Welcome to the last article in my quest to turn The Roundup into Israeli state media. We’ve covered around 100 years of history to some extent or another by now. But this article was always meant to be the ultimate one of the series, and all the previous ones were really meant to lay a foundation for this article. This article will be much more focused on analysis and argument than the events themselves, and as such the recap will be brief. This article will also not cover recent concerning developments with Iran, as they will get their own article in the future.

The Events

I remember October 7, and I always will, dementia or old age be damned. I remember being at a sleepover, and reading a headline on my phone around 2:00am. It read something like “Hamas Militants Cross Israel-Gaza Border.” I remember thinking “What else is new?” such was the conditioning of Jews to Hamas’ barbarism, and I went to sleep. It was only when I woke up several hours later that I realized just what had happened. I watched as Netanyahu went on Israeli television and declared that his country was at war. I watched as the largest call-up in the history of the Israeli Reserves was announced, and watched as videos of Israelis being manhandled into jeeps bound for Gaza were proudly released by Hamas.

I watched the live maps with utter horror as I realized just how deep Hamas had infiltrated because I knew that for every kibbutz, every city, every music festival Hamas fell upon, carnage not seen since the Holocaust would follow. I ranted for hours on end in front of the TV about the stupid mistakes Israel had made, and the role of the two-state “solution” and how its advocates had played in this travesty. But regardless, as the I.D.F. reached the front and pushed Hamas back into Gaza over the next couple days, everyone knew there was a bloody war to come.

As Operation Swords of Iron was launched by the I.D.F. to begin the complete annihilation of Hamas, the world cautioned Israel that it must be “proportional” in its response. That is, an idiotic notion for reasons I will cover later, but the Israeli government cared little anyways. As the airstrikes pounded Hamas into oblivion, there were immediate accusations of “indiscriminate bombing” (another falsehood I will address), but the writing was on the wall. Hamas had poked the hornets’ nest, and they were not going to make it out of this alive. For over two weeks after October 7, the I.A.F. pounded Gaza’s terrorist controllers using aerial ordinance and artillery.

Starting 20 days after the massacres of 10/7, the I.D.F. began its ground invasion by slicing the Gaza Strip in two, isolating Gaza City from the rest of the territory. They, in the following weeks and months, went about systematically eradicating the terrorists’ command centers, tunnel networks, and rocket sites within Gaza City. The situation in Northern Gaza has since been relatively calm, with I.D.F. raids continuing mop-up operations of the last of Hamas’ isolated terror cells in the area. The I.D.F. then went about taking the city of Khan Yunis further south, encircling the city and storming various points of Hamas activity (hospitals, schools, etc). Now, Hamas’ last 4-5 of 24 original battalions are pinned against the Egyptian Border, using the overcrowded city of Rafah as cover.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan ran its course without ceasefire, something Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (a man perfectly willing to blame Israel for many things) has publicly stated was Hamas’s fault. Hamas has rejected every ceasefire proposal that doesn’t perfectly suit them, and as such is deliberately prolonging this war they brought on themselves. They made a bet that Ramadan will save them, that they would be able to say Israel is preventing Muslims from living in peace during this month of prayer. But if Hamas insists on war, so be it. The final battle is coming, one that will decide the fate of Gaza and permanently change the Middle East.

For months now, the I.D.F. has held off from storming the city due to international pressure. But as of early April, the I.D.F. seems poised to enter the city. Three brigade are reportedly waiting for the green light just outside the city, and civilian evacuations have begun. As of May 6, in fact, the assault has begun after a last-ditch Hamas attempt to eek out a ceasefire approved neither by Israel nor, it appears, their Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Hamas sealed their fate on October 7, and there is no escape.

But in the end, one of the most significant things this war has ushered in is a massive set of lies. It has shown that we in the West have become complacent. We have allowed a worldview literally based entirely on lies to become mainstream. So in this next section, I will try and show some of the lies for what they are.

