IDF, Hezbollah Exchange Fire Despite Ceasefire

Dear Editor:

The last Hezbollah-Israel war ended with a ceasefire in 2006. UNSC 1701 stipulated Hezbollah forces would remain north of the Litani River, approximately 15 miles from Israel. The Lebanese army and UNIFIL would keep peace on the border.

Immediately, Hezbollah moved in. UNIFIL did nothing. The UN did nothing. No-one reacted to the calls of “Death to Israel, death to America”.

Hezbollah built apartments and houses for its fighters. It offered free homes to local Lebanese civilians. All structures included space for military use; for weapons storage, rocket launchers, etc.

Hezbollah amassed 150,000 rockets and missiles, imported from Iran.

On the day after Hamas’ savage slaughter of Israelis in the Gaza Envelope on Oct. 7, 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel. Iran’s plan was to replicate Hamas’ invasion across Israel’s northern border. To date Hezbollah has fired 6,700 rockets into Israel.

Israel evacuated 80,000 civilians from their towns and moved them to the interior, but they must be able to return safely to their homes.

Israel booby-trapped beepers and walkie-talkies, incapacitating 3,000 mid-level Hezbollah operatives. Then they attacked Hezbollah’s infrastructure and weapons systems.

Israel is clearly poised for victory. Lebanon’s Christian community is cheering them on. No-one else has come to their aid.

Sincerely,
Len Bennett, author of ‘Unfinished Work’
Ottawa, Canada

Nobody Is Born Antisemitic

Dear Editor:

In London last week, a 17 year-old boy pleaded guilty to setting a synagogue on fire.

In Houston, a planned massacre of Jews in a local synagogue was narrowly averted when the police arrested the conspirators before they acted—an unnamed 16 year-old boy in Texas, and 18 year-old Angelina Han Hicks, in North Carolina.

And in Syosset (Long Island), New York, a 15 year-old was arrested for drawing swastikas and antisemitic graffiti on a wall in his school. A search of his home turned up a number of explosives that he and his father, Francisco Sanles, were preparing.

Angelina Hicks and her 16 year-old friend were not born antisemitic. Neither were Francisco Sanles’s son or the arsonist in London. Nobody is. Somebody had to teach them.

A few months ago, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), published a 400-page study of 290 textbooks and 71 teachers’ guides used in schools run by the Palestinian Authority.

The study found that “virulent antisemitism, the glorification of jihad, and incitement to violence remain deeply embedded across all grades of Palestinian Authority textbooks.”

“Antisemitism remains a central feature of the curriculum,” the report concluded. “Hate and collective accusations specifically directed toward Jewish people appear across grades and subjects….Religiously motivated violence is promoted and celebrated….Science, mathematics and grammar exercises are politicized to transmit hostility and normalize violence….Maps and language in Palestinian textbooks erase Israel entirely….”

We don’t know precisely what influenced those teenagers in London, Texas, and Long Island to embrace anti-Jewish violence. But we do know what influenced the terrorists who took part in the mass atrocities of October 7, 2023: it was what they learned in school, every day, throughout their lives.

Sincerely,
Prof. Rafael Medoff

Teaching Hate

Dear Editor:

I came across an interesting item which was published in the left-of-center political affairs weekly The Nation on October 18, 1933, about nine months after Hitler’s rise to power.

“It is as plain in Germany as it is in Italy that the whole nation is being trained for war,” wrote Robert Dell, a British socialist, in an essay titled “The German Nightmare.”

He continued: “Nor is the training merely theoretical. Boys from fourteen to sixteen practice under the supervision of a teacher throwing dummy hand grenades at pasteboard soldiers in dummy trenches. There is no secret about it. They can be seen doing it in Berlin.”

They could be seen doing it in Gaza, too, for decades. And they are still doing it, today, in the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Why was there an October 7? Because if you train young people to hate Jews and love violence, eventually they will act on it. That was as true in Robert Dell’s time as it is in our own.

It’s worth recalling that in a rare moment of common sense, the editors of the New York Times wrote last September 30 that the future governing force in Gaza needs to “create a program in schools, the media and elsewhere to remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.”

The Times editorial continued: “There are historical antecedents for an international mission along these lines. Deradicalization programs succeeded in Germany and Japan after World War II, and multinational police forces have operated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti and elsewhere.”

The problem, of course, is not merely “Hamas’s radicalizing influence” but that of the Palestinian Authority, as well. The schools in PA-controlled territory, like the Hamas schools in Gaza (which for many years were run by the PA) have raised an entire generation of young Palestinian Arabs who hate Jews and Israel, glorify anti-Jewish violence, and aspire to “martyrdom”—that is, to die while attempting to murder Jews.

The perpetrators of October 7 were graduates of those institutions. The schools of Gaza will need to be completely transformed if there is to be any hope for real peace in the Middle East.

Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff