If Israel is prevented from defeating Hamas, we should be under no illusions about what it will mean for the future of democracy. If, under the pressure of internal Democratic politics and global public opinion, the Biden administration forces a “cease-fire” that leaves our closest ally in the region short of victory over an enemy that seeks to destroy it, sooner or later we shall all pay the price.
This isn’t only because Israel is a democratic nation fighting nihilist savages and theocratic tyrants, though it is that. It is because forcing it to succumb to moral outrage over the violence that invariably comes with waging war would represent the self-imposition of an inescapable restraint on our own ability to defend ourselves.
Of course Israel is battling, above all else, for its own survival. In a hostile region, it is also the sole standard-bearer of individual freedom, tolerant pluralism and self-rule. Contrast the condition of ethnic minorities, women, gays and dissidents in Israel with that of their counterparts anywhere else in the Middle East. We should give thanks every day for the sacrifices Israelis make at the fragile frontier of freedom.
Every Islamist terrorist Israel kills is one fewer threat to the rest of us. Every setback Israel can deal to the Iranian puppet masters of Hamas, Hezbollah and others inflicts a loss on the regime that is sworn to eliminate us, the “Great Satan,” and our allies. There is no historical evidence that appeasing enemies committed to our extinction ever keeps us safe.
But there’s a second sense in which the future of democracy is at stake in the bloody streets of Gaza. If Israel can somehow be bullied into forgoing victory over this enemy, our own capacity to wage wars inflicted on us will be dramatically diminished. We will have allowed a coalition of armchair media critics, far-left agitators and Islamist-sympathizing activists and governments to hold Israel to a standard no nation taking necessary measures to protect itself would ever be able to meet, a standard to which our enemies will certainly never hold themselves.
This reality of asymmetric warfare in the age of an all-seeing media and diminished faith in the virtues of our way of life has been on vivid display in the past week. After near-universal condemnation of Israel for the deaths of seven foreign aid workers in a drone attack, a British army veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, who now serves at a senior level in the British government, put the event in context: “War requires levels of violence and destruction that few truly understand. It requires an acceptance of human suffering among innocents that is unimaginable to most. There is no such thing as a clean war. This one is more visual but not substantially worse than those I fought in,” he told me via text message.
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Author: Ruth King
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