Common Pro-Palestine Lies

Seeing as their entire worldview is shaped by blatant lies, the Pro-Palestine movement has come up with quite a number of talking points rooted in buzzwords, not facts.

“Genocide” in Gaza

In short, there is no genocide in Gaza. In more detail, the math just doesn’t check out. The following numbers are as of mid-March, 2024. About 20,000 civilians (Hamas says over 30,000 deaths without distinguishing combatants and civilians, while the I.D.F. estimates over 10,000 terrorists killed/captured) does not seem to me like an attempt to wipe Palestinians off the planet. Gaza is among the most densely-packed places on earth. And despite its incredible density, plus Hamas’ blatant policy of blocking civilian evacuations, “only” 20,000 civilians have died. And since we’ve taken Hamas’ numbers for granted, its only fair we take the IDF at its word as well. So if we look at this 20,000:10,000 ratio, that simplifies to 2:1. That is called a “civilian to combatant death ratio,” and 2:1 isn’t what you get when carpet bombing an area.

While two civilians for every terrorist seems questionable at first, it’s actually stellar regarding heavy urban combat. The Iraq Body Count Project estimates somewhere around a 3:1 ratio was achieved during our 2003-2011 war there, during which the Iraqi insurgents worked in far less dense environments than Gaza. But perhaps an even more blatant ratio will prove my point that Israel in fact has done the opposite of genocide.

During the 1st Chechen War, there was indisputably indiscriminate bombardment of civilians on a wide scale. So lets see what ratio actual indiscriminate bombing nets you. The answer is roughly 100,000 civilians for 2,000-3,000 Chechen militiamen. That is a a 33:1 ratio at the lowest. It might well be about 50:1. Let’s compare using a down-the-middle estimate for Chechnya: 40:1. That is a ratio 20 times worse than Gaza. As you can see, not only is Israel not committing genocide, it is actively doing an excellent job avoiding unnecessary death.

I must also point out that Hamas’ numbers are in all likelihood inflated. Abraham Wyner is a statistician at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is the source for this segment. The daily death toll figures Hamas releases are linear. Maybe 15% day-to-day variation. That’s not how naturally-occurring numbers work. There will be days of many more casualties, and days of many less. Certainly there will be much more variation than 15%. In short, Hamas is almost certainly spitting out numbers it doesn’t know are true. They likely don’t have a clear idea of the casualty picture, and as such are just throwing numbers to the media, numbers that one can’t help but suspect are inflated. So, more likely than not, Israel is achieving an even better casualty ratio than I listed above.

“Apartheid State”

One common buzzword in this argument is “apartheid.” To define our terms, apartheid is a system in which races of people are segregated. So is this how Israel operates? Absolutely not. Arab-Israelis make up 20% of the population, and are entitled to every right a Jew has under Israel’s legislation. I have walked down an Israeli street and have seen women in hijabs walk around like any Jew, shopping in the same stores, buying the same food, etc. Mixed neighborhoods are commonplace, and Arab-Israelis are in the vast majority of cases downright patriotic regarding their country. They have rights as Arabs living in the Jewish State that a citizen of any Arab State can’t even imagine. The West Bank is the only place Pro-Palestinians can even begin to complain about, so let’s address it here.

To preface, I am not claiming that bad things never happen in the West Bank. Up front, I will acknowledge that there are police beatings, overly-harsh prison sentences and settler shootings aplenty. But there are two very important qualifiers to that acknowledgement. First, that is the nature of every military occupation in history. And second, said occupation is not one the Israelis wanted or started. The Israelis actively tried to avoid a war with Jordan in 1967 when they took the area, and they continue to have their hands tied in the West Bank.

They can’t unilaterally withdraw, because that would inevitably result in a terrorist state on Israel’s border, just like Gaza. And they can’t negotiate their way out of this because that door shut 16 years ago in 2008 (the last time Mahmoud Abbas ever talked to an Israeli P.M.). The Palestinian Authority doesn’t know what the word “compromise” means, and until they figure it out Israel has no partner for peace. Until they realize they are never going to get the entire West Bank plus East Jerusalem, they can’t be negotiated with. Israel has been sucked into a cycle of terrorism and counter-terrorism that only the Palestinian Authority can stop. But they don’t, do they?

