Over the top

From Wikipedia

On October 7, Israel suffered a brutal attack from Hamas and grieves for the hostages held by the savages. When President Biden criticizes Israel’s necessary war in Gaza to eliminate Hamas as “over the top,” the irony is, well, “over the top.”

Israel faces cruel enemies whose hyperbolic hatred is hard to top. Hamas’s charter calls for the elimination of Israel, and it pledges to repeat the sadistic murder, rape, hostage-taking, and butchery “…over and over.”  Iran’s genocidal “death to America and death to Israel” screed is actualized by proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. This “over the top” vitriol should restrain President Biden from second guessing his ally, Israel.

Here in America, antisemitic, anti-Israel protestors, riled up by their misperception of the October rampage and indoctrinated instead of educated by woke professors, have no skin in the game. Their demonstrations, as an intersectional virtue signaling exercises, are part of this year’s BLM or Women’s March an “over the top” cause célèbre.

Wasn’t the over one hundred and fifty billion dollars of President Obama’s financial relief afforded Iran, and ultimately passed on to her proxies, as part of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015, an example of “over the top” weak-kneed capitulation? Are the over one hundred and fifty thousand Hezbollah rockets pointed at Israel an “over the top” menace that must be eliminated?

In 1948, Palestinian refugees, not expelled but instead leaving at the behest of their leaders, numbered between 500-700 thousand. Today, there are over six million “refugees.” No other group of displaced persons, including all the Jews expelled from North African countries, enjoy their “over the top” United Nations support. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has squandered an “over the top” amount of money. The United States alone has spent over seven billion dollars to UNRWA since inception, and this unique indulgence has been rewarded with hate-based school curricula, a 2005 Gaza disengagement by Israel where the Palestinians chose Hamas leadership, hundreds of miles of terror tunnels instead of Singapore-on-the-Mediterranean, and October 7 UNRWA staff collaboration. That’s an “over-the-top” squandering of good funds and opportunity to live in peace.

When the United States, in 1941, was attacked by the Japanese, President Roosevelt, in his December 8 Infamy Speech called for absolute victory. Our response included fire-bombing Tokyo and destroying two cities with nuclear weapons. Similarly, in the war against Nazi Germany, America subjected the enemy to devastating aerial carpet bombing most major cities and with fire-bombing urban sites like Dresden. For the sake of our troops and in pursuit of all out victory, all out war was necessary. Yes, some pundits opined on use of the atomic bomb and author Kurt Vonnegut penned his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five about Dresden’s conflagration. But America’s effort to prosecute a just war against her enemies and to bring her troops home safely was not to most Americans considered “over the top.”

In both theatres of war, American civilians were thousands of miles away from the battlefields and were protected by wide oceans. Not so for Israel with uncomfortably tight borders proximate to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The constant rocket attacks Israel has endured leave Israeli communities with seconds to find cover.  Only because of the innovative Iron Dome has Israel not responded more often and inflicted greater damage on the Hamas launchers.

Fighting in an urban environment against an enemy that uses human shields is the ultimate military challenge. The IDF rigorously trains to ensure it fights as ethically, as possible and the use of warnings sent to civilians before attacks are well documented. Unfortunately, Israeli troops often are placed into incremental danger because of these prescribed procedures. The parents of these brave Israeli fighters agonize that their child may wounded or worse doing the right thing.

President Biden has for the most part acted as a faithful partner supporting Israel in both word and deed. Loads of armaments continue to be delivered, and support on the diplomatic stage has been ironclad. But it is most unfortunate when ill-chosen condemnations are uttered or premature calls for cease-fire or Palestinian statehood are dignified. During President Biden’s lifetime, Israel has fought against five Arab countries for her independence, and she has endured multiple existential wars. President Biden has witnessed unending terror attacks, including the bloody intifadas, and he knows Palestinian intransigence prevented any real chance at a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Israel is, and has been, in a desperate fight for national survival. Loose phraseology like “over the top” comforts her undeserving enemies. If the phrase is to be used, it should highlight the extreme dangers that threaten Israel.