Daily Alert Archives

Hamas Would Never Have Dared Attack Israel without Iran's Backing

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - There is accumulating evidence that the killers from Hamas lacked even the humanity to grant their victims the mercy of a quick death. In far too many cases, the victims were tortured before they were killed. Decent people everywhere, including pious Muslims, recoiled from acts of barbarity that recall the darkest moments in human history. Basic decency, however, is not universal. There are Jew-haters among us. Moved by bloodlust and orgiastic fantasies, they thronged the streets and squares of Europe and marched across American campuses. Jew-hatred for them is a passion so pure, so justified, that those who torture Jewish children and slaughter helpless babies are heroes. Team Biden does not seem to have internalized the reality that the American policy to develop a U.S.-Iranian detente that would allow the U.S. to reduce its role in the region remains a destabilizing force in the Middle East. It has discomfited our friends, disrupted our alliances, emboldened terrorists, and provided Iran's mullahs with the resources to turn both Hizbullah and Hamas into formidably destructive forces. While the perpetrators of these horrors came from Gaza, those ultimately responsible do not live there. It is the mullahs and the agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran who provided the resources, training and encouragement without which the Hamas leadership would neither have dared nor been able to unleash this evil on the world. Iran is at war with Israel and with the U.S. It does not seek compromise or accommodation. It does not want its interests respected or its grievances redressed. It wants what it says it wants: a holocaust in Israel and the destruction of the U.S. We must be honest with ourselves. We have a war on our hands with the worst kind of enemy. Wishful thinking won't make it go away. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
2023-10-17 00:00:00
Full Article