Bloodied but unbroken, Israel set to take on Hamas

Israel, reeling from the deadliest attack on its territory in half a century, formally declared war on Hamas as the conflict's death toll surged past 1000 after the Palestinian militant group launched a massive surprise assault from Gaza.

Like 9/11 and the Yom Kippur War 50 years and one day ago, Saturday’s barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorist fighters will shape the course of history for decades. While up to 5000 rockets rained down, footage emerged of jihadists killing, torturing and capturing elderly women, small children, other civilians and soldiers on a Jewish religious holiday, Shenini Atzeret, that celebrates the Torah. Within hours of the first attack at dawn, local time on Saturday, the world was dividing. In a moving sight, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and Austria’s chancellery office in Vienna were illuminated with images of the Israeli flag. So were the Empire State Building in New York, European Union headquarters in Brussels and other landmarks around the world. On the other hand, Palestinian support groups such as the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network blamed Israel for the violence, and condemned efforts for Saudi Arabia to join UAE, Morocco and Bahrain in normalising relations with the Jewish state. That deal, if it can be pursued and finalised, should be a positive, stabilising influence in a volatile region. Iran, which is mainly responsible for arming Hamas, lauded the group’s “commendable operation’’ and pledged to “stand alone with the Palestinian freedom fighters until the liberation of Palestine’’. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also anticipating “a long and difficult war’’ but a different result. The first phase, he said, will involve “destroying most of the enemy forces” that have infiltrated Israel. Israel has also begun an offensive into Gaza that “will continue without hesitation and without respite – until the goals are achieved”. Under the circumstances, its stopping electricity, fuel and goods supplies to Gaza is a good move.

Israel’s friends and allies near and far must not leave it unsupported. Joe Biden, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, was unequivocal in pledging “rock solid” US backing for whatever action is taken. “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop,” President Biden said, a view reiterated by Anthony Albanese on Sunday. But President Biden and earlier US administrations, especially that of Barack Obama, who signed a weak deal on nuclear power with Iran (which Mr Biden foolishly tried to revive), cannot escape blame for the pernicious role Iran is playing in the Middle East through Hamas, its proxy in Gaza, and its more powerful proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Hezbollah, as Greg Sheridan wrote on Saturday night, is known to possess 150,000 rockets, more and more of which are sophisticated in their ability to target with deadly payloads. By Sunday afternoon, Hezbollah was shooting into northern Israel from Lebanon. The Israeli Defence Force was ready and responding with artillery.

Hamas’s iron grip on Gaza has been strengthening since 2005, when Israel withdrew its troops from the region, 38 years after capturing it from Egypt in the Six Day War. Hamas rebranded itself as a social and political force, as well as an armed group, and in 2006 won legislative elections. Soon after, it ousted the rival movement, Fatah, and has since held absolute power. Funding and technical know-how from Iran helped bolster its militia and production of homemade rockets. Tehran has also supplied larger and more advanced weapons via smuggling routes. For years, these included a web of deep underground tunnels, some with rail tracks. Many of the tunnels were destroyed by years of Israeli attacks. Israel has also intercepted ships carrying weapons bound for Gaza. Before the May 2021 Gaza war, the Israeli military estimated that Hamas had about 30,000 fighters, including around 400 highly trained naval commandos, as well as stockpiles of about 7000 rockets as well as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. It has also used aerial and underwater drones. While ruling Gaza, Hamas’s appetite for bloodthirsty conflict precludes the possibility of negotiating a two-state solution with Israel. That reality underlines the folly of naive politicians and UN delegates making empty gestures recognising a Palestinian “state’’ without borders or legal standing. Misguided moves like those from radical elements of the Labor Party before its recent conference to recognise Palestinian “statehood’’ only play into the hands of Hamas.

