OPINION:
It has been a year of deep sorrow in Israel, where the people of this small outpost of freedom have again been forced to walk in the valley of death at the hands of radical Islamic terrorism. The innocent and the courageous will surely be remembered, but it must also be acknowledged that in the face of barbarism, Israel has chosen to fear no evil.
The massacre perpetrated last Oct. 7 by Hamas on behalf of Iran has allowed Israel to take up the mantle of global leadership against terrorism abandoned by the United States.
Israelis have risen above their grief to demonstrate extraordinary moral clarity and resolve. They should be proud of it. David decided to take on Goliath. That’s how leaders are born. No people know that better than the people of Israel.
At the United Nations this year, the speeches about battling climate change and platitudes about peace and justice from leaders who have little interest in advancing any of those goals were abruptly interrupted by the leader of Israel calling the world body a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
In what should be regarded as one of the boldest speeches in the history of the U.N., Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out the world’s choice in Reaganesque fashion.
“What choice will you make? Will your nation stand with Israel? Will you stand with democracy and peace? Or will you stand with Iran, a brutal dictatorship that subjugates its own people and exports terrorism across the globe? In this battle between good and evil, there must be no equivocation.”
After the massacre, Israel chose to protect its people, defend its right to exist and send a powerful message to Islamic terrorists that their free ride was over.
Israel’s approach hasn’t been about nation-building or adventurism. Its operations have consistently attempted to minimize collateral damage despite the rhetoric of the Biden White House and global media elites.
The pager attack, which reads like a James Bond or “Mission: Impossible” movie script, and the surgical strikes to cripple Hezbollah have demonstrated Israel has largely left the White House behind, using a blend of blunt instruments and sharp tools to cripple Iran’s terror operations.
While the U.S. and its millions of tons of naval and air power project impotence in fighting the Houthis in the Red Sea, Israel has systematically used its resources to inflict real damage on terror groups that have done Iran’s bidding for decades.
While Mr. Netanyahu drives forward to protect his people, President Biden and the U.S. diplomatic corps continue to lobby the G7 nations to publicly dictate to Israelis how they can respond to the latest attacks by Iran on their country.
America’s two-faced approach to our democratic allies rears its ugly head again. It’s a sorry record that has hampered the advance of freedom since the 1940s from our broken promises to Chiang Kai-shek through then-President Barack Obama’s abandonment of Iraq. It’s a record Mr. Biden has been happy to perpetuate.
It is for this reason that as we mark this moment, Americans owe Israel a debt of gratitude.
Mr. Netanyahu has avenged not only the deaths of his people but also those of hundreds of American service members who have been killed by Iran over the decades across the Middle East.
The killings of Hassan Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders should have been done years ago by the United States, but the U.S. has repeatedly proved too timid to exact retribution for even our own dead.
Crippling sanctions against Iran should never have been lifted. The elimination of Iran’s proxy groups should have been a top priority for Washington. Instead, the mullahs have been allowed to kill thousands without significant reprisal from the West.
George W. Bush’s war on terrorism had success in coordinating operations to interdict the terror threat in more than 100 countries. The often half-hearted and lengthy engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, made the overall strategy susceptible to inevitable collapse. That collapse emboldened Democrats and the liberal think tankers who drive their milquetoast foreign policy.
Since Mr. Obama had the phrase “war on terrorism” stricken from our lexicon, the world has suffered from America’s “lead from behind” strategy for 12 of the last 16 years.
The God of history brought the Jewish people to the land we now know as Israel more than 4,000 years ago. Its continued existence is a threat to the Islamists, communists and far-left Americans because it validates a destiny for Jews established in the Old Testament. It validates the existence of God the Father and God the Son, which undergirds the faith that gives humankind real power.
As we mark a year since the attack and remember the victims, the world should also mark this as the moment that Israel, against all odds, became a global force. We are fortunate that Israel has risen from its sorrow, left the whims of Washington behind and come into its own. Americans should pray that this continues.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.