Never again another Holocaust

It was unknown until now that Mehbooba Mufti had such an overflow of emotion towards the recently killed leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Perhaps that would explain why some inhabitants of Kashmir paraded in streets there to protest the taking out of Nasrallah by the Israeli Defense Forces. Getting a group of folks together to shout pre-cooked slogans and disrupt traffic for a while by taking up the space needed in roads for motorists and pedestrians. The former Chief Minister of Kashmir suspended

her election campaign for a day, avowedly in homage to Nasrallah. As a consequence, the spotlight of public interest returned towards the leader who on 8 October 2023 began a campaign against Israel by sending rockets across the frontier between Lebanon and Israel. On the previous day, Hamas had carried out a grisly terror attack that resulted in the death of several Israeli citizens and the taking captive of many. It was clear that the calculation of the Hamas leadership was that the captured hostages would deter the IDF from taking energetic action against the terror group. However, such an expectation went awry. The reason was that the cruelty and ferocity of the 7 October attack on Israel brought back memories of the way in which the Nazis had dealt with the Jewish population in the territories that were controlled by supporters of Hitler. Having endured the Holocaust in the previous century, it has been imprinted in the mindspace of every member of the Jewish community that such a fate ought never to befall them again. No matter what the collateral cost, Israel was determined that such a fate ought never to be repeated. The IDF and its affiliated agencies have over the past year demolished the ability of the military wing of Hamas to a level that makes any future mass terror attack improbable.

An argument often trotted out to justify the terror attacks of Hamas is that the territory of Palestine as presently exists is under the security control of Israel. While such may be true of the West Bank, it was not in the case of Gaza, from where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had cleared out Israeli settlers and left Hamas to its own devices, focusing his attention on the West Bank. What took place on 7 October 2023 shows the unwisdom of such a “Hands Off” policy towards a Hamas-controlled Gaza. It is clear that by launching the terror attack and by (in its own view) ensuring the lack of a robust response from the IDF by taking such a large number of hostages, Hamas was looking at converting the West Bank into another Gaza. The calculation was that young Palestinians in particular would flock under the Hamas banner in what is the West Bank, displacing the Palestinian Authority as had taken place in Gaza in 2005. The rubble that is left of Gaza shows what happens when a terror organisation takes control of a territory. As for Lebanon, the people of that country have been paying a steep price as a consequence of its domination by Hezbollah. In much the same way, the people of Iran have been suffering privation as a consequence of the takeover of the country by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. By going forward with a major attack on Israel on 1 October, the clerical regime in Tehran may have sealed its own fate. Where Iran is concerned, President Biden cannot afford to look weak, and will therefore back Israel in its fightback against the biggest foe of Israel in the region. What is happening to Hamas, Hezbollah and the clerical regime in Iran shows why it is folly to attempt to repeat what was attempted by Hitler during 1936-45, the elimination of the Jewish people, who are among the most creative and gifted in the world. Never again will there be a repeat of the Holocaust.