There is an old school marm and or hippie aphorism that says violence never solved anything. History says otherwise.

Violence has liberated entire peoples from tyranny, from bloody genocide, from decades of captivity. Violence has brought freedom and liberty to nations and righted wrongs. Judiciously applied violence keeps us safe from criminals and the threat of violence keeps us safe from foreign enemies. So when a nation that is attacked is criticized for defending herself by violence you can bet the critics have nothing against violence as long as it is committed by themselves. Which brings us to the Middle East.

Every day for decades Israel has lived with unprovoked violence aimed at her very existence. When Israelis die in terrorist attacks or by rockets from Lebanon or Gaza the world hardly notices. It seems, after all the tragedies of the last century, to much of the world Jewish lives are still cheap, a commodity to be thought of in the historical abstract but never in day to day reality.

However, let Israel defend herself and the usual suspects are in an uproar. AOC and Tlaib engage in their usual Jew baiting. The Biden administration initially gets it kinda right then backtracks under pressure from their antisemitic hard left. The Euros tut tut and, as Churchill said, can’t tell the difference between the fire and the fire department. Our media, and worldwide media in general, blame Israel for her incursion into Gaza while completely ignoring the reason they went in. How strange those Jews are. When attacked, they defend themselves. How gauche.

All the while the neverending absurdity of Gaza and the West Bank continues. Part of me wants to see Israel put the whole lot to the sword and be done with the whole festering deal. As satisfying as that would be in a purely spiritual sense, it is not realistic. It would only cause more headaches.

It serves the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to attack Israel and use her as a convenient scapegoat to divert attention away from their unbelievable corruption and theocratic fascism. Under that leadership Gaza and the West Bank will stay under a constant state of agitation and aggression because their masters decree it so. The only man who perhaps could have made some headway in the Middle East, as he did in other facets of that particular Gordian Knot, American voters booted out of the presidency last year.

So Israel has gone into Gaza and will give Hamas a bloody nose. The world will coddle Hamas and curse the Israelis for defending their own citizens. Then Israel will withdraw and, after a brief period, the rocket attacks will begin anew. And then, after a decent interval, the Israelis will go back in. And so on and so on and so on…