Israel’s Enemies Will Never Forgive It for Refusing to Die

In Israel on October 7, 2023, 1,200 people — including 364 young men and women attending a music festival — were murdered in cold blood in a mass sneak attack launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. Terrorists went house to house, killing and burning with barbaric fury. (I have seen the agonizing videos and grisly photographs of the aftermath, and if you doubt for a moment the mad cruelty on display that day, you owe it to yourself to see them as well.) Hamas abducted 251 people from Israel and carried them away into brutal captivity. (Only 166 of them came back alive.)

And needless to say, before the week was even out, while the nation was reeling from the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, and before it had even responded militarily, Israel was already being accused of committing genocide. The situation in Gaza — from which Israel withdrew in 2005 — was “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” wrote Raz Segal on October 13 in Jewish Currents. U.N. official Craig Mokhiber mirrored that language on October 28, 2023, in a resignation letter where he called events in Gaza a “text-book case of genocide.”

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

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In Israel on October 7, 2023, 1,200 people — including 364 young men and women attending a music festival — were murdered in cold blood in a mass sneak attack launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. Terrorists went house to house, killing and burning with barbaric fury. (I have seen the agonizing videos and grisly photographs of the aftermath, and if you doubt for a moment the mad cruelty on display that day, you owe it to yourself to see them as well.) Hamas abducted 251 people from Israel and carried them away into brutal captivity. (Only 166 of them came back alive.)

And needless to say, before the week was even out, while the nation was reeling from the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, and before it had even responded militarily, Israel was already being accused of committing genocide. The situation in Gaza — from which Israel withdrew in 2005 — was “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” wrote Raz Segal on October 13 in Jewish Currents. U.N. official Craig Mokhiber mirrored that language on October 28, 2023, in a resignation letter where he called events in Gaza a “text-book case of genocide.”

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.