It's time to open your eyes: The war against Hamas is not just Israel’s problem

On the morning of Saturday, Oct. 7, I woke up to a message from Voz Media Editor-in-Chief Mario Noya. I read the message, as I was just a few minutes away from getting out of bed. I thought something serious had happened. "Hamas invaded Israel," he said, and asked if I was online. I thought he was exaggerating. Although I was not yet completely lucid because I had just woken up, I imagined that it was a, let's say, usual infiltration, in which one or two Palestinians managed to cross from Gaza, advanced a few yards and that soon the security forces were going to catch them.

However, I began to realize, now a bit more awake, that it was evidently something more serious. I got up and looked on my phone at what was happening in Israel, a country where I lived seven years of my life and which I admire beyond its successes and its mistakes.

I couldn't believe what my eyes saw and read. Hamas had actually invaded southern Israel after a wave of rocket attacks. The terrorists roamed around as if they were in their own home, murdering, raping, beheading, torturing and kidnapping men, women and children. It was a true pogrom in the 21st century in the Jewish state.

I quickly made myself a coffee and sat in front of the computer trying to keep up to date on social media. I am well educated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as I have followed it since my childhood and I lived in Israel for almost seven years of my life, where I served in the army, studied and worked. For this reason, Mario left me in charge of many more responsibilities than usual. The reports and images that came in were increasingly more intense, increasingly sadder, increasingly more horrible. I didn't know what to post first. I wanted to keep our social media followers updated in the best way. If there is something I can rescue from the stress and pressure I suffered at that time, it is that it helped me overcome the anger, pain, disgust and sadness I felt, feelings that would have played tricks on me when it came to work. People had to know what was happening as reliably as possible. There would be time for my brain to cope with the severity of what was happening.

The blows hit close. I wondered if I would have died in this attack. He could well have been murdered or kidnapped.

It became night. The day passed quickly, and it became time to think about what had happened. I never imagined that I would feel the pain so close to me, and not only because when I lived in Israel I had attended electronic music festivals like the one where hundreds of young people were killed, tortured and kidnapped. I had traveled to the south several times to visit friends, and I had lived in the same places that were hit by several rockets. I still have friends and friends of friends there. I contacted them to see if they were okay, and luckily they were.

But then I received a message from one of my best friends, who told me that the brothers of a friend of his who lives in Israel were missing and had not yet been found. Were they killed? Are they being held hostage in Gaza? Where and how will they be found? There was so much uncertainty. Then a childhood friend whom I had been in touch with recently wrote to tell me that his cousin’s family was one of those that had been killed. The entire family was murdered while in their home. ALL, at once, by wild beasts for whom life is worth absolutely nothing.

The blows hit close. I wondered if I would have died in this attack. I could well have been murdered or kidnapped. I've never felt like this. Not even when a terrorist was found in the restaurant where I worked when I lived in Tel Aviv in 2006 or when a suicide bomber in Burgas, Bulgaria, blew up a bus, killing seven Israelis in 2011, maybe the same one I was on a year before when I flew to that Bulgarian city for work.

I didn't understand what had happened in Israel. How could one of the strongest armies in the world have failed so much for so long? Golda Meir resigned from her position for much less after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Then I had to continue working to continue showing the war, and that's when I started seeing the messages on social media. Of course there have been many gestures of support for Israel and plenty of repudiation for Hamas terrorists, which shows that perhaps the world is not lost after all. However, there is also so much support for terrorism from the left. They accuse Israel of apartheid and genocide and even compare the Jewish state to the Nazis, as did Gustavo Petro, the terrorist president of Colombia who is obsessed with drug money.

And now a phrase Alejo Schapire comes to mind, which summarizes part of the ideology from the left, whose members are nothing more than skinheads with hair: “The left sees Nazis everywhere except when there are Jews murdered for being Jews.” Spot on.

However, we must also remember the words of Yoseph Haddad, the Israeli-Arab activist whom I had the honor of interviewing for Voz Media, who said that “terrorists do not distinguish between Arabs and Jews.” Haddad is the citizen of Israel who travels the world to explain that the Jewish state is far from an apartheid. There is more freedom there than in any other country in the region for ALL citizens. Yes, ALL, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, gender, color, sexual preference, etc.

Apartheid is precisely what the Palestinian leadership does, and not only the wild beasts from Hamas, but also those from Fatah, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called moderate Israel is being asked to negotiate with, recently justified the Holocaust. What the Palestinian extremists want to perpetrate is genocide, but they won't be able to do it.

