OPINION:
The pundits and so-called experts busily explaining to all who will listen that Israelis are acting irrationally in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel dismiss the loss of life and barbarity of that attack.
Given Israel’s size and population, it was the equivalent of 13 or more times the number killed when New York’s World Trade Center was attacked 22 years ago. As they condemn Israel for “overreacting,” they might want to think about how we reacted to that attack.
Americans were as shocked and outraged by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as they had been more than half a century earlier by Japan’s attack on our naval forces at Pearl Harbor.
What followed was both predictable: a united America demanding that the perpetrators be hunted down and eliminated. The Pearl Harbor attack brought us into World War II, and the 9/11 attacks ushered in what became known as “the global war on terror.”
Both were not just attacks on Americans but on the American homeland and were seen by millions of Americans as assaults on their homes, their way of life and perhaps our very existence as a nation and people. They changed the way Americans thought about what was going on in the world.
Before Pearl Harbor, polls reflected the public’s ambivalence about getting involved in the war already raging in Europe and Asia. That changed on Dec. 7, 1941, as the country rallied behind President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress to demand that our enemies pay for what the president described as “a date which will live in infamy.”
The public reaction to the 9/11 attacks by Muslim militants was a president who, as a candidate, had questioned the wisdom of involvement in the seemingly endless and convoluted turmoil that was a constant in the Middle East morphed into a crusading war president backed by both houses of Congress and an enraged public.
In the years since, many have tired of the consequences of that reaction, but anyone breathing today remembers that in the wake of those attacks, we were willing to pay any price to “get” those who had wronged us and killed thousands of our fellow citizens.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has at long last demonstrated that it’s as just as dedicated as it claims to wiping out Israel and the Jews living there and elsewhere. The beheading of Jewish babies has been justified because “they will grow up to be occupiers.” The victory Israel seeks may be difficult or even impossible to attain, but who can blame Israel for trying?
The students and others demonstrating against Israel here and in other nations are celebrating the barbarity of Hamas while claiming that Israel must pull back lest innocent Palestinians be killed as they attempt to root out Hamas in Gaza. Innocents will be killed as they are in every war, and that is unfortunate. But let’s not forget who started this one and why.
The Palestinians living in Gaza have been terrorized and propagandized by Hamas for decades and have become willing accessories to their crimes. The Israelis are trying to spare them the costs of this war by urging them to seek safety.
A liberal Israeli academic, Corey Gil-Shuster, has interviewed literally thousands of Palestinians in Gaza about their attitudes toward Hamas, Israel, Jews and the possibility of peace since 2012. He began his study advocating peace and coexistence, but his belief that this might be possible was waning even before Oct. 7.
The Palestinians he has interviewed don’t want to coexist with Israelis; they want them gone. He recently told National Review that “when I do meet someone who actually believes in some form of coexistence with Israelis — I wanna hug them. It’s so rare when it happens I have to stop myself from actually hugging them.”
And now, he says his fellow Israelis aren’t much interested in coexistence either: “Everybody — mainstream and right-wing — want revenge,” he said. “They want blood. … People are really, really traumatized, and they are angry.”
That may not make much sense to television’s talking heads or experts who like to treat Hamas, the Palestinians and Israelis as moral equals, but it should to Americans who witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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