In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is joined by columnist Melanie Philips, whose work can be read at JNS.org and at MelaniePhillips.com.
According to Phillips, support for the Hamas terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip on display in the Muslim and Arab world, as well as on the streets of cities in Europe and the United States in the wake of the terrorist atrocities of Oct. 7, is not rooted so much in a belief that Israel is in the wrong in the conflict. Rather, it is a manifestation of raw antisemitism: the lust for the shedding of Jewish blood and a hope that the destruction of Israel is at hand.
Phillips says evidence of the barbarism on display in the pogroms unleashed against Jewish communities near the Gaza border is causing confusion among Western liberals. They find it hard to understand how it is that their erstwhile allies on the left, as well as among Muslim and Arab communities, are willing to excuse the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But rather than admit that they were wrong, they must try to blame Israel and the Jews for the crimes committed against them, denying the truth about the Palestinians.
Phillips believes that the reluctance on the part of some elites in the United States and Europe to draw a moral distinction between Israel and its foes, which commit such savage crimes, is rooted in a desire to project Western attitudes on the Palestinians rather than to understand them in the context of an Islamist worldview.
Moreover, she sees the ultimate responsibility for these crimes belonging not just to Hamas, and their Iranian sponsors and funders. It also belongs to the West, which has kept the Palestinian problem alive by lying to itself about the solution to the conflict being the division of the land. The truth is that it really is an Islamist war against the West.
While the road ahead for Israel will be difficult, Phillips says a war to destroy Hamas is the least worst alternative. Although it’s not clear what role the United States is playing behind the scenes as the Jewish state prepares for the next phase of military action, Phillips believes that America must not stop Israel from destroying a group that has become civilizations’s new Hitler.
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