The international betrayal of Israel in the midst of a life-and-and-death battle for national survival is now becoming too blatant to deny

Mick Hume, an English journalist and author based in London, chastises Western elites, who are close to full retreat in the face of the Islamic threat.

European Conservative (h/t Marvin W) What precisely would have been an ‘objectively humanitarian proportionate response’ to a genocidal massacre in which Islamist terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Jewish people and raped, brutalised, and kidnapped many hundreds more, as part of their crusade to wipe out the world’s only Jewish state?

The question occurred to me this week, listening to spineless Western leaders humming and hawing about how Israel has ‘gone too far’ and should now agree to an ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Which, given that the anti-human death cult of Hamas has no interest in a lasting peace, would mean Israel surrendering to its fate.

Let us remember what is at stake here. Since antisemitic terrorists massacred more than 1,200 Jews and kidnapped more than 200 on October 7th, it has been clear that supporting Israel in its war to destroy Hamas is vital for the future of democracy and freedom, not only in the Middle East, but also in the West.

Yet, around 150 days later, with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) still advancing in Gaza, our Western elites are close to full retreat in the face of the Islamic threat.

I’m writing this in London where, at the Westminster parliament last week, Islamist protestors and their useful idiots on the left projected their favourite slogan, ‘From the River to the Sea,’ onto the tower commonly known as Big Ben, global symbol of British democracy.

The full slogan, ‘From the River to the Sea/Palestine Will be Free’ means in practice that the Israeli state should be wiped off the face of the earth, and that the Jews of Israel should be driven into the Mediterranean. It was effectively a call for genocide, projected on to the ‘Mother of Parliaments,’ while London’s institutionally woke Metropolitan Police stood around and watched the show.

This piece of antisemitic theatre was part of an Islamic demonstration intended to intimidate Members of Parliament inside into voting for Labour Party and Scottish National Party motions demanding that Israel stop fighting.

It is hard to imagine a more graphic illustration of what we are up against, and why all Western leaders need to stand firm alongside the Israeli people. Instead, in the hour of need, Europe and the U.S. appear to be withdrawing from the battleground, qualifying their support for Israel out of existence and calling for an immediate ceasefire. Which, given that Hamas still holds Israeli hostages and has sworn to repeat the October 7th pogrom “again and again” if it gets the chance, sounds like a demand that Israel should commit suicide—and a sign of the West’s imminent surrender.

Israeli forces are closing in on the city of Rafah, the last remaining Hamas hide-out in southern Gaza, where the terrorists are, as ever, using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Israel has given the terrorists of Hamas plenty of time to hand over the hostages and surrender, to avoid further bloodshed.

Yet instead of backing those calls, Western leaders have focused their anger on Israel, demanding that it leave the Hamas bastion of Rafah alone and warning of a bloodbath long before the IDF attacks. The meaning is clear: that Israel is in the wrong, so much so that the Israelis who are responding to a genocidal antisemitic massacre are themselves somehow guilty of genocide. As we have suggested before, this is an inversion of reality that deserves the title Hamas in Wonderland or Gaza Through the Looking-Glass.

The international betrayal of Israel in the midst of a life-and-and-death battle for national survival is now becoming too blatant to deny. Even U.S. President Joe Biden, supposedly Israel’s staunchest ally, has submitted a draft UN resolution calling on Israeli forces to desist, and is reportedly ready for a ‘breach’ with Israel.

Here in Europe, things are far worse. Josep Borell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and a frequent critic of Israel, boasted last week that 26 out of 27 EU member states had called for “an immediate humanitarian pause that would lead to a sustainable ceasefire.” Borell did not disclose which one EU member had refused to vote for such a victory for Hamas but, as The Telegraph reported, “Hungary reportedly blocked a similar initiative earlier.”

Listen to the falsely righteous language European leaders are using to justify their displays of moral cowardice. Here in the UK the opposition Labour Party, widely expected to be in government by the end of the year, is now calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” for the first time, in a desperate bid to appease its Muslim and leftist supporters. Leading Labour MP West Streeting justified this change of position by insisting that, “I think, objectively, Israel has gone too far, and we have seen that with a disproportionate loss of life.”

Leave aside for a moment the fact that nobody knows how many Hamas fighters and civilians have been killed in Gaza, and that the figures frequently cited come from the Hamas-run health ministry. As I asked above, what exactly would have been a ‘proportionate’ response to the October 7th massacres? What precise numbers of dead would Mr. Streeting have found acceptable? If Israel had somehow sought to match the precise numbers of young people, grandmothers. and babies killed by Hamas, would the Labour Party then accept that they had gone just far enough? Of course not.

Despite all the talk of ‘indiscriminate killings’ in Gaza, the IDF have been remarkably restrained and strikingly discriminate in their attacks. Of course there will have been thousands of civilian casualties, which Hamas not only makes inevitable by hiding behind the population but welcomes as a propaganda weapon. Yet as American author and former soldier Edward N. Luttwak observes, the military success of Israeli forces in Gaza has been achieved despite the “exceedingly restrained” use of their hi-tech armaments and particularly air power. In Gaza, writes the well-informed Luttwak, “the Israeli air force was hardly allowed to contribute more than a fraction of its strength to the fighting, in deference to the insistent requests coming from the White House.”

In short, contrary to the impression given by Western commentators today, there is only one force fighting in Gaza intent on committing genocide against its enemies, and that’s Hamas. But as ever, it seems the world’s only Jewish state must apparently be held to higher ‘humanitarian’ standards than anybody else in times of war. Why ever might that be?

In one sense, of course, the posturing by European and American politicians makes no difference to the war, since the Israeli government and people have so far shown little inclination to buckle under. When Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime-minister-in-waiting, declared that the fighting must “stop now,” he might as well have said ‘stop the world, I want to get off.’ But such political posturing does increase Israel’s isolation in a hostile world.

More immediately, the impending abandonment of Israel really does matter here in Europe and the West. It signals that our leaders are giving up on the fight to defend democracy and freedom at home, and to resist the rising tide of antisemitism.

So let’s remember what has been at stake since October 7th. In the first Democracy Watch column after that pogrom, I quoted the Jewish playwright Tom Stoppard’s cautionary warning that, “Before we take up a position on what’s happening now, we should consider whether this is a fight over territory or a struggle between civilisation and barbarism.”

That is even more true now than it was on October 7th. This remains a fundamental struggle between civilisation and barbarism. Not a “fight over territory” or any two-state solutions, none of which is of the slightest interest to Hamas, who are waging jihad for a global caliphate, not a Palestinian homeland.

It is an existential battle about the existence of the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East, and the ability of Western society to defend our democratic civilisation against Islamist and allied barbarians who are not only within the gates of the citadel, but spraying their pro-genocide graffiti on the Palace of Westminster.

Now is the time to stand foursquare with the Israeli people, and to remind our neighbours of what they are fighting for. If we forget, and risk losing the war over there and at home, everybody will have a long time to remember and repent.