THE COLUMN: Reality Bites

A few months ago, I wrote a column in this space entitled "First, Posit a Counter-Factual," in which I remarked upon the Left's longstanding methodology of simply asserting the truth of fantastic statements and then acting upon them with the ferocity of madmen. Multiple genders, "green" energy, transsexuals, plucky little Ukraine, the harrowing threat of the "far right," and a world-wide "climate emergency" that demands immediate action are just a few of their current ideological hallucinations. Alas for them, all are currently experiencing implosion as reality catches up with insanity. But none -- as events in Israel now so vividly illustrate -- as the feminine notion that the world can sing and hug its way to perpetual peace. 

Si momumentum requeris, circumspice: Germany, which had foolishly and inexplicably abjured traditional fossil fuels as a method of heating a country that gets pretty damn cold in the winter, is now prudently backing away from its rash promise to "go Green" as the bitter realization dawns that "green" energy is essentially a political pipe dream, as well as a gigantic financial scam. Here on the home front, children inexcusably butchered by members of the medical profession are starting to sue the "doctors" who castrated them and cut off their budding breasts after a hasty but politically expedient diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" -- almost as big a hoax as "climate change" and morally even worse. While they're at it, those children ought to sue the politicians who have legalized such Mengeleian horrors, the parents who encouraged them, and the amoral members of the corporate media who have so diligently promoted the idea as (what else?) a matter of "rights."

"If you ever cock a gun in a man's face..."

Meanwhile, the state of Israel is today reeling from utterly predictable "surprise" attacks on its citizens launched by Muslim Hamas radicals; apparently the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet, and the Mossad were all too busy observing Simchat Torah to notice what was going on in Gaza -- the selfsame Gaza they so foolishly returned to Muslim control in 2005 under the Ariel Sharon government.

One of the oldest rules in American gangland was formulated by Murray "the Camel" Humphreys of the Capone mob in Chicago: "If you ever have to cock a gun in a man's face, kill him. If you walk away without killing him after doing that, he'll kill you the next day." The Israelis could have, and should have, finished the Iran-adjacent Hamas terrorist organization when they had the chance, but of course they did not, and this is the result. 

Now reality bites. Hamas -- the indirect recipient of part of the $6 billion in Iranian fund recently unfrozen by the ghastly Biden administration as part of a prisoner-swap deal -- remains as dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state (about a fifth of whose citizens are Arabs) as ever and have a rocked an always-contentious nation (a sizable proportion of the population of which doesn't even believe it should exist and don't serve in the nation's armed forces) back on its heels with the latest coordinated attacks across the border. Israel must fight, of course, and thanks to its client-state relationship with the U.S. it will have the wherewithal to do it, at least for a while. Indeed, warships and planes are already on their way.

This however is no guarantee that the wider Arab world won't see Israel's weakness as an opportunity to finish off their bête noire while they have the chance. In that event, so much for the ballyhooed Abraham Accords, one of the few remaining achievements of the Trump administration that haven't already been overturned by Joe Biden. Surely, American support for Israel has never been more tepid; the Democrats loathe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (whose brother died during the 1976 raid at Entebbe), as does the Biden administration, despite itself being heavily Jewish. There have even been pro-Palestinian marches in Washington, D.C., celebrating the attacks.

Not everybody loves Bibi.

The left in Israel has been gunning for Netanyahu for years via lawfare and its opposition to his proposal to reform Israel's supreme court. Perhaps if the country had spent more time and attention on the threats to its existence in its own back yard instead of arguing about petty politics its officials might not have been asleep at the switch Saturday, but here we are. No matter what happens, this is likely to be the end of Bibi and his spit-and-baling-wire political coalition, and will crack open even more the fissures in Israeli society. Indeed, the attack is being called "Israel's 9/11" and illustrates the folly of not finishing one's enemies given the chance:

A careful campaign of deception ensured Israel was caught off guard when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched its devastating attack, enabling a force using bulldozers, hang gliders and motorbikes to take on the Middle East's most powerful army.

Saturday's assault, the worst breach in Israel's defences since Arab armies waged war in 1973, followed two years of subterfuge by Hamas that involved keeping its military plans under wraps and convincing Israel it did not want a fight. While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group's fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, a source close to Hamas said.

Israel concedes it was caught off guard by an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday. Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns, killing 700 Israelis and abducting dozens. Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians in its retaliation on Gaza since then. "This is our 9/11," said Major Nir Dinar, spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces. "They got us."

Well, that didn't work out very well.

The cries are already coming for some sort of American involvement, especially considering the number of Israelis with dual passports, but that would be unwise; with the Ukraine mess still reeking from the bottomless stink of the Midget and his unaccountable hold over much of the western world in a cause he can only lose (but surely is privately profiting from), the last thing America needs now is to get involved in another foreign squabble. It can and will be argued that the U.S. has a duty to support its only real ally in the Middle East; it can be equally argued -- as Osama bin Laden certainly did -- that Israel is little more than the last Crusader state, the medieval County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem redux, and thus a foreign body to be violently expelled from the body of the Islamic ummah. 

A hard row to hoe, and not just for Americans but for Europeans as well, where sympathy for the Palestinians is high. The radical European left despises Israel and would hardly shed a tear if it disappeared: an ugly truth but true nonetheless. As I wrote on X the other day: "The feminine desire for peace has just been trumped by the masculine understanding that war is the natural state of man, and peace the aberration."

We know what the Romans would have done in this situation, as should the Israelis since the Jews were on the receiving end of the Roman way of total war under Titus and Hadrian. Alas for the Israelis and the rest of the world -- we're looking at you, Iran -- that will be affected by how the dominoes now fall, the Western political class of gay men and childless women is the worst since the run-up to World War I, and we all know how that ended. Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings must and will out, and when reality bites, it doesn't much care who gets it first, or whom it hurts the most.