This bizarre alliance between the left and Islamic extremism is tragicomic, and it is already being seen in the U.S. The Muslims and progressives who want to impose their crazy agenda on everyone are creating friction, even in a population that is usually made up of more conservative people, thought it contains a large faction of intolerant people willing to do anything to inflict their ideas.

I'm tired, truly exhausted. I am writing this article little by little, at night, after days when I barely get up to go to the bathroom because Voz Media and I need to keep people updated about what is happening as well as we can. The issue is no longer focused only on Israel, because anyone who believes that Hamas and the other Islamic terrorist groups in Gaza are simply aiming to obtain territory understands absolutely nothing. The purpose of this type of group is to throw the Jews into the sea, exterminate them. They said it, not me.

In the eyes of Islamic terrorists, we are all less than rats; we are garbage that must be exterminated because we 'pollute' the 'pure air' of Islam.

But do people really believe that their only target is the Jews? Not at all. The problem for them is that the Jewish state, an oasis of freedom and progress in the Middle East, is next door, and it is strong, proud, prosperous, open and free. This is something they cannot stand. Israel is the first obstacle, that's all. However, radical Islam continues to expand throughout Europe, and terrorist attacks have even affected infidels (non-Muslims or Muslims who do not want to follow this path of destruction).

The security problems in Europe are generating concern among authorities, who, through a mixture of absurd do-goodism and political opportunism, have opened doors to many people who not only do not want to integrate, but also seek to impose an authoritarian and violent way of life. I have been seeing people who beginning to change their minds about immigration, people who lived in a fantasy world believing that the problem was borders and lack of opportunities, although no one seemed to point out that lack of opportunities began in the countries these refugees were coming from. Very well, the borders opened and they poured in, while the opportunities were there for them to take, but they rejected them. They were only looking for the opportunity to dominate the West. They go little by little; they are not in a hurry.

Are there really people who believe that these beasts have any regard for the people who welcome them with open arms and try to 'understand' them? In fact, many of the Israelis living in the kibbutzim and other communities in the south, and several of those who were at the Music Festival for Peace, yes, FOR PEACE, were surely pacifists. Hamas terrorists kidnapped them, murdered them, raped them, beheaded them, tortured them and set them on fire because they don't care AT ALL about their ideology, their way of thinking, whether they are sympathetic or not. In the eyes of Islamic terrorists, we are all less than rats; we are garbage that must be exterminated because we 'pollute' the 'pure air' of Islam. I would surely have had many debates with the victims regarding how Israel, Europe and the world should take care of themselves, because I have been repeating it for many years: prevention is better. We already see what Israel has to do now because it made serious mistakes protecting its borders. So did Europe, whose measures to protect its population from radical Islam are being tightened little by little, and it is not clear where they are going. The enemy is devouring them from the inside.

Returning to Israel, I ask: is Yoseph Haddad right when he says, as he stated during his interview with me, that Israel always responded to attacks to the "correct extent," ergo, the proportion that the world was asking for, while Hamas and other terrorist groups set the pace of the conflict to reinforce themselves and attack again? If so, surely none of this would be happening today. As I read from an online influencer, Israel is not going to respond "proportionately," because it is not willing to go to a music festival and rape women, kidnap and murder innocent people at random, or go house to house gunning down entire families and decapitating babies. No, Israel prefers to go after the terrorists, who, of course, are hiding among the civilian population to hinder Israeli attacks. Therefore, as Yoseph Haddad told me, Hamas is responsible for EVERYTHING that happens in Israel and Gaza.

The images from Saturday, Oct. 7, will remain in everyone's memory until the end of our days, like the images of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

I'm tired. The fatigue is weighing on me. My work days have now become complicated in every sense, not only because of the amount of information that I have to post, but also because of the anger and sadness that it causes me. But I want to continue to write and make the clarifications I always make once again.

Let's see if it is understood once and for all: Israelis go to sleep thinking about work the next day; Palestinian terrorists on how to kill them. Israelis create and produce products that are used around the world and improve the lives of all of us; Palestinian terrorists only think about destruction. Israelis educate their children to succeed in life; Palestinian terrorists only educate them to glorify death, their own. In Israel, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, Orthodox, secular, gay, heterosexual, etc. live together with the same rights and with more freedom than in any other country in the region, while in Gaza or the West Bank, authoritarianism and intolerance reign against infidels, gays and anyone who does not submit to their tyrannical whims. In Israel, there is freedom of expression for everyone; In Palestinian territories, no one can say a word to criticize leadership.

