My Word: The Ayatollahs’ war via Gaza - opinion

Israelis have a saying “Zar lo yavin et zeh” – “An outsider wouldn’t understand it.” The fact that the slogan is in Hebrew narrows the number of people who get the meaning. There are some things we’ve gone through – the wars, the waves of terrorism, the stated desire by our enemies to wipe us off the face of the Earth, that sort of thing – that bring Israelis together.

Ten months after the Hamas mega-atrocity of October 7, Israelis differ in their opinions on how to deal with the challenges we face but recognize that those dangers and threats are aimed at us all – religious and secular, Left and Right. We are, in fact, facing the sort of difficulties no other country in the world is facing – yet. How we fare will affect how the rest of the global village will cope.

As I write these lines, we are still in a period of heightened tension, waiting to see whether Iran or its proxy in Lebanon will launch some form of mega-attack on the Jewish state. The uncertainty is something Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has proudly admitted is a form of psychological warfare.

It is also emotionally draining as we wait to hear whether the hostages being held by Iranian-sponsored Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza will be released, and at what price. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the fate of those abducted on that dark Shabbat. They’re always in our thoughts and prayers.

Following the IDF’s retrieval of six bodies this week, there are now 109 people held in captivity, with only some 70 believed to be alive. That number could be dropping as you read this.

The fact that Hamas has not been willing to give Israel a list of the hostages, dead or alive, is a reminder of how evil it is. That the International Red Cross Committee has not visited the hostages or even delivered much-needed medication to those being held captive in Gaza – ranging in age from one-year-old Kfir Bibas to 86-year-old Shlomo Mansour – shows just how ineffective the international community is in the face of this evil.

Hezbollah and Iran are not planning major retaliatory strikes against Israel in response to the targeted elimination of arch-terrorists Fuad Shukr and Ismail Haniyeh, in Beirut and Tehran respectively, both operations attributed to Israel. 

Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen plan their attacks because they openly want to cause the demise of Israel. And they have been allowed to get away with it. The international pressure is on Israel, not on nearly nuclear Iran with its far-reaching terrorist tentacles.

I WAS struck this week by two commercial campaigns on Israeli TV stations. A series of informative ads by Magen David Adom show first-responder and former supermodel Miri Bohadana explaining what to do in an emergency, ranging from a panic attack to major blood loss. 

For the latter, Bohadana calmly shows how to apply a makeshift tourniquet. It’s a bit like a flight attendant charmingly explaining what to do if your plane is about to crash. Incidentally, I once heard of a quick-thinking officer who used the arm of her sunglasses to tighten an improvised tourniquet on a terror victim. Live and learn. And learn and live.

The second ad that caught my attention was part of a public relations campaign by Mifal HaPayis, the government-owned lottery company. It starred popular singer-actor Idan Amedi, a cast member of the TV drama Fauda and real-life hero, who was seriously wounded during his military reserve duty in Gaza. 

In the ad, against the background of an emergency helicopter evacuation, Amedi calls for continued unity and to help each other cope and survive – the physically wounded, emotionally traumatized, those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, and the bereaved.

The ads didn’t seem out of place, although I’m not sure a stranger would have the same reaction. Similarly, we have grown used to television programs like the local versions of Come Dine with Me and Strictly Come Dancing being broadcast with real-time rocket alerts superimposed as necessary. What can I tell you? If you’re not from around here, you might not get it.

It’s not normal – nor should it be – but it’s part of the collective coping mechanism. It is jarring, however, when the rocket and drone alerts dominate one side of the TV screen during news reports on the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice condemning Israel and of world leaders calling for Israel to make more humanitarian gestures and concessions to those who continue to threaten us and bombard us with rockets.

No end in sight 

And it’s not going to change. The attacks won’t magically stop if a deal is reached with Hamas and, by extension, Hezbollah. Neither are about to change their dedication to trying to eliminate the Jewish state.

After the October 7 invasion and mega-atrocity in which some 1,200 people were brutally murdered, there was a lot of discussion about what to call the subsequent Israeli military operation.

The official title, Operation Swords of Iron, has not really taken root. 

Personally, I think the name “the Iran-Israel War” is more accurate. It’s a war of attrition in which the ayatollahs in Tehran play a major role. Terrorist atrocities are part of that attrition, aimed at driving Israelis to tear each other apart in continued social and political divisions – boosted by Iranian bots and manipulations on social media – or to abandon the country altogether.

There are ongoing rocket and killer drone attacks from several fronts, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, directly from Iran. There are also constant terror attacks. At least two fatal attacks in recent weeks were perpetrated by terrorists released in the hostage deal in November.

Israel is being pressed into withdrawing from the critical Philadelphi Corridor, where arms and supplies to Hamas flowed over the border with Egypt (and under it, through the dozens of terror tunnels Hamas built there). Jerusalem is expected to release more terrorists in return for citizens abducted from their homes and a nature rave – and who can forget the bloodied and anguished faces of the unarmed female soldiers snatched off duty from their base wearing their pajamas? 

Israel is being told to risk Hamas regaining its strength and even building on it in the nominally Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank. All this, in return for a passing illusion of fleeting quiet – at least long enough to survive the US presidential elections in November.

The current administration under President Joe Biden and Vice President and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, for all its stated support, strong words, and military gestures, has not left Iran deterred or weaker. On the contrary; mobs in Tehran still chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” – the Big Satan and the Little Satan. The ayatollahs continue to inspire, sponsor, and train terrorist movements – Shi’ite and Sunni alike – as part of a strategy aimed at bringing down Israel, the US, and the West. 

These are not freedom fighters 

The anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrators holding rallies on campuses and in Western cities, waving Palestinian flags and proclaiming Hamas slogans, are not the face of democracy and freedom of expression. 

If you don’t understand this, you risk becoming a stranger in your own land. The pro-Palestinian protesters outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week were actors on the sidelines of the theater of terror.

As Seth Mandel wrote recently in Commentary: “Fact is, the Iranians have systematically worked to erase the Palestinians from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to take their place. This is a war Iran has launched against the US and Israel. Gaza is a front in that war.

“We have let Tehran hijack the narrative and set the terms of the conflict. If we don’t reverse that, we’ll be further than ever from peace in the region.”

This is not about the Islamic Republic threatening the Jewish state. This is about a jihadist bully threatening the global village, starting with the Jews.