Commend Israel for emancipating the world from ‘odious infestations of terrorists’

by Conrad Black

As this is written, the world is still waiting for Israel to strike the blow that it has promised against Iran in response to Iran firing 180 ballistic missiles at Israel 10 days ago. The Iranian claim was that it was a justified use of force because of Israel’s attacks upon Hamas and Hezbollah, terrorist organisations that have been entirely sustained by Iran and have been inflicting casualties upon Israel for many years. Iran and its terrorist puppets have both avowed that they will never accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, though it was as a Jewish state that Israel was established by the United Nations in 1948. Other countries founded the United Nations or joined it, but Israel was itself founded by the United Nations and possesses a level of legitimacy that is unique in the world, though its precise frontiers remain a matter of legitimate discussion.

The Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, and the massacre of more than a thousand Israelis, many of them women, children, and the elderly, was intended to be an act of war and was responded to as an act of war. Israel formed a national coalition war government to respond to this heinous act of aggression. International opinion roughly settled into three groups: those who agreed with the terrorists that Israel had no right to exist in the first place and was on stolen land which should be restored entirely to the Arabs, never mind that the Jews have lived in the land of Israel for 5,000 years; those who asserted the right of Israel to exist and respond to an act of war with a counter-assault to destroy the terrorist aggressors; and those who wallowed and havered in moral relativism. The American administration’s euphemism for this was demonstratively to proclaim Israel’s right “to defend itself,” which meant to expel the invaders but not to carry the battle across the border of Gaza.

Almost all of Israel’s natural allies including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and almost all of Western Europe, have, in effect, pretended that the Hamas attack was just another skirmish over contested borders where the rightful solution was somewhere between the claims of the two parties. The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, visited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week and the two issued a joint statement calling for a Gaza cease-fire and the standard preferred settlement of Israel’s so-called friends: that Israel withdraw completely from Gaza, abandon the Philadelphi line between Gaza and Egypt, and acquiesce in the complete replenishment of Hamas’ armaments and personnel to continue its terrorist outrages against Israel indefinitely. It is a shameful posture for democratic countries to adopt. Peace is the objective and as the other side will never reach agreement with Israel or acknowledge its right to exist, peace can only be achieved by annihilating the terrorists. Hamas’ assault on October 7, 2023 justified Israel doing that and we should all commend Israel for its progress in emancipating the world from what are probably the most odious infestations of terrorists now active anywhere. Following the advice of Macron and Trudeau and Biden and others would just continue these many decades of terrorist assaults and provocations of Israel.

At times, both the French and British governments had become quite purposeful in opposing Iran becoming a nuclear military power, but latterly they have folded like cheap suitcases and are resigned to welcoming it into the nuclear club. As the Biden administration is. It has been little noticed that both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke to the United States Congress on September 27, and former U.S. President Donald Trump in his debate with the incumbent vice president several weeks ago, promised to destroy the Iranian nuclear capability. The burning question is whether Israel is going to do it now, having the military capability and the provocation to do so, or will it await the American election next month with a view to consorting such a step with a new Trump administration.

It is distressing that great democracies are almost entirely encouraging a course that will perpetuate violence around Israel and assure the survival of the terrorists bedevilling Israel. The terrorists only survive on assistance from Iran which is derived from money that the Biden administration has released to Iran and permitted Iran to raise by oil sales the Trump administration had interdicted. Instead of waffling and posturing as peacemakers, the democracies of the West should recognise that a war to eliminate these terrorists is a war to end war in the region and create the conditions in which peace can flourish. It is obvious that the Arab powers entirely support Israel against Iran and it must be said that the conduct of the main Western countries on this issue, especially in Europe, as the Americans or at least assisting the Israelis militarily, is a disgrace and a betrayal.

Europe, the cradle of our civilisation, is now a witless dupe of that civilisation’s most militant and violent enemies. The spectacle of most of Western Europe grovelling to Islamist extremism in the Middle East and within their own borders, viewed from North America where at least the solid majority of people favour Israel in its present struggle, is both disgusting and worrisome. America will likely elect a pro-Israeli government, and Israel will win its war with Iran and its pawns. But the whole world is waiting for Europe to regain some sense of pride and leadership and return to the level of public integrity it enjoyed under such recent and lamented leaders as Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and even François Mitterrand. Europe has become an aimless force of uniform, no-fault, appeasement, apart, up to a point, in Ukraine. It will have to do better if it expects to remain relevant in the geopolitics of the world.

First published in Brussels Signal.