Opinion: The Nation of Israel and the Proportionate Response

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

On October 7, 2023, the Iran-funded-and-supplied vermin of Hamas charged through the wall and attacked innocent farmers, festival-goers and vacationers in Israel, brutally murdering over 1400 people and injuring many more, then kidnapping some 250 more to hold as hostages in Gaza (killing many of them too, in the year since).

Israel responded as it had to, in an intensive military operation, sweeping across the Gaza Strip from top to bottom, revealing thousands of hideouts, weapons caches, munitions factories, and an incredible tunnel network, finally also revealing how the past twenty years of the world’s “charitable donations” to Gaza have been spent.

Throughout this year-long operation, Israel has been painstaking in its efforts – as Israel always is – to focus on the terrorists and to keep civilian injury and death to a minimum. Collateral damage happens in war, of course, even with precautions, but Israel’s efforts to limit their fire to the terrorists alone have been remarkable.

Has that helped Israel in the world press? Hardly.

If Israel fired back at a rocket launching site that was located behind a clinic, the world press reported that Israel fired on a clinic.

If Israel destroyed a weapons cache that Hamas had built inside a school, then the press reported that Israel destroyed a school.

If Israel had to raze a kitchen that Hamas used as the entry to a secret tunnel where terrorists hid out underground, then the press reported that Israel blew up a neighborhood’s only food source.

If some of the Hamas operatives killed in an attack were women, the press would find out how many children they had, and state how many children Israel had left motherless. And if some of the terrorists were under 20 years old, the press would report that Israel killed “children” in the attack.

For a solid year, the anti-semitic Left has complained that Israel’s operation in Gaza wasn’t “proportionate,” that Israel was responding to a one-day attack with a year of retribution, and that can’t possibly be considered fair.

And constantly they have whined that Israel just isn’t trying hard enough to avoid the killing of innocent civilians along the way, despite objective and knowledgeable experts confirming that Israel gone above and beyond all expectations in these efforts.

Time to turn northward, to Lebanon.

Iran’s proxies in Lebanon are known as Hezbollah. Just as malevolent as Hamas, just as criminal, this group has spent much of the past year engineering attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil, keeping Israel’s forces divided in what has effectively been a two-front war.

Israel could never give 100 percent of their attention to Gaza, while Lebanon is aiming rockets at Israeli population centers – fifty to seventy attacks per day for much of the past year. Israel has had to resettle 60,000 people from the north of the country because of this constant barrage from Lebanon.

Israel tried a new method this week, where Hezbollah is concerned.

While Israel has to be somewhat noncommittal in describing the operation, what the world quickly figured out was that Israel learned that Hezbollah decided last year to switch to pagers and walkie talkies for communication with their Iranian leaders.

In a top-secret joint operation between the Israeli military and the Israeli intelligence services, they somehow found a way to sabotage shipments of these devices, then patiently waited until they were all distributed, and then detonated all 4000 of them – the pagers on Tuesday and the walkie-talkies on Wednesday – only once they were safely in the pockets of individual Hezbollah operatives.

The beauty of this particular operation is that Iran distributed the devices to specific operatives, proving the guilt of the recipients. Israel didn’t have to guess here; Israel couldn’t possibly have gotten any of the targets wrong. Only Hezbollah operatives would get these communication devices from their masters in Iran, and they certainly wouldn’t loan them out.

If someone received a pager or walkie talkie from Iran, that someone is a terrorist, a member of Hezbollah. Period.

Has the world press praised Israel for this?

Surely the world press should be impressed at Israel doing exactly what they have been calling for – finding an absolute, fool-proof way of confirming targets before attack, and ensuring that there was no possible risk of mistaken identity. 100 percent of those injured by this attack literally have to be guilty; Iran itself identified them.

But no, the world press has not done that. Oh, there have been congratulations on the technical brilliance of the maneuver, but no compliments on Israel’s discovery of a way to absolutely ensure that every single target would be a terrorist without possibility of error, to eliminate their frequent complaint against Israel.

Having one of these things in one’s pocket is no different from carrying a terrorist ID card.

And still the Left doesn’t give Israel credit for its efforts in avoiding the targeting of innocents. There are a few lessons for us in this, aren’t there?

Perhaps first and foremost, the anti-semitic press is just that: anti-semitic. They will twist any story to show Israel in a bad light.

Even though Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli residential areas every day for a year, the press describes the communication device attack as an “escalation,” rather than recognizing it as a perfectly justified defensive measure.

Even though the only people with Hezbollah pagers in their pockets were by definition Hezbollah operatives, the press describes those wounded by naming their “regular day jobs” as drivers or accountants or doctors or lawyers or ambassadors, rather than acknowledging that they were terrorists.

Even though these organizations have been attacking Israel almost constantly for decades – hardly a day has gone by since the 1960s when some terrorist hasn’t fired a rocket or launched concrete chunks or detonated a backpack bomb aimed at innocent civilians – the press acts as if Israel’s current response has just gone on too long.

There is a peculiar definition of proportion in the heads of the punditry class these days: Israel can’t fire on more land, can’t retaliate to more terror cells, can’t shut down more front operations, than the uninterested public has noticed attacking Israel.

The public is only allowed to remember October 7, so the further along the calendar gets from last October, the less justification the pundit class sees in Israel’s ongoing work.

The public can remember an image on this morning’s news; they can avoid remembering the images of slaughter and rape, of mutilation and torture, from the Hamas videos of a year ago. The public certainly can’t remember the dozens of rockets each day fired into Israeli neighborhoods, especially if the press never reported on them in the first place.

The press doesn’t talk about it, but the truth is, the ongoing attacks on Israel by Iranian-allied proxies from Hamas to Hezbollah, and by other groups like the PLO before them, have been going on almost nonstop for generations. Not always every day, but often every day. Just because it hasn’t been on the front page of the newspaper doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening.

The Israelis have gotten better and better over the years at identifying and punishing the truly guilty parties, even as their enemies have continued to viciously attack innocents.

The Israelis have finally decided that the status quo – of living with constant attacks by neighbors from all directions – simply can’t go on anymore. October 7, 2023 was a wake-up call for Israel; it was in fact the proverbial last straw.

The global Left says that Israel’s response needs to be “proportionate.”

After 75 years of harassment, café and bus bombings, incoming drone and rocket fire, and all sorts of other attacks from all directions, in order to ensure that Israel’s response is truly proportionate today, this military action should last 75 years.

The anti-Israel crowd might be wise to heed the old saying:

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo