(Spectator-UK) Zoe Strimpel - During my visit to Israel last week, one thing most people agree on is that the war must go on until Hamas is completely destroyed. Across the board, Israel has become a country with a precise sense of the urgency of war: unstinting armed combat against a clear and intolerable enemy. Attacking a music festival was an efficient way to turn a generation of youngsters into hawks. The people who lived in the kibbutzim one mile from Gaza used to work for peace with their neighbors. I was told by former residents they used to donate money to funds for Gazans. But when the same people came to butcher them and blow up their homes with rocket propelled grenades, laughing all the while, the old peacenikkery was revealed for the hideous illusion it was. At the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, I met a young man, 24, who, on trying to escape from the festival, had taken four bullets in his left arm and three in his right. I asked him if his politics had changed since Oct. 7. He said, "For my friends and me, the situation is now clear. Hamas must be erased. Erased. Now." One major theme in Israeli discourse post-Oct. 7 is the certainty that Hamas, and its brethren in other jihadi groups, are coming for us next. The question is what will it take before recognizing who our enemies are.
2024-01-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive