Am Yisrael Chai

The People of Israel Live!

Am Yisrael Chai are the words recited by British Army Chaplain, Rabbi Leslie Hardman, during the first Shabbat service held in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation. It’s surely on the lips of every Jew in the world today and every non Jew who realizes the importance of Israel to global democracy and international security, both of which are under increasing threat.

Israel has pulled off one of the most amazing feats in military history — cutting off the heads of Hezbollah’s leading snakes, one by one, and reducing its capacity to continue firing missiles and drones at Israel —which it’s been doing every day since Hamas chose to murder, kidnap, and rape over 1200 Israelis on October 7th.

Hamas’ atrocities that day include capturing eight Americans, four of whom it has killed as our President has futilely tried to negotiate their release. What he hasn’t done is join Israel is attacking Hamas and trying to rescue our countrymen. Why not is a question millions of voters are silently asking themselves.

As The Free Press reminds us, Hezbollah has the blood of 241 Marines on its hands — the young American patriots Hezbollah killed in 1983 in Beirut via a suicide bombing. All told, the U.S.-designated terrorist group has killed over 300 American military personnel and civilians since 1982.

You might think that our President and Vice President would be publicly rejoicing at Israel’s elimination of Hassan Nasrallah and an ever growing number of his close associates. Indeed, you might expect our military to have conducted the mission together with Israel or, indeed, on its own.

Instead, we received a report that our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was furious with Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, for not giving him a heads up before this top-secret mission. Then, again, President Biden did mutter that Nasrallah’s death provided “a measure of justice for his many victims.”

What he should have said is this:

Today, Israel killed a terrible enemy of our country. In 1983, 241 American marines - America’s best and bravest — were slaughtered by Hezbollah, a heinous and vile terrorist organization. The same truck bombing killed 58 French paratroopers who, like our forces, came to Lebanon to serve as peacekeepers. Hezbollah has continued to attack American troops and those of our allies in the years thereafter. We congratulate Israel on this tremendous accomplishment.

We don’t know all the facts and may never know them. Perhaps our President, Vice President, and Defense Secretary were in on the mission and are now playing dumb for strategic reasons. Perhaps they assisted Israel in other ways, such as providing the 2,000-ton bombs used in the attack. But the message they are sending the American people and the rest of the world is one of profound weakness. This is the last thing Kamala Harris should be doing if she hopes to win in November.

This is the same message of passivity the Biden Administration is now sending Ukraine. President Zelensky came to the U.S. to meet with Neville Chamberlain and Benedict Arnold. Together, they told Russia,

Keep up the fight. Our red line is the border of Ukraine, not its current front line. Take whatever you want. We’ve done our part.

This is the direct opposite of what’s needed.

Today, Israel has begun a ground invasion to clear Southern Lebanon of Hezbollah’s military forces. The question is where is our military? Why is it not directly supporting Israel in eliminating Iran’s entire axis of evil and degrading Iran’s nuclear and conventional capacities. Are we really ok with Iran taking the last steps needed to develop a nuclear bomb and continuing to develop ballistic missiles (or simply buy them from Russia) capable of delivering those bombs to U.S. cities?

Imagine our armed forces, starting with our Air Force, participating in this fight. Our intervention would surely lead Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran to quickly opt for peaceful co-existence over military suicide.

There is risk in acting and there is risk in not acting. Israel’s agreeing to a cease fire with Hezbollah, as President Biden and Vice President Harris have publicly pushed and continue to push, risked and risks Hezbollah adding to what was its stockpile of 130,000 missiles and drones. Assuming each of these armaments was capable of destroying 75 or more people, Hezbollah had, prior to October 7th, enough weapons to kill every man, woman, and child in Israel.

Imagine a terrorist organization controlled Mexico and had 4.5 million missiles and drones — the proportionate number given our 34 times larger population — pointing at the U.S. Imagine the organization’s charter proclaimed the destruction of America as its central goal. Imagine the organization had been launching missiles every day for just short of 365 days at various parts of our country, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Do you think any ally of the U.S. would publicly advise the U.S. to sit back and negotiate?

Hezbollah started rocketing Israel on October 8th with no provocation. They did so to support Hamas’ atrocities. They did so with the full backing of Iran, whose decades-long mottos are Death to America and Death to Israel.

Return to September 11, 2001 when the long arm of Islamic terrorism reached our shores, killing almost 3,000 of our citizens, destroying the iconic World Trade Center and destroying part of the Pentagon. Our country spent the next almost quarter century fighting radical Islam in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The civilian death toll is estimated in the millions. One can question the rationale, success, and intent of each of these interventions, particularly Iraq. The point is that we reacted. And yes, we did so at a massive cost to innocent people, many of whom were children. And, yes, Israel is extracting a terrible cost to innocent Palestinians and Lebanese, many of whom were children. But it is doing so in the course of attacking those who are visibly attacking it. This is not Iraq, which we claimed, with phony evidence, was behind 9/11.

The loss of more than 40,000 civilians (a speculative count, which, if true, comprises large numbers of Hamas fighter) in Gaza and now Lebanon is horrific. But it’s disproportionately low compared with U.S.-caused civilian deaths in our own recent wars. Our use of the atomic bomb against Japan ended over 200,000 innocent lives in a matter of minutes. Total U.S.-caused civilian deaths in WWII from bombing Japanese and German cities, including fire-bombing Tokyo and Dresden, is estimated at up to 1 million.

In short, we are not in a position to tell Israelis to hold fire for fear of civilian casualties. The Nazis, the fanatics running Japan’s military, and their Italian, and other Axis allies bear the ultimate responsibility for the civilian casualties of WWII, just as Iran and its proxies are effectively killing and maiming the people they claim to represent.

The path to peace in the Middle East is peace, not war and terrorism. The sooner we assist Israel, with all elements of our armed forces, the sooner we will visibly convey this point to Iran and its proxies. And the sooner Palestinians will achieve statehood and be able to proclaim the People of Palestine Live!

Postscript

Two days after I penned this, Iran fired some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. The U.S. and UK helped shoot many of them down. But this is the hour for the U.S. to take out Iran’s nuclear capacity and its long-run missiles. If not, President Biden and Vice President Harris will leave a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads not just of all Israelis, but also all Americans.

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