Israel Deferred to the West on Gaza Once Before. Not This Time | Opinion

The drumbeat from the West for Israel to back down in its war to destroy Hamas is getting louder.

President Joe Biden, to his great credit, has repeatedly made clear the American people and government stand with Israel's right to defend itself. But, predictably, some members of Congress, European governments, celebrity activists, and UN agencies are pushing back, calling for an immediate ceasefire before Israel has time to root out the terror infrastructure that massacred and took captive civilians.

Following that chorus would be a mistake that Israel has made before and can't afford to make again.

For too long, Israel has withheld from fully confronting Hamas and other terror groups. It's done so to appease countries and institutions that speak about Israel's right to defend itself in theory but grow squeamish with the reality of what this looks like. It's done so to placate those who fail to realize that Hamas's continued existence threatens both Israeli and Palestinian lives.

Israel can no longer afford to defer to those who live a world away and whose approach would neuter its response yet again. Those days are over.

After all, Hamas's homicidal designs against Israelis and Jews have been there all along. The terror group's charter speaks of the complete destruction of the Jewish state, and it spent the last 15 years firing rockets and executing terror attacks as proof they mean what's written. Iran, which provides the financial backing for Hamas's campaigns, has also been explicit about its designs to "uproot and destroy Israel."

But instead of uprooting the terror network that spread like malignant cancer throughout Gaza since Hamas took control in 2007, Israel deferred to Western leaders' more measured approach. It deployed Iron Dome batteries to shoot incoming rockets out of the sky, built a high-tech security fence intended to contain the terrorists, and allowed Qatar to transfer money to Hamas to disincentivize war.

Israelis, for the most part, grew accustomed to sporadic flare-ups and didn't allow the lurking and omnipresent threat of terrorism to obstruct their lives.

Then, on a single day, Hamas slaughtered more Israelis than the total number murdered throughout the Second Intifada, which spanned five years. Hamas has never played by the rules of war, but on October 7, they proved that they also don't play by the rules of civilization.

Israel must retaliate determinedly both to eliminate the threat from Hamas and to send a message to the region. In the Middle East, the weak are preyed upon. Iran and its terror proxies must see that attacking Israel would bring devastating consequences.

The case for this is straightforward. After all, the gruesome evidence of Hamas's attacks crystallized two truths.

First, Hamas has no interest in a two-states solution. Just the opposite, they are trying to make good on the promise in their charter to annihilate Israel and its people, to make sure the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Judenrein, cleansed of Jews.

Second, the argument that Hamas is fighting occupation is wrong. While Gaza's borders are controlled by Israel on one side and Egypt on the other out of security necessity, there is not a single Jewish community or Israeli soldier stationed in the Strip. In fact, the only Jews in Gaza are the ones now being held captive by Hamas.

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinians had an opportunity to build the infrastructure and organs of their own state. They didn't. Hamas stole aid dollars intended for building hospitals, schools, and other critical infrastructure and instead funded the web of terror we now see on display.

Israel is on the frontline of a war for civilization. It will do what it must to destroy the Hamas war machine, including its leadership, its infrastructure, and its weapons—once and for all. It will do so with as much precision as possible to avoid civilian casualties even as Hamas intentionally operates behind the civilian population of Gaza.

Wars are ugly. Made uglier by the fact that Hamas employs tactics to amplify the human tragedy. In the eyes of the terror group, every dead Jew is a victory, and every Palestinian killed is a chance to parade the dead before the media and decry Israel's inhumanity.

For the past two weeks, it was not a matter of if but when questions from the West about Israeli restraint or a ceasefire would become more frequent, and the tide of support buoying Israel would turn. So here we are. Politicians and human rights activists are drawing a false equivalency between attacking civilians and acting in self-defense to defend civilians.

But Israel must stand up to the expectations of these "Western sensibilities." Its leaders cannot allow those sitting comfortably in their homes on the safer side of the world to dictate how Israel keeps its own citizens safe.

Israel did that once before. And this month, we saw the brutal, senseless, and savage results on display.

Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a non-profit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat Jew hatred.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.