by Harvey Oberfeld
October 31, 2023
Three days after the October 7, murderous rampage in Israel, by Hamas terrorists, I was in Normandy… visiting the Canadian war cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer [Juno Beach].
As I walked among the 2,049 graves of the Canadians buried there and placed five poppies I had brought with me on a few of them, I couldn’t help but notice how young so many of them were… 19, 20, 21 years old.
A total of 45,400 Canadians died in military service during World War II and 55,000 more were injured… some of them suffering from their wounds and scars for the rest of their lives.
But their sacrifices, and those of our allies, saved us from the terrors of Nazism that had also rampaged across the civilized world, murdering, torturing, kidnapping, not just 6 million Jews, but 32 million other civilians as well.
Thank God our leaders at the time did not stop at “proportional“ striking back at the Nazis, or accept a cease-fire that would’ve allowed the Nazis to stay in power in Germany, to regroup and rebuild their arsenal.
We smashed them, we eliminated them, we sent the Nazis to the rubbish heap of history, and out of that, came not only our own continued freedom, but a democratic, prosperous Germany as well.
Lucky the free world governments didn’t listen or cave to the Nazi sympathizers, pro fascist intellectuals, peace activists, or anti-war media at the time!
We also did not stop short of the complete defeat and destruction of ISIS, the Khmer Rouge, Al-Qaeda, or other terrorist groups that wreaked havoc, mass murder and cruelty, not only on their enemies, but against their own people and subjects as well.
The war is taking place right now in Gaza is not a battle between Israel and the Palestinians, despite the anti-Israel propagandists, trying to portray it as such.
It is a conflict that pits the civilized world against the barbarism of terrorism… an ideology that endorses and uses murder, torture, beheadings, rape, burning people, alive, throwing opponents off rooftops, as a legitimate means of ensuring compliance and retention of power by brute force.
The best thing that could happen for the Palestinian people is the total defeat and eradication of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs brigade.
Only then, with a Palestinian governing force willing to seek a realistic peace, could the Palestinian people achieve their deserved and long sought after dream of their own state, living, side-by-side in peace with neighboring Israel, even economically cooperating together.
Impossible?
If you think that, it’s because you have been drinking the Kool-Aid dished out by the Palestinian extremists and propagandists, their anti-Israel media allies, prejudiced, radical, far left university professors, and, frankly, naïve, uneducated, ignorant protesting students, aligning themselves with the usual bigoted antisemites and Muslim extremists, who have deliberately ignored many of the good things that have been going on between Israel and it’s Palestinian neighbors over the last few years.
We hear a lot about illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. I agree many of them should never have been allowed and should even be removed.
And Israel’s current far right government makes things even more difficult: but do not ignore that it was the Palestinian Authority, that re-buffed, repeatedly, peace approaches by several left-leaning Israeli governments in the past.
Yet what a lot of people don’t know is that the two entities had actually and increasingly been sharing successes… until Hamas destroyed everything.
How many of us are aware that every single day, 90,000 Palestinians from the West Bank have been crossing into Israel for years now to work, earning higher salaries than they could dream of where they came from, complete with full health and vacation benefits?
How many readers know that until Hamas blew up the Eretz border crossing with Israel and murdered the border guards, 12,000 Gazans had also been allowed by Israel to cross legally every day to work and earn salaries 10 times those at home.
And moves were underway to boost cross border Gaza commuters to 20,000 a day !
How many are aware that almost all of the 500 trucks a day the United Nations is now bemoaning the loss of , that supplied Gazans with food, housewares, consumer goods, equipment, and medical supplies actually came from or through Israel, not Egypt?
Who knew that the millions upon millions of dollars that Qatar had been providing the Gazans indirectly helping support her mass was transferred regularly to Gazza through Israel?
And did you know that many Gazans requiring specialized medical treatments surgeries were being regularly allowed into Israel to be treated without cost?
In fact, in November 2022, well before Hamas began its mayhem, Israeli media marked the 3,000th Gazan child treated in an Israeli hospital.
And shhhh!! Don’t let the Israel haters hear that the younger brother of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas had also been treated in a Tel Aviv hospital, and so was Abbas’s brother-in-law and Abbas’s wife!
The hypocrisy is even worse when it comes to Hamas: the daughter of the terrorist group’s top leader, Ismael Haniyah was treated in an Israeli hospital a few years ago and so was his sister and also his granddaughter !
All of them could’ve gone to hospitals in Egypt, Jordan or Qatar…but chose Israel.
Bet you haven’t seen or heard any of this in the consistently anti-Israel media we are now subjected to daily.
People really have to start questioning the anti-Israel campaign that has been conducted in “liberal” media, on campuses, and by radical far left antisemites.
For example, just in the last few days, the media has been carrying story after story of Gaza, being “under siege“ with people suffering from lack of food and fuel.
But on Sunday, there was footage of United Nations warehouses, loaded with food to the rafters being looted by the people of Gaza, who knew it was there, but apparently was not being distributed!!!
And what kind of “siege” could be taking place if Hamas was able to import/amass enough concrete, steel, electrical wiring and other materials needed to build hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels, fully reinforced?
As for the lack of fuel, what do all those “human rights experts” think is still being used by Hamas to continue to fire off hundreds of rockets from Gaza… deliberately aimed at Israeli civilians?
Let’s keep it real: any ceasefire or truce will only allow Hamas to re-arm and prepare for yet another murderous assault on Israeli civilians… and relegate the Palestinian people to years more of struggle/conflict under the Hamas dictatorship.
The Israelis must press on to defeat and eliminate not just Hamas control over Gaza , but also get rid of the other terrorist groups running amok there as well.
Israel’s victory will ensure Israel’s survival as a democratic state, and also represents the only realistic chance that the Palestinian people will also move closer to enjoying a state of their own.
And anyone who really wants to see that should be cheering the Israeli military on… to get rid of Hamas!
Harv Oberfeld
Hamas is the product of the US and the Israel governments. So who is responsible for all this carnage?