Some point to movement restrictions in the West Bank as apartheid. But, even if the movement of Palestinians is restricted in the West Bank, that’s not apartheid. It’s called counterterrorism. It’s not an issue of race. Wherever Israeli restrictions are stronger, Palestinian terrorists struggle more. Take Hebron, the most heavily policed city in the West Bank. The Arab part of the city belongs to the the Palestinian-controlled Area H1, while a section of the eastern part is Israeli-controlled Area H2. The Arab part of the city is heavily policed, seeing as that’s where the terrorism is. Tons of checkpoints restrict movement and I.D.F. patrols often roam the streets. But at the end of the day, Hebron is the most secure major West Bank city precisely because of this heavy policing. Terrorism in the city is kept well under control (unlike the rest of Area A).

It is a rich city that has done well for itself, being the most economically productive area under Palestinian authority control. Yet, even with Israeli restrictions, Hebron’s Arab residents have access to some impressive luxuries. If they so desire, they legally can enter the H2 part of Hebron. They have thousands of shops, a 4,000 seat basketball stadium, knockoff I.K.E.A., and they make up 40% of the P.A.’s economy yearly.

The crown of this success story is the 8-floor shopping mall named the Hebron Center, containing all the staples of western decadence, including K.F.C. and Dominos Pizza. Come to think of it, I actually feel bad for any Palestinians who’ve been tricked into eating Dominos, but that’s not the point. And did I mention the Jews of Hebron legally don’t have access to any of that H1 area? What we see here is not apartheid against Palestinians. We see Palestinians doing well for themselves.

So let’s compare with some other West Bank cities. Take Jenin, that city is what I would call a cesspool. It is swarming with terrorists and radicals. It is also among the least-policed cities in the West Bank, and isn’t particularly productive economically. We can clearly see a trend. Wherever the Israelis don’t police and don’t use these tactics of checkpoints and detentions, terrorism flourishes.

The only thing keeping Jenin under control is the massive wall between it and Israel (which many whine about anyways). I have, in fact, seen Jenin from afar. And between me and that god-forsaken city was the West Bank Barrier, the so-called “apartheid wall.” It was at that moment I realized it was not just a land grab, but one of the only things keeping me and my Israeli brothers and sisters alive, safe from the stabbings, lynchings, bombings and shootings that originate from the city of Jenin.

“Disproportionality”

Another constant complaint from the Pro-Palestine Movement is this concept of a “disproportionate response.” Many people throughout history, some of them very much qualified to issue opinions on the matter (like former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera), have claimed that war is a game of proportionality. But that’s not how war works. War is a thing in which the very fundamentals of human society are torn into shreds.

“Thou shalt not kill” goes out the window literally on an industrial scale. What’s more, a “proportionate” response from Israel would entail the systematic raping of women, the beheading of babies and the kidnapping of innocent people. Is that what people are advocating? No, of course not, because they know such an idea is madness. When you knowingly provoke a war, you don’t get to complain about the scale of response. Were we only allowed to kill 3,200 Japanese people during WW2? No, because that’s not how war  works.

Another aspect of this is the sheer numbers. These “activists” might point to the raw numbers and say “20,000 vs. 1,200, who do the numbers say is the bad guy?” That is, however, built upon a faulty assumption. It is built upon the assumption that all human deaths are equal in the staining of the killer’s morals. That is simply not true. In what universe is the death of a civilian in an airstrike designed to minimize such casualties morally equivalent to intentionally raping and murdering a person? The answer is that there is no universe where that is true. There is no moral equivalence.

Also related to numbers is the fact that Hamas hides under civilians, and is quite nonchalant about it, too. Whose fault is it those civilians die? The side doing their damndest’ to avoid civilian casualties? Or the side systematically putting those civilians in harm’s way? We both know the answer well. So how is it in any way logical to blame Israel over Hamas for the 20,000 dead civilians? It isn’t.

