters were either neutralized or disabled by pinpoint use of pagers and walkie talkies that exploded throughout Lebanon. Currently, Israel continues to attack Hezbollah to secure its northern border for the safe return of its citizens to their homes.
Disappointingly, most of the media and many of Israel’s allies continue to deny reality. Israel is now accused of a genocide in Lebanon, parallel to the false claims of genocide in Gaza. Her response to the thousands of airborne attacks perpetrated against its citizens for nearly a year, is labelled an escalation. Nasrallah is glorified in an obituary in the NY Times as a “powerful orator, beloved by Shi’ite Muslims” who had helped “provide social services for Lebanon.” Thus, the NY Times, supposedly a beacon of fact-checking and truth in reporting, justifies the life of a cardinal, evil terrorist responsible for killing hundreds of Americans and Israelis, and countless Arabs who opposed his rule. He hijacked the government of Lebanon and imposed a ruthless regime over a once flourishing Arab country that is spiraling to its demise.
The carnage caused by the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah is almost beyond imagination. Israel’s justified protection of its sovereignty and its citizens has severely hurt both terrorist groups. Nasrallah, Haniyeh, and virtually all the top military leaders of these Iranian proxies, except for Yahya Sinwar, have been eliminated. This fact should have led these groups to sue for peace. Yet the remaining terrorists steadfastly refuse to surrender. Sinwar, living in the remnants of his subterranean tunnel system, is content to surround himself with a protective layer of hostages whom he knows Israel will not sacrifice. He learned a great deal while in Israeli prisons. What he apparently forgot is that Jews have been struggling against our enemies since the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the hegemony of Kings David and Solomon. We waited two thousand years to return home. We seek peace, but we will fight until our enemies either accept our presence as a Jewish State or are eliminated. The free World should support this just aim.
The writer is a distinguished emeritus professor of biochemistry and chemistry at the City University of New York. He lives in Rehovot and has two grandsons in the IDF. The opinions in this article are his own.
By Dr. Fred Naider
