At a peace-loving music festival in the Israeli desert, hundreds of partiers dance to psychotrance. Dark specks appear on the horizon. They quickly get bigger. Confusion turns to panic as gunshots rain from the sky, coming from terrorists using AK-47 assault rifles shooting into the crowd from paramotors. One student, Noa Argamani, is kidnapped on the back of a motorcycle while her boyfriend is held back by a group of terrorists, screaming. A German tattoo artist, Shani Louk, is killed and later seen lying face down in a bra and underwear, dead in the back of a truck as she is brought back to Gaza City, where Palestinians surround the truck, spit on her and celebrate. So far 260 civilians have been confirmed dead. This pure, unadulterated evil does not represent any ambitions for freedom or peace; it demonstrates the desire for the extermination of the Jewish people.
Early morning Saturday, October 7, Hamas, the terrorist organization that took over Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal from the area in 2005, funded largely by the Iranian government, took over the streets of Southern Israel. They murdered 12-year-old girls in front of their families, raped girls next to the corpses of their friends, burned civilians alive as they tried to escape and beheaded babies. They took scores of hostages, including babies and an elderly Holocaust survivor. These actions are unnervingly similar to those of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the violent terrorist group which took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria after they emerged in 2014. Hamas must be condemned just as ISIS was.
Unlike previous Hamas attacks on Israel which ended in ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that this violent attack will result in a war aimed at ending all of Hamas’s military capabilities, and that every member of Hamas was a “dead man.” Although Israel’s military might is far superior to Hamas’, it has not been able to eliminate the terrorists to this point because Hamas uses its own citizens as human shields — it places missile launchers in the most densely populated areas of its territory including hospitals, schools and residential areas. Hamas hasn’t made a miscalculation; they are sacrificing innocent Palestinians to manipulate the media narrative and portray Israel as the sole aggressor.
Western nations have supplied Palestinian civilians with resources like healthcare, food and clean water. Israel is one of the largest funnels of resources into Gaza and has offered opportunities prior to the war for any Palestinian citizens in the West Bank to obtain work visas to come and work in Israel. Before the Palestinian Authority stopped referring Palestinians to Israeli hospitals, Israel brought thousands of Palestinians in need to Israeli hospitals in the past, regardless of the fact that they are not Israeli citizens. Rather than utilizing the generosity of Western nations such as the United States to create better living conditions for Palestinians , Hamas has turned water pipes into missiles and materials for roads into tunnels to bomb Israelis. Now, after the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, Israel has cut off power, water and fuel to Gaza, which could be restored — according to Israel — if Hamas released just 150 innocent hostages.
Hamas as a group acts synonymous to ISIS; supporting Hamas for the sake of the Palestinian people is like supporting ISIS in the name of Iraqi people. Israel is the only place for thousands of miles where women are given unique opportunities for work and education and people are free to express their sexuality. As an Israeli myself from the northern coastal area of Haifa, Israel where there is a large Arab and African presence, Israel is a diverse country of people — Israeli and Palestinian, Muslim and Jewish — coexisting productively.
The current situation in Israel is not a political question, but a humanitarian crisis that must be handled as soon as possible, as thousands of innocent Israeli and Palestinian people are already dead. Hamas are not heroes in any way, shape or form. If we want peace, the world must eliminate Hamas, as they did ISIS, and recognize that their goals are not for the betterment of this world or its people but rather for the eradication of the entire Jewish race.
