Peace comes at a price: Israel deserves our full support
The same people who criticised Israel for not being targeted enough in its war in Gaza, have called the attack on Hezbollah – the literal definition of targeted warfare – indiscriminate carnage. But make no mistake, Hezbollah is pure evil and deserves zero sympathy.
It’s not every day that exploding late-80s era communications devices fall into my wheelhouse of things to unpack. But here we are, and I’d like to offer a warm welcome to you all as we start the conversation.
Actually, it’s not so much about the extraordinary, unimaginable events of the past few days, rather the reaction to them.
The utterly tiresome, predictable, one-sided, ignorant, hypocritical Jew-hating diatribe that’s been forthcoming from the usual suspects since October 7. The usual suspects of course are in the corner of the bad guys, saying “poor Hezbollah”.
Hold that thought for a moment while I set some context. Many Australians will be vaguely aware of Hezbollah. What it is, who it is, who pays for it and, importantly, its violent bloody history. Vaguely aware of Hezbollah in the same way that I’m vaguely aware of the fact there’s another code other than AFL. Let’s have a short, sharp history lesson.
Hezbollah, for those catching up, is expressly and unapologetically committed to a couple of key, stated goals. It wants to “liberate” Jerusalem, a process that involves eradicating Israel, the legitimacy of which it does not acknowledge. It wants to replace Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, with a caliphate, based on the Iranian regime. You know Iran? That place where women can’t dance, sing or show their hair. Where you’re hanged for being gay. The same Iran that executed 834 people in 2023, and is year on year responsible for 74 per cent of all recorded executions worldwide, according to Amnesty International.
Iran is a funder of Hezbollah, to the tune of $200m annually, by conservative estimates. As always, don’t take my word for it, everything I’ve just said is easy to verify by even the laziest online search. Go, read for yourself and see. All of this is historic, obviously, and what’s more relevant to the events of this past week is that since October 7 Hezbollah has fired about 8000 rockets into civilian areas of northern Israel. More than 60,000 Israelis can’t go home because it’s too dangerous. This unacceptable act of ongoing aggression has gone largely unnoticed and unchallenged by governments like our own. Hezbollah’s war on Israel’s northern border is ongoing. Even when it fired a rocket into a soccer field, killing 12 children in a Druze community, the world just brushed it off and said, yes but really Israel should be nice.
Only the mentally bereft would point the finger at Israel when Hezbollah’s violent history in attempting to wipe out the Jews not only goes back decades but is as bloody today as it was then. Why is this important? Because it’s the main event. The destruction of the state of Israel is for Hezbollah, as it is for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the main event.
Which brings me back to the start. This precision targeted attack on Hezbollah took everyone by surprise. I am on holiday (a term I use quite loosely these days) in Italy and it was early evening here when the news broke. I watched, incredulous, as I did on the afternoon of October 7. I didn’t believe what I was reading, what I was watching. What was completely believable, however, was seeing the usual suspects twist themselves into knots, breaking into a sweat like a Bikram Yoga teacher, trying to make out that Hezbollah’s fighters are the innocent victims. It’s as if these commentators either don’t know their history or don’t want to. I’m not sure which is worse.
The tiresome list went on and on. Innocent civilians. Indiscriminate action. You name it, they said it. The same kind of morally corrupt nonsense from those who only apply this kind of thinking to Israel. The same people who criticised Israel for not being targeted enough in its war in Gaza, have called this, the literal definition of targeted warfare, indiscriminate carnage.
Where have these people been as Hezbollah rained thousands of rockets down on northern Israel over the past 10 months? Where were they when Hezbollah blew up kids playing soccer one afternoon? I’ll tell you where they were. Looking the other way, gutless and complicit by sins of omission.
What the anti-Israel cohort and others, including our own government, don’t ever acknowledge is that one side is ideologically committed to the eradication of the other. One side does not want peaceful coexistence. The other, Israel, keeps trying and keeps paying the price.
How do I know this? History, silly. Multiple offers, all of which have been rejected by the Palestinian leadership in different iterations, the most notable Camp David where Yasser Arafat turned down the deal of a lifetime brokered by the Clinton administration. The Abraham Accords, which have been significant in their impact throughout the region. This is what it looks like to want peace. Solutions. Strategies. Pathways forward.
It is undeniable evidence. An Israeli mate of mine said last month, “I want a two-state solution, but not if it means they get to slaughter my kids on the way there”. I do not blame him because that isn’t a throwaway line. That is a real and present risk for him, and every Israeli.
But back to this past week. What happened was the stuff of movies, of books and of worlds vastly different to most of ours but one thing is undeniable truth.
If you’re in possession of one of the pagers that was targeted, you’re no innocent civilian. You are Hezbollah and you want to destroy Israel and the Jews. You want to establish a caliphate throughout the region, which is not great news if you’re a woman or gay. These truths were MIA.
The UN has said in response to this attack that everything must be done to avoid further escalation. Cute. And, as usual, embarrassing in its bias and inability to confront the actual issue. Moreover, the UN itself seems to have forgotten that 18 years ago, it passed Resolution 1701 which called for Hezbollah to be immediately disarmed. That resolution strictly prohibits Hezbollah from rearming, and specifies various measures to ensure rearmament can’t happen. Ahh, the UN. A more useless organisation never existed.
Telling, too, how it never spoke of de-escalation when 12 children playing soccer were blown to pieces by a Hezbollah rocket. God, the utter hypocrisy of them.
I hate this war. I hate it. The cost. The loss. The broken lives. The carnage of it. Israel is defending itself against multiple wars on multiple fronts yet somehow this keeps getting ignored. Why anyone should expect Israel just to sit back and take it is beyond me.
Imagine if after 9/11 the US had said, “You know what? Okay, al-Qa’ida. You win, have it your way. Death to America it is.” It’s absurd, but yet again, a different lens applies to Israel and this is where my own spot of mental callisthenics comes in. I try to understand how any sober-minded person could arrive at these conclusions. Is it ignorance? Is it ideology? Is it pure anti-Semitic hate? Is it a combination of all of these things? I don’t know.
It would seem to me that so many don’t just have a problem with how Israel is defending itself, rather that it is defending itself. War is bloody murder, so best not to start them.
And here’s another truth many (especially in the younger generations) can’t seem to accept because, I suspect, it involves a cost. Sometimes war must be waged to enforce peace. Peace comes at a price, and it is not paid for by the weak. God willing, Israel will be strong enough to finish it, for all of our sakes.
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