When a country is invaded by a foreign power, the only sane response is to retaliate with massive, overwhelming, disproportionate force. And when an invader commits the kinds of atrocities that we have seen over the last week, unprecedented in modern times, vengeance must be the order of the day.
War is a terrible thing. But the Gazans started this war, and war is what they are going to get. Every resulting casualty should be laid at the foot of Hamas and all Gazans who have supported and collaborated with Hamas–a large majority, by all indications.
But there is something else going on, something beyond even Israel’s need to win the war or the entirely appropriate desire to exact revenge. The Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, have the sickest culture on Earth. Little productive work is done; Gaza exists largely as the beneficiary of international welfare. Instead of goods and services, the main product of Gaza is ideology–the perverted ideology of Jew-hatred.
Of all the appalling images that have emerged from Israel and Gaza, this one may be the most chilling. A captured Israeli boy who appears to be around six or seven years old is tormented by Palestinian children:
The inhuman heartlessness of these Palestinian children is the product of their education and upbringing. Gazan children are taught that killing Jews is the highest human achievement and religious duty. They are taught that they must wipe Israel off the map. In fact, in their schools they are given maps on which Israel has already ceased to exist. They are not reared to pursue gainful occupations, enrich their communities or enjoy the arts. They are reared to hate, and to kill, Jews–all the Jews who live “from the river to the sea.”
Israel has learned through bitter experience that it does little good to decapitate Gaza’s political leadership, Hamas. As long as Gaza’s sick culture exists, new leaders will be easy to find and the society’s perverted aims will be pursued. So the ultimate objective of Israel’s current military effort should be to destroy the culture that has rendered Gaza an implacable foe.
How do you destroy a culture? For starters, you discredit it. The surviving residents of Gaza must be made to understand that their ideology of Jew-hatred has been a catastrophic failure and a comprehensive disaster that has brought them nothing but ruin. In the future, anyone who tries to resurrect the idea of Gaza as a terrorist state should be treated as a post-WWII German who argued for bringing back the Nazi Party and marching on Germany’s neighbors would have been.
More than this may ultimately be necessary, but the first task is to make Gaza pay in full for its crimes.