It is likely that nothing I write will change the minds of the people who have already established a stance on this issue. Unfortunately, I am not just referring to the left, but there are open and intelligent people who are not going to be carried away by a image, nor because of what this or that person says, not even myself. It is for those people that I am taking all this time to write.

But beyond everything, Israel has to do what it has to do. The images from Saturday, Oct. 7, will remain in everyone's memory until the end of our days, like the images of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. And yes, as expected, many voices are speaking up to condemn the Israeli response, which is strong, which is forceful, but it is still not enough. Damage to civilians must be minimized, which is what Israel always does, but Hamas and other terrorist groups must be exterminated. The price that the Jewish state will pay will be high. Many soldiers and civilians will die, even though Israel has the power to erase Gaza with a stroke of a pen. However, it pays with the blood of its own so as not to spill the blood of others. Anyway, as I said, nothing is going to satisfy those who already have their opinion solidified, whether it be out of hatred or not. But Israel must continue its path.

When I was in the army, at no time was I taught to commit the atrocities that some say Israeli soldiers do, quite the contrary. What's more, I joined the army with young people from a diverse background of cultures, ethnicities and religions (Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, Bedouins, etc.). In fact, the logistics commander at the base where I spent my last few months of military service was a Druze man, and it was he who gave us a class on the Holocaust on the day of remembrance for the victims of the Nazi genocide. I will never forget that even my friends in combat duty told me that they sometimes had to defend Palestinians when a conflict arose between religious nationalists and inhabitants of a Palestinian village in the West Bank.

That is the fundamental difference: in Israel life is valued, even the lives of those who want to kill them, while Palestinian fundamentalists value death and will kill even their own brothers to achieve their dark ideological and political objectives.

Israel has the right to defend itself and its population has the right to debate and fight without this posing a danger to the country's existence. Many people say that internal division related to judicial reform led to Oct. 7. I don't know, but Israelis have the right to debate these issues, as in any other country in the world, but when their very existence is at stake, they will unite, as they are doing now.

It is incredible that Israel is being attacked from all cardinal directions all the time by people who want to make its entire population disappear, yet it still has to provide an explanation for why and how it defends itself, even though it does so prudently given the very difficult circumstances. Israel responds forcefully to terrorists while trying to avoid civilian casualties, unlike their enemies, who target civilians on the other side and use those on theirs as human shields. However, Israel still must explain its actions. Enough. As Golda Meir said: "I prefer everyone's repudiation, not their condolences."

Will there be peace? Is it necessary to clarify again that Hamas does not want peace and that the so-called moderates in the Palestinian Authority who justify the Holocaust don't either? How many times have they rejected any type of solution to the conflict to have their own state once and for all? Hamas, being a radical Islamist organization, aims to murder all Jews and is part of the radical Islamist world that wants to dominate the planet with its authoritarian, misogynistic, racist and bloodthirsty ideology. Palestinian Authority leadership has repeatedly demonstrated that peace is not, shall we say, among its priorities. Not even when in the early 2000s, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat almost everything they supposedly asked for, which the Palestinians responded to with the Second Intifada, or when Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas everything he supposedly demanded just a few years after. What's more, Israel saved the lives of many members of the political-military organization Fatah, which is a main component of the Palestinian Authority, when they were cruelly attacked by Hamas terrorists in 2007.

Israel has not only saved the lives of Fatah members, but has even saved the lives of Palestinian terrorists who were injured by Israeli forces after staging an attack. That is the fundamental difference: in Israel, life is valued, even the lives of those who want to kill them, while Palestinian fundamentalists value death and will kill even their own brothers to achieve their dark ideological and political objectives.

It is necessary to clarify that this conflict is no longer just about the Arabs vs. the Israelis, but about civilization against barbarism; those who value life against those who value death; those who promote freedom for all against those who want to subject the world to their authoritarian whims.

Never again means never again. The time has come for Israel to set the pace of combat instead of Hamas or their friends in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It must turn a deaf ear to the part of the mainstream press that does not care to check information and prefers to lie in order to tarnish Israel's image. It must also ignore the hypocritical UN, where the worst tyrannies in the world give lessons on human rights. People can talk all they want, but it is necessary to repeat Golda Meir's phrase: "I prefer everyone's repudiation, not their condolences."