Oct. 7 was not a skirmish. Had Hamas terrorists not been stopped, they would have murdered all 7.4 million Jews in Israel. They are more determined, as shown by their actions, to kill Jews than to establish their own state.
The Palestinian Arabs in general have turned down numerous opportunities for and offers of a state, but they have never turned down a chance to kill Jews. In war after war, each of which the Palestinians started, they lost. Yet never in the history of warfare has the losing side demanded so much of the winner. At one point, the Palestinians were offered a state on 95% of the land they allegedly wanted plus 5% in land swaps. Moreover, they were offered a capital in Jerusalem. They rejected it all because that is not what they want.
One of their chief sticking points when rejecting a state was what they framed as a “right of return” to Israel. Many Arabs fled then-Palestine during their 1948 war against Israel (a war the Arabs started). Now, they demand not only the return of these “refugees” to Israel but all their descendants as well. That number is so large it would turn the democratic nation of Israel into an Arab-majority state or absorb it into one of the neighboring Arab countries, effectively destroying Israel.
Moreover, what group that truly desires a state of its own demands, as a chief condition, the ability to live in the country next door? Is this the demand of people who want their own state, or want to destroy someone else’s state?
The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, allegedly to “liberate” Israel. The PLO was not founded to liberate Judea, Samaria or Gaza. Those areas were already under Arab control: Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria. The Palestinians showed no aspirations for a state in any of those territories. The truth was that the PLO wanted Israel gone.
Strangely, no one asks why the Palestinians never attempted to “liberate” Judea and Samaria from Jordan or Gaza from Egypt. Those two territories had already been ethnically cleansed of Jews after the 1948 war, so they would have satisfied the Palestinians’ Jew-free state aspirations.
Yes, I know ethnic cleansing is what the Palestinians accuse Israel of doing. But it is quite apparent that what the Palestinians blame Israel for is always that of which they are themselves guilty.
If there is one thing the Palestinians excel at, it is propaganda. With the help of Qatari dollars, they have led a worldwide sympathy campaign that denounces Israel for the number of Palestinian casualties in the Gaza war—and they have been quite successful at it. Those casualties are tragic, but they are entirely the fault of Hamas, which deliberately uses women and children as human shields for the sole purpose of winning in the court of world opinion.
We do not know the exact number of civilian casualties in Gaza because Hamas does not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants and does not exclude those who died from natural causes, those killed in internecine fighting or those Hamas killed while they tried to reach humanitarian zones. That said, the total is still quite small compared with the 7.4 million Israeli Jews who would have been killed had Hamas not been stopped.
That is the real story: More than 7 million were saved.
That is how we should tell this story, over and over again, especially when Palestinian sympathizers throw casualty numbers in our faces. The deaths of Gaza civilians are tragic, but the numbers that were saved dwarf those losses.
Jews have already been driven nearly to extinction by a history of worldwide anti-Jewish aggression. The enemies of the Jews have reared their ugly heads once again, but we must all look to the millions who were saved.
