Mick Hartley

An enlightening report at Spiked from Rob Killick, visiting Israel:

‘Hamas must be eradicated.’

You can rely on taxi drivers the world over to deliver blunt opinions. Unusually for Israel today, my taxi driver is a Netanyahu supporter. He has lost family in the war with Hamas. ‘Our minds were broken’, he says of the 7 October atrocities, ‘but now we are fighting back’. This, I soon discovered, is a common sentiment in Israel. Netanyahu remains deeply unpopular, but the war on Hamas is the one policy of his that the vast majority of Israelis back.

I ask the taxi driver if the pressure from the US and the rest of the outside world to hold back is having any effect. ‘No’, he says, ‘nobody likes us now, but they will respect us when we win’.  […]

They are embarrassingly grateful that I, as a non-Jew, am here and helping in Israel. They think the entire world is against them. Ronen tells me that part of the reason there is a lull in the fighting is that the Israeli arms industry is ramping up. The aim is for Israel to be less dependent on the US for military support.

His wife says that since 7 October large sections of previously left-wing kids have rallied behind the IDF’s invasion of Gaza. Unlike Western youths, these kids have seen their friends slaughtered. Sympathy for the ‘Palestinian cause’ is a luxury belief they cannot afford.  […]

I meet Carlo. He is a gay Italian catholic, the first other non-Jew I have met since I arrived. He says that he has experienced no hostility in Israel on account of his sexuality, and thinks Queers for Palestine activists are utterly insane. This is something I hear time and again during my stay.

The manager of my hotel has a brother who helped collect the bodies along the Gazan border after 7 October. He then spent three months on active service in Gaza. She is now worried about her brother’s state of mind. Her daughter lost two friends at the Nova festival. One was found days later, decapitated. It is hard to find an Israeli who has not lost family or friends in this war. […]

There is also widespread distrust and fear about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the West. Many Israelis cannot understand why we do not understand that Israel is in the frontline of a wider struggle for democracy and civilisation. I do my best to explain that there are many in the UK and elsewhere who recognise the right and duty of Israelis to fight for their country. But when Israelis look at Western media, all they see and hear are ‘pro-Palestine’ protests and ‘pro-Palestine’ voices.

It is difficult for foreigners, especially non-Jews, to fully grasp the existential character of this conflict for Jews. This is a people who were murdered in their millions before and during the Second World War. Afterwards, they were unwanted and so they came to this patch of desert and mountains to build a fortress.

A patch of desert and mountains, it should be stressed, that is their ancestral home.

Today, Israel, a country the size of Wales, is surrounded by hostile nations and facing an almost constant insurgency. Israelis cannot afford the luxury of believing that they can survive without a fight.