“An Act of Resistance”

When the Nazis swept through France in May-June 1940, the French Resistance as it would be known, came to symbolize the ideals of a free France. A film would later be made about their bravery and dedication to fighting the greatest evil the world has ever known.

Hamas isn’t any of that.

The Resistance never widely embraced rape as a weapon of war. They never sought to terrify the German populous into submission. They didn’t seek the destruction of the German people. Yet Hamas does all of those things with Israel. Even ignoring the fact that Israel doesn’t even exist on the same moral plane as Nazi Germany, “resistance” does not justify terror. If the Palestinians simply wanted to resist occupation, they would just attack the I.D.F. (they still shouldn’t, but for arguments sake bear with me), not Israeli civilians who have little to do with their plight. Yet they don’t just attack the military. They strike at the very heart of Israel using rape, suicide bombing, stabbings, kidnappings and more to harm civilians. The Palestinian terrorist groups care little about resisting. They care about killing Jews.

This idea of resistance and lashing out against Israeli oppression has been latched onto by many. Dare I say there are students in the very halls of this school that openly admit as much. These students say, and this is a direct quotation from one of them, “What can Israel expect?” What can the Israelis expect from what? Settlements that were founded as a result of the war the Arabs started in 1967? Counterterrorism operations? Walls that the Palestinians proved needed to be there? Please.

America’s Failures

Perhaps more relevant to the reader is the situation in America. The way I see it, America has failed on two fronts in its handling of the war. It has already failed on the social level, and it seems in the process of failing on the governmental level.

The Social Aspect

To summarize my and many American Jews’ current feelings toward the United States, never before have I felt personally betrayed by such a large swathe of America. Even before Israel’s very much justified military response to October 7, there were sinister voices blaming the Jewish State for this tragedy that befell it.

Specifically, these protests on college campuses are utterly disgraceful. At U.C.L.A., students have blatantly restricted access to campus, at Colombia they’ve set up an encampment on private property, and at U.T. Austin they have, according to students all across campus, caused massive disruption. These are things you can’t do. Your right to protest exists so long as you don’t infringe on other people’s rights, like freedom of movement, the right to property and the right to learn. Yet, here is Colombia negotiating with people repeatedly told to leave. You don’t negotiate with criminals. You arrest them. Enough is enough. Follow the Texas State Police’s example, and disperse these students with force. Punish them to the fullest extent the law allows for their crimes, and give our college students campuses that aren’t war zones. These people hate Israel, America and Western values as a whole.

And so I ask myself many questions. Who is there to rely on? Not the left as they’ve proven. Not the right as they have also proven. What political party do I have? Do I, when I’m of age, vote for a Democratic Party that has just proven itself infested with antisemites and is increasingly beholden to them? Or do I vote for a Republican Party that I believe is increasingly beholden to the Marjorie-Taylor Greenes of the world, those who are only anti-Hamas because it gives them a chance to paint Muslims as a quote “Zionist controlled” existential threat to the white race? Where do I turn?

There are millions of Americans who recognize this conflict for what it is: terrorism vs. Western democracy. Yet I have seen extremely few regular old Americans attending Pro-Israel rallies. You will notice a massive amount of radicalized white people at Pro-Palestine protests, “fellow travelers” as they’re known. But at Israeli rallies, there are few but the Jews. Why, America, are the Jewish on their own?

Of course, there are bastions of intelligent life out there. Some, like our own Dr. Michael Degen have fully supported me on this marathon of an article series, and some Jewish faculty members have reached out to me in an attempt to grasp some semblance of solidarity. And ultimately, I appreciate that. I appreciate the atmosphere Jesuit, a catholic school, has managed to craft of plurality and religious tolerance. But ultimately, the problem isn’t Jesuit. It’s that most places aren’t Jesuit.

