War in Israel, War in the West

“This is not Israel’s 9/11. It is not even Israel’s Pearl Harbor. It is worse by an order of magnitude. The closest parallel is the Rape of Nanking.”

It has been two days now since war came to southern Israel, and the picture is coming into focus. What we have seen has clearly been a strike by Hamas and associates from Gaza into Israel, most likely at the instigation of Iran. According to Israeli sources, around 1,000 Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel through 80 pre-existing gaps in the supposedly secure and militarized border defenses. The terrorists then ran rampage for over a day, killing, raping, and mutilating with abandon. It was a frenzy born of blood-lust-infused savagery.

At the time of writing my previous piece, the Israeli casualties stood at between 150 and 200. This was appalling enough. But now the toll is truly catastrophic: over 700 confirmed dead, 260 of those at the Nova music festival for peace between Israel and Palestine near the Israel/Gaza border. That is the equivalent of almost three Bataclan theatres. There are 2,100 wounded. Over 150 Israelis, civilian and military, have been taken hostage inside Gaza. These casualties were the result of in-person, up-close killing, not impersonal airstrikes from planes or drones.

Hamas launched a combined arms operation from land, sea, and air. The air assault saw engine-powered hang gliders fly into Israel. These were used to assault the festival, with Hamas fighters flying in from different points to surround the event, from which they proceeded to mow down, hunt, rape, and murder hundreds of young people. The sounds of joy that drifted over the desert expanse turned to the shrieks of rockets and gunfire, followed by screams of terror and anguish.