The release of three gaunt Israeli hostages once again drives home how depraved the West’s enemies are.
Let’s imagine that you spoke with a good Jewish friend who is not religious. You ask him if he needs to eat kosher food, and he says that he does not. You probe further and ask about keeping some type of sanctity of the Sabbath or fasting on Yom Kippur. He tells you that he has no obligation for such things. And so on. Now while he is a Jew by all metrics, one might conclude that his answers are not necessarily Jewish. As Judaism from time eternal until today requires certain things of its practitioners, one who says that she is expected to eat kosher food would appear to provide a Jewish answer that accords with religious tenets.
On Saturday, Hamas released three Israeli males. They looked as they had walked out of the barracks of Auschwitz. Besides obviously being starved and no doubt physically tortured, they were also mentally abused. One of the abductees, Eli Sharabi, was forced to give a speech on the Hamas exit stage. He spoke of reuniting with his wife and two daughters. The heavily-armed cowards standing around him laughed as he spoke. Hamas murdered them on the 7th of October. He only found out after returning to Israel. Now, if you could call a timeout and run onto the stage and ask Hamas about starving these men or murdering the six emaciated young prisoners a few months ago, the answer would be one and the same: it’s a religious obligation. All of the perversions and depravity displayed by Hamas and other Islamic terrorists are rooted in traditional texts, and unlike our nonreligious friend above, these folks are acting according to their religious teachings. And this is the reason why Donald Trump wants to get the Palestinians away from Israelis, and if Europe had any sense, they would disgorge their large and growing foreign population from their midst: civil society cannot exist when you have a large presence of people whose values are the exact antithesis of what keeps your society running.
In a recent article, I mentioned that there had been an Israeli organization that brought sick Gazans to world-class Israeli hospitals. Such activity involved getting medical and security approvals, independent of the logistics of pick-ups and drop-offs. Those involved were from the local communities that were “pro-peace” and were decimated during the Hamas pogrom. Nine members of their group were murdered during the attacks. They have now moved their services over to the West Bank. One sees in this example exactly where Western and anti-Western values meet. A group of individuals act according to the values of kindness and brotherhood that they take from their religious and national upbringing. It is obvious to them that one should help his fellow man, independent of the latter’s background. The terrorists saw weakness and used their attack to kill the very people who had helped them in the past. And this was true of Yahya Sinwar, whose life was saved while he was in Israeli jail. A brain tumor was removed, and he showed his appreciation by murdering 1,200 Israeli citizens and soldiers. The same theme runs in Europe where “refugees” turn on the countries that took them in and brazenly say that they will soon take over governmental institutions and establish Sharia states.
Everything that Hamas and the newcomers to Europe do is in the name of their religion. People like George W. Bush have tried to convince us that Islam was the “religion of peace” while Mosab Hassan Yousef, who literally grew up in the house of a Hamas founder, says that the terrorists’ behavior is based on religious tenets and not outside of them. If you could have made a running commentary during the actual October 7th attack, it would go something like the following:
“Why did you burn that family alive in their car?” “Religion”
“Why did you chop off the head of that little boy?” “Religion.”
“Why did you rape and then murder that young woman?” “Religion”
You would get the same answers if you asked about burned-down churches and stabbed children in Europe. And they would be telling the truth. Apologists try to tell us that those behind terror and violence do not understand their own religion. Sorry. They are living their religion as they and many of their scholars understand it. And as such, they need to be isolated from Western civil society, where such actions are dangerous and destructive. Their stated goals are conquest and subjugation, and it makes no difference whether the target is Israel, Europe, the US or Australia. As I asked a long time ago, modernizing a bumper-sticker from the Vietnam era: “What would happen if they made a war and only one side showed up?” This is the state of affairs today. Much of the immigrant population in the West makes it clear that they want to take control and turn their new homes into Sharia states. They are not lying and they are not hiding their intentions. And all the while, Western leaders debate who can use which bathroom, how many pronouns the English language can spawn, and if we should give up air conditioners as wind and sun cannot provide enough energy to keep us in the 21st Century.
What people should learn from the actions of Hamas is that there is nobody with whom to make peace. Sure, you might be able to make short-term agreements that serve everyone’s immediate interests, but these people are clear that they have no interest in compromise. They say it and they mean it, unlike the duplicitous Palestinian Authority that says it wants peace only to keep the foreign checks coming in. The only question is whether Israel, and by extension, the West, have the gumption to confront those who see a religious obligation to destroy Western societies. One has to stop saying that the violent practitioners don’t understand their own religion or are following a corrupted version of it. No, this is Islam as many have understood it for ages. Those emaciated hostages released only to find out that their loved-ones died 16 months ago are just one symbol of their ruthlessness and cruelty in achieving their goals. If the West does not have the fortitude to fight this evil, then it must isolate it away from its population. One side means what it says and does. Will Western leaders figure that out and act in time?