So my point, after all of that, is simply that as Americans, we have failed collectively. The situation is not good. After all, antisemitism is a sort of “canary in the coal mine” for various societies. When people start blaming Jews for problems that A. they didn’t cause and B. often don’t even exist, some kind of decay has gone on. Is this what the West has become? A husk stuck blaming the vulnerable for the sake of some idiotic agenda of oppressor vs. oppressed? I hope, for all our sake, that it’s not.

The Governmental Aspect

But as rotten as America’s most prestigious academic institutions, media conglomerates, social movements, and “philosophers” may be, arguably only the Federal Government has the power to enact change on global scales. Unfortunately for Israel, this too might be shifting.

President Biden has strongly supported Israel, providing weapons and using America’s veto power at the U.N. Security Council to shield Israel from a torrent of pointless and idiotic U.N. Resolutions, and for this I thank him. There is no disputing that Biden has been the high-ranking democrat most willing to support Israel, and for this I thank him. But these increasingly public spats between him and Netanyahu are unacceptable. Relatively recently Biden said the Israeli P.M. needed a “come to Jesus moment” over his attitude toward civilian casualties. As we’ve laid out previously, the Israeli attitude toward civilians is neither one of malice nor one of indifference as reflected in the death numbers.

My ire is most intensely directed toward the Biden Administration for its policy of what can only be described as gaslighting. This constant toeing the line between “Israel has a right to dismantle Hamas” and “Israel needs to hold off on attacking Rafah” needs to stop. As George W. Bush declared, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists.” There can be no destruction of Hamas without the invasion of Rafah. This fearmongering of inordinate civilian death in Rafah is just false. The I.D.F. has already bought 40,000 tents of 10-12 people each, and is setting them up near Khan Yunis. That’s 400,000 less people that the I.D.F. needs to worry about in Rafah, roughly 25% of the 1.5 million people living there at the moment.

More recently, threats from Biden over preventing the use of American weaponry (most likely precision guided munitions) in an assault on Rafah only add salt to the wound. It’s an idiotic idea for a couple reasons. Firstly, the fear that Israel will kill tons of civilians with these weapons is unfounded, as proved earlier. Secondly, the absence of things like American-made precision guided munitions only increases civilian casualties. The I.D.F. is going to hit their targets. It is up to Biden whether they use a P.G.M. or a dumb bomb. Either way the Israelis will do their best to limit casualties, but one of the options helps them do that much better. If you want Israel to be surgical, give it access to a scalpel, not a fire axe.

Conclusion

But to leave off, I do have a personal appeal to each of you, however many that may be. I want, and need you to be an advocate. Jews comprise 0.2% of the world. Catholics, on the other hand, make up about 31%. Jews only have one homeland, one seat at the U.N., one state. Our only steadfast ally is the United States. If not for America, Israel could very well have lost in 1973. If not for America, Israel could very well have needed to tolerate the P.L.O.’s terrorism in 1982. And without America going forward, Israel will absolutely need to tolerate it’s citizens being raped, decapitated, and paraded around.

If, God forbid, people like Ilhan Omar are the future of this nation’s politics, Israel will be wiped off the map entirely, its residents subject to another Holocaust. So it is up to reasonable Americans like yourself to avoid silence. Donate to various funds supporting October 7’s victims, donate to pro-Israel charities like A.I.P.A.C. (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee). I need you to keep in mind that the best way to end the children of Gaza’s suffering is to finish this war quickly, and the best way to move forward is to forge a future free of Hamas. Anything you can personally do is profoundly appreciated by the Jewish community. I know this for a fact.

So in short, the Jewish community needs you. We don’t have numbers, and as such we can’t defeat the sheer amount of idiocy pumped out daily by the Pro-Palestine movement. It is because of that we need you to help make up the difference. I thank you profoundly for reading this series. I look forward to covering other topics, even diversifying beyond the fun subject of war. Additional debate coverage and some other, less long winded opinion pieces are to come in the near future. Once again, I thank you for your readership, and long live the Western World.