Given Israel’s awareness of Hamas’s arsenal and outlook, the Netanyahu government must ask itself and its intelligence agencies hard questions about why it was caught by surprise by Saturday’s attack. That appalling failure has cost hundreds of lives and will ultimately cost many more. It is a major setback for Israeli citizens, the Middle East’s only functioning democracy, the morale of the Jewish diaspora and for world peace. “That Hamas could co-ordinate such a big operation, with not only huge numbers of rockets but also countless Hamas terrorists flooding into southern Israel, without Israeli intelligence hearing a whisper of it in advance, is shocking,’’ Sheridan wrote on Saturday. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israeli intelligence was similarly surprised, lasted 19 days. Circumstances following Saturday’s onslaught look far more portentous. It is often said Israel is faced with an existential threat. That has never been more accurate than now. The country’s deep internal political divisions in recent years have not helped. Being regarded by enemies as a sign of weakness, they have probably led to a view that this could be an opportune time to attack. And they have distracted the Israeli government from the difficult challenge to protect the state from the existential threats it faces in a hostile region, especially from Iran. That challenge did not get any easier last month when Mr Biden did a hostage deal with Tehran that rewarded the ayatollahs’ odious, cash-strapped regime with $US6bn in return for the release of five US hostages. That would have emboldened them to provide strong backing for what were probably well advanced plans for the weekend attack. The onslaught highlighted how ill-advised Washington was to deal with Tehran over the hostages, however desperate their plight. Rather than handing over money, the US should be leading a global charge to isolate the ayatollahs as much as possible.

At any time under the current Iranian regime, boosting the ayatollahs’ ability to help Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad with rockets and other equipment can only help achieve Iran’s declared goal of “wiping Israel off the face of the Earth”. The thumbprints of Iran’s ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guard were all over Saturday’s incursion. Its raw brutality also smacked of the cruel fanaticism of Islamic State before it imploded. After raining down rockets from dawn, the jihadists went on a murderous rampage through 22 Israeli villages, killing and dragging out civilians from their homes and capturing people going about their daily lives. Some had their throats slit, or were seized and carted off across the border into Gaza to be used as hostages – one of Iran’s favourite terrorist ploys. It is hard to contemplate the price they will try to extract for their safe return and to avoid them being tortured. As more images emerge of the events of Saturday, appalling scenes of jihadists triumphantly parading the naked body of a visiting German woman through the streets on a pick-up truck, as Hamas brutes spat on her and shouted “Allahu-Akbar”, are likely to become as defining an image of this war as that of the “napalm girl’’, Phan Thi Kim Phúc, fleeing from an attack during the Vietnam War in 1972. The German woman, Shani Louk, 30, was visiting Israel for a music festival for peace. Seizing female captives, especially Israeli Defence Force personnel on active duty, was a priority of the rampaging militants, as Jamie Walker reports: “In one confronting video … a young Israeli woman wearing military-style camo pants and T-shirt was seen to be hauled by her hair from a commandeered IDF vehicle.’’ She was drenched in blood; her captors shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

By Sunday night, at least 300 Israelis were believed to be dead and almost 1000 wounded. Similar numbers were reported from Gaza. But on both sides of the fighting, those numbers will rise substantially. National security has always been Mr Netanyahu’s strong suit. His aims now will be to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas as quickly as possible and to avoid the need to fight a ground war against Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. Israel’s superior forces should ultimately prevail, but the cost in human life is likely to be catastrophic. It also remains to be seen, as The Jerusalem Post warned on Sunday, whether the Hamas attack is to be a curtain-raiser for other major moves by Iran and its network of terrorist proxies. That is a warning Mr Biden and other Western leaders must not ignore. As Liberal MP Julian Leeser said on Sunday, Australia must be a consistent and steadfast friend of Israel. Our values demand nothing less.

This unexpected war, that has unleashed Israel’s worst fears of Hamas roaming its streets, terrorising and killing citizens, will be a historic turning point. Its eruption, on the same day of the year as the Battle of Lepanto (Islam’s biggest naval defeat on October 7, 1571) is a reminder of jihadists’ unquenchable thirst for brutality and vengeance – 9/11 happened on the date of the Battle of Vienna in 1683. For the sake of peace and humanity, currently bloodied but unconquered, Israel, especially with the support of its allies, has the strength and determination to prevail.

.