by Stefano Piazza
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s wanted number one, sent Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a letter in recent days thanking and appreciating the support given by the pro-Iranian Lebanese organization since the beginning of the war against Israel. “The blessed procession of martyrs,” the missive reads, according to Israeli media, citing the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen, ‘will grow in strength and power in the struggle against the Nazi-Zionist occupation,’ the Hamas leader reportedly wrote, and pledged to fight the “Zionist project” together with the rest of the so-called axis of anti-Israel resistance “until the occupation is defeated and wiped out of our land and our independent state with full sovereignty is established with Jerusalem as its capital.”
October 7, 2023, was not only a tragedy for Israel, but a new stain on human civilization as a whole that has forgotten the Shoah. What happened raises profound questions about the nature of human beings, the dangers of hatred and prejudice, and the responsibilities of individuals and nations in the face of absolute evil. I have been dealing with terrorism and fundamentalism for many years, but what I saw during my trip to Israel last February is something unspeakable, shocking and that must be fought, because today it is Israel’s turn, tomorrow it will be our turn. No one has any illusions.
International solidarity with Israel lasted a few days. Then, when the Jewish state decided to respond with the military operation to prevent a new Oct. 7 and to bring home the hostages still alive and the bodies of those who were barbarically slaughtered by Hamas jihadists, we witnessed the total reversal of the story. The media has so far played a key role in the narrative of the conflict, which is all or most of it against Israel, as Hamas communiqués about the obviously false death toll, military operations and everything else happening in the Gaza Strip are copied, pasted and fed to readers, who are presented with a reality that has been studied at a desk by those very fine minds behind Hamas propaganda.
But Oct. 7 also spells the end of institutions such as the UN, now hostage to Iran, the Arab states, Russia and China, which, not surprisingly, are against Israel, and the European Union, which, amidst a thousand distinctions, has as its High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy a man like Josep Borrell who, like UN Secretary General António Guterres, have for decades made hostility to Israel their political and personal hallmark. But October 7 did not come by accident. The military operation desired by Iran has been studied for years and someone in Israel has not been vigilant, and for that they will have to explain and pay the price for their inaction.
Finally, there is an October 7 that has yet to be written; who prevented radio, telephone and web communications in southern Israel for hours that morning? To my specific question the answer was, “a state entity and we are investigating.” Who did it and why? Who is paying for the street demonstrations against Israel, who is funding the protests in the universities, and who is paying those who have been going on television every day for a year now to tell that Hamas is a political movement and Israel is a terrorist state? Take notice: these are the same people who have been serving Vladimir Putin’s Russia, he a war criminal, for more than two years. This cannot be a coincidence.