This Time, No One's Asking Israel for a "Proportionate Response"
What would that even look like? It's just another indication of how dramatically things have changed, as Hamas' true intention is unmasked: to kill Jews - and their God.
Europe finally gets it.
European capitals were all blue and white last night. One of my congregants sent me this photo (above) from the Eiffel Tower. Below you can see that Germany, England (that's 10 Downing), Italy (theĀ Palazzo Chigi) and the US. followed suit.
What's far more important than a few photo ops, impressive though they are (I can't imagine who must be rolling over in their grave seeing that Star of David on the Brandenburg Gate), is theĀ joint statement releasedĀ by the leaders of those same five countries:
Why is this statement groundbreaking?
We can't know how the convictions expressed here will stand up to the stresses that are bound to come over the next few weeks. But it's different from anything weāve seen before.
It does not equivocate in its support of Israel. There is no expiration date to this support, as in, "You had better mop up your revenge in a week and a half." This support reflects a broad public consensus. Just look at the British tabloids from the first two days of the war - Israel has never gotten press that supportive.
The statement does not call on Israel's response to refrain from being "disproportionate," a word used all the time during prior military confrontations with Hamas - as if the psychological impact of thousands of indiscriminate missile firings could be measured in some mathematical way. That's reassuring, but when you pause to think for a second, whatĀ wouldĀ be considered proportionate in a case where Israel lost the population equivalent of a dozen 9/11s, which is where this is heading? Israel can retake Gaza, with all the brutality that would entail, and it still wouldn't come close to a "proportional" response to what Hamas did. So there is no logical point where this quartet would be morally justified in saying, āenough!ā
Speaking of morality, there is no manner of moral equivalence in this statement. True, there are innocent people dying on both sides of the border, but all of these needless deaths, the ones in Israel and the ones in Gaza, are the responsibility of Hamas. For years, Israelis have been begging for the world to condemn the taking of human shields. The statement takes the Israeli side in advance of what will be a messy slog that will cause more innocents to die. It does not come right out and call Hamas āterrorists,ā which President Biden has clearly done. Some news outlets are still having trouble doing that - though they are beginning to climb onboard, thanks in large part to the impassioned pleas of ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt on MSNBC. Others are still living in the Before Times - before last Saturday. But they are learning.
The statement craftily separates Hamas from the Palestinians and their plight - a correct reading of history that delegitimizes their rule and paves the way for what comes next, Hamas's hoped-for political demise. The need for that demise is being tacitly endorsed here, which highlightās Hamasās enormous strategic error. They turned Israel from Goliath back into David again. For the past half century at least, itās been widely known that in that part of the world, to the victim belongs the spoils.
Just as much of the European press has suddenly shifted from its typical knee-jerk reaction, no longer needing to provide "context" as an excuse to air age-old claims, the leaders have stated clearly that Palestinians do have real grievances and aspirations, but that those grievances have nothing to do with this attack. Sure, Israelis have done things that deserve scrutiny, and when they err they should be called out. But the face of the victim here is the Israeli child - Jewish, Christian or Muslim - ripped from his home by Hamas, or killed. Nothing excuses that.
A Religious War
Since last Shabbat, Hamas can no longer be considered a political entity with a practical agenda representing an aggrieved party. It never really was, but now all pretenses of a mask have been ripped away. They are in fact a religious entity bent on an apocalyptic mission of indiscriminately killing Jews - young, old and everyone in between - and in killing the Jewish God as well. Itās not a battle of nationalisms, but of religions, and that is what Hamas wants it to be.
Ever notice how they are picking off Jewish holidays one by one? Terror attacks have been timed to coincide withĀ PurimĀ (Tel Aviv suicide bombingĀ killing children reveling in 1996). Yes, that was Hamas. Passover (TheĀ Seder bombingĀ at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002: Yes, Hamas). There was the Yom Kippur War, which predates Hamas, but Hamas aimed this attack for the 50th anniversary, which also happened to fall on the festival of Sukkot - a twofer!
Shavuot appears to be the only major holiday remaining on their Bingo card, though their allies in the axis evil, theĀ Russians, bombed Kyiv this yearĀ on that festival, appearing to take aim at a synagogue.
The fact that this is a religious war in Hamas's eyes is important for us too, because that means that the best historical analogy to what they did last week is not Pearl Harbor or Kishinev, and Hamas is not equivalent to the Japanese or the Cossacks. The better analogy is ISIS, as many have been saying, and what we saw this week is the killing of a thousand Daniel Pearls. No longer does Hamas even merit comparison with Palestinian nationalists like Yasser Arafat. Rather, think Haman.
Because Hamas is really most like Amalek, Hamanās progenitor, that group of renegades from the Bible who tried to destroy Israel where it was weakest. Both Hamas and Amalek prefer to attack the rear lines, the women, the children, the elderly, the kids at the peace concert, the weakest, They are cowards, they are evil and their memory must be wiped out. The Torah commands us not to massacre the population, not to harm innocents, but to reduce to metaphorical rubble every trace of their ideology. Some take the commandment more literally, which has gotten them into trouble (see under: Baruch Goldstein).
So the next time your Israel-bashing friend begins to speak of Hamas in sympathetic terms, if they are of the Bible-thumping variety, whether evangelical, Catholic or mainline - or Jewish - mention Amalek. āHamas is Amalekā has a ring to it, and it suits the kind of war they are aiming to fight, the kind that begins on a Jewish holiday and definitely will end on another Jewish holiday - celebrating Israelās victory over them.
This is the Holy War that Hamas has chosen.
Hamas deserves no mercy. And some people in the media, as well as among the leaders of Europe, finally seem to be getting it. The Star of David glowing in the Berlin sky is all we need to see.