Capital Review

To realize that “the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked” one need only look at the anti-Israel protests around the world since Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,400 civilians and kidnapped 200 others.

The horrific acts include:

• More than 260 people concert-goers gunned down as they fled marauding butchers. Women were raped, their legs broken, some burned alive.

• A grandmother taken hostage was executed by terrorists who filmed her murder then posted it to her social media account for her family to see.

• Traffic and dashboard cameras, plus videos boastfully recorded by the bloodthirsty attackers, shows them indiscriminately shooting and torturing civilians. Some, including children, were decapitated with shovels or rakes.

• A father was blown to bits by a grenade as his sons watched. A parent and child were bound together with wire and burned alive.

For two years preceding the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas pretended it was more interested in governing Gaza than attacking Israel. All the while, it prepared, aided by Iranian advisors, this attack on unsuspecting civilians.

Now, Israel knows it must utterly destroy Hamas, which hides its headquarters and munitions in hospitals and schools. While Israel urges Palestinian civilians to leave before bombing these locations, Hamas forces its own people – often at gunpoint – to stay in harm’s way, eager to sacrifice civilians to foment hatred of Israel.

Meanwhile, protestors in the West cheer Hamas, chanting, “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea!” Make no mistake: Palestinians do not wish to intermingle with Jews in a free, democratic state. The slogan means eradicating Jews “by any means necessary” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, Israel’s eastern and western boundaries.

These mostly-white, mask-wearing protestors lack only swastikas to punctuate their gruesome, genocidal message.

Israel is tiny – smaller than West Virginia. Its 9.5 million residents (including more than 2 million non-Jews) are vastly outnumbered by 151 million Arabs in bordering countries and half-a-billion Arabs or Muslims across the Middle East. Israeli Jews comprise less than 0.1% of the world’s population. Only in a terribly twisted world is it unacceptable to allow them a tiny homeland and the opportunity to live in peace.

As the sole democracy among its neighbors and the only one to recognize rights for sexual minorities, Israel ought to be a hero of the Left.

But protestors claim Israel “has a monopoly on violence” and that it is a “colonizer” of Palestine. Of course, Israel’s survival depends on its military strength because the first war it loses will be its last. Moreover, Israelis surely are not colonizers. Jews have inhabited the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for more than 3,000 years. It was they who were scattered from their homeland by Roman and then Muslim conquerors.

After World War I, control of Palestine fell to the League of Nations which created a homeland to which Jews could return and live alongside Palestinian Arabs who did not want a Jewish minority in their midst. Some Jews fleeing Europe were confined to refugee camps. After World War II when Arab nations backed Hitler’s Germany, the United Nations voted to create separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine.

One day after Israel declared its independence in 1947, seven Arab nations attacked it, seeking to eradicate the Jews. Miraculously, Israel prevailed in a 10-month war and emerged with control of much of the land originally designated for Arabs. Israel gained more territory following the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Egypt and Syria attacked on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

Eventually, Israel and Egypt negotiated a peace agreement in which Egypt ceased hostilities against the Jewish state. Palestinians, however, have rejected at least four opportunities for self-governance because their leaders refuse to recognize Israel’s essential right to exist.

In 2005, Israel removed 10,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza and withdrew all military personnel. Palestinians “rewarded” Israel by electing the Hamas party which is sworn to Israel’s destruction. That was the last election in Gaza.

This much is clear: If the Palestinians put down their weapons tomorrow, they would have peace with Israel. But if Israel surrendered its weapons tomorrow, it would be annihilated.

Those who justify genocide against the Jews, decapitation of children, and burning alive of families are monsters who dare not liken anyone else to Hitler or Nazis without first looking in a mirror.

Mark Hillman served as Senate Majority Leader and State Treasurer. To read more or comment, go to http://www.MarkHillman.com.