The daring raid that led to the safe return of four Israeli hostages should be feted by all. But it is not, and those who condemn the raid tell us a great deal about themselves and their distorted worldview.
A little less than a month ago, a dangerous French prisoner known as “The Fly” (real name: Mohamed Amra) was sprung from a police caravan, with two officers killed in the raid. The French police are still looking for their missing prisoner. I know of no individual or organization that praised the breakout or rejoiced in the death of two policemen doing their job. While I am sure that the prisoner, his family and his associates are happy with the outcome, no normative person would be happy with a dangerous prisoner being set free at the cost of two dead cops.
I mention that unanimity of response to the “daring” French operation in relation to Israel’s truly daring operation to get four of its hostages home. One would have thought that the whole world would celebrate the release of four people who were snatched against their will from Israel. None of them were in the IDF and not one of them was in any way involved in activity against Palestinians. Their release was received here in Israel with great joy. But not everyone is so happy. A BBC commentator complained that Israel should have warned the Gazans that they were coming. The Special Rapporteur for the UN called Israel’s actions in killing somewhere between 100 and 200 Palestinians “genocidal”. She was not alone. Organizations as well as antisemites lamented on Twitter and elsewhere Palestinian deaths without any consideration for the hostages and there being no other way to get them home alive. The latest kvetch is that the commandos wore civilian clothes against the laws of war; where were these people when Hamas traipsed into Israel in civilian clothes and continues to fight the IDF intentionally dressed like everyone else?
While it is heart-warming to see the support for the hostage release operation and respect for Arnon Zamora, a leader of the elite police commando unit that led the raid, one still has to wonder: what is going through the heads of those condemning Israel and claiming genocide instead of rejoicing in the freedom of people who went through eight months of hell? What did they want:
*These hostages dead like many of the others?
*The hostages released only through a Hamas-dictated exchange which numerically always benefits Hamas?
*The hostages to remain in Gaza forever if their recovery would cost one Palestinian life?
One of the released hostages, Noa Argamani, was famously seen sandwiched between two Hamas gorillas on a motorcycle. As she is being sped off to Gaza, she raises her hands and begs for someone, for anyone, to help her. She pleads for someone to save her from captivity in the hands of savages who immediately prior to her capture murdered hundreds at the Nova music rave. The “this was genocide” crowd has no humanity left to show joy that such a woman has been reunited with her father and terminally-ill mother? The answer, of course, is no.
It is clear that the campus lunes and their Muslim friends, the UN poseurs and the leftwing journalists hate Israel, Jews, and the West. But their inability to celebrate the return to freedom of four people taken and held against their will is the final word as to their abject lack of humanity and their great hatred of all that normal people hold as good. Jews do not have the right to protect themselves: that news flash came out as soon as Hamas put the supposed number of killed on the scoreboard and the left demanded an immediate ceasefire even before ground troops had crossed into Gaza. Jews do not have a right to respond to a Holocaust-level pogrom. Somehow, Israel was supposed to take it on the chin, and one of the dimmer lights on X suggested that on October 8th, Israel simply could have negotiated to get back the people they returned home yesterday—and without the shedding of any blood. Israel does not have the right to avenge its people or to save them from any and all danger. There was a time when the US would also send special forces to save Americans held against their will in third-world dumps. But now, it is the terrorists who are calling the shots, and woe to anyone in the West who would kill the bad guys to get their people back. What the Palestinian apologists do not understand is that in war, one does not weigh your side and theirs equally. However many Palestinians were killed, the four Israelis brought home safely were worth the price. Anyone killed, wounded or displaced in this war is on Hamas’ tab: they started the war with their attack, and like the Japanese and Germans, they too are responsible for all death and destruction to follow. Don’t blame Israel for those killed during the raid; blame Hamas for placing civilian hostages in private homes. One of those homes holding three hostages around the dinner table belonged to an Al Jezeera “journalist”. Surprise, surprise.
Israel and its supporters must realize that there is a large body of people who will never support anything that the country or its citizens do. Israel does not have to feed the Palestinians or provide them with water or electricity. Israel does all three and is only berated by the professional left, its Muslim friends, and those in the press and international organizations who cannot stand Jews and hate it when Jews are successful. Understand that they will always hate Israel, Israelis and as they showed the other day in Lafayette Park in Washington, America and the West as well. Israel and the US will have to continue doing the right thing for their citizens and simply tune out the masses filled with hatred towards the good embodied in the moral values of the US and Israel. You cannot placate the pro-Hamas zealots or make a deal with them. So the only alternative is to ignore them and do everything to protect your people and get back any hostages possible.
The hostage rescue was a Rorschach test to know who still has humanity in him and who does not. Now we just have to remember who our enemies are and not give them any support or consideration. They have thrown their lot with Hamas and have lost all moral authority with their statements, claims and demands. Let them go to Gaza to help their ideological brothers in arms. They have become indistinguishable with the brutes they support.