The fragility of life – and frailty of ceasefires – was not pounded home with a thump. In fact, it was a news item I almost missed that set me thinking.
On Tuesday, June 24, Israelis celebrated the sudden ceasefire with Iran announced by US President Donald Trump after the US Air Force had struck three nuclear facilities. If you haven’t spent 12 days (and nights) running to bomb shelters from incoming ballistic missiles, it’s hard to explain the relief of it officially being over.
Late that evening, however, an item almost overlooked amid the tumultuous news roundup suddenly hit me – thank Heavens, not literally. Two killer drones had been intercepted on their way to Israel. Apparently, they had been part of a batch launched hours earlier – before the ceasefire went into effect – but due to the vast distance they had to cover from the Islamic Republic to the Jewish state, it had taken them a long time to reach here.
What would have happened, I wondered, had the drones impacted with lethal power after the ceasefire had been announced?
When Iran launched its ballistic and cruise missiles and killer drones on Israel, it let them go and hoped for the best – or worst, from the Israeli viewpoint. Israeli public advocate Eylon Levy succinctly summed up the war: “The Iranian regime blew up a hospital, a cancer research center, a disabled kids’ clinic, and thousands of civilian homes.
“Israel blew up Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, top brass, and together with the United States – its precious nuclear program.”
Whose side do you support?
After the ceasefire, Israelis swiftly got back into start-of-summer mode. The Jerusalem Municipality immediately announced the resumption of normal service: that schools would be open and parking inspectors would again be giving out tickets. There was an only-in-Israel postscript – Hebrew Book Week events would also pick up where they left off following the start of Operation Rising Lion on June 13.
The English-speaking community was treated to a “Show must go on” experience in Jerusalem when Encore Educational Theatre Company rescheduled missed performances of its high-level, amateur production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard.
But the rocket threat is not over. Since the ceasefire with Iran, its Houthi proxies in Yemen, and even Hamas in Gaza, have continued to launch rockets and drones that were either intercepted or landed without harm to people.
The Houthi rockets are less sophisticated than those of its patron and, usually launched singly, generally cause less damage. I don’t fear these rockets – I fear getting used to them. Israelis should not return to a situation where they shrug at rockets as long as no one is killed. Running for shelter, closing the airport – such things should not be normalized. Not once a week, once a month, or even just once a year.
If October 7, 2023, taught us anything, it’s not to ignore signs of aggression – the rockets and incendiary devices and riots along the southern border; the occasional missiles on the center of the country; the Hezbollah rockets and terror attacks in the North.
Israel is often tritely told that “you make peace with enemies, not friends.” But you can’t make peace with enemies still sworn to your destruction. Although Trump declared Israeli agreement to a 60-day ceasefire this week in Gaza, it doesn’t solve the problems. Peace is made with countries, not terrorist organizations that hold hostages. It would be foolish – suicidal, even – to forgive and forget the Iranian-sponsored Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity when 1,200 were murdered in southern Israel and 251 abducted amid the cover of massive rocket fire.
Netanyahu's White House visit expected to reshape the Middle East
Still, the fast pace of change in the Middle East is demonstrated by the scheduled visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington next week. And it gives room for hope. Before October 7, it seemed Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the cusp of a peace agreement – one that Hamas openly tried to derail. Saudi Arabia definitely feels safer now that the common threat from Iran has been vastly reduced thanks to Israel (and the US); whether or not that will motivate them to join the Abraham Accords (or whatever the next stage is called) remains to be seen.
All sorts of possibilities have risen in the new confluence of circumstances following Israel’s post-Oct. 7 actions: sovereign Lebanon has been strengthened with Hezbollah’s demise, and Syria has a new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. But even if Sharaa has truly given up his jihadist past, this does not make him an instant saint – ask the Druze, Christian, Kurdish, and Alawite communities.
The world is still strangely obsessed by the Palestinians. This has led to some absurdities. Due to the Israel-Iran war, French President Emmanuel Macron temporarily shelved his plans to announce his recognition of Palestinian statehood. I noted, however, that the regional assembly of Corsica on Friday passed a resolution recognizing the state of Palestine. Don’t hold your breath while waiting for France to recognize Corsican independence. The current mess in the Middle East, of course, owes a great deal to French and British interference, particularly the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Peace agreements are no guarantee of good sports. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994, but the Jordanian team is refusing to play with Israel in U19 basketball World Cup on Sunday. This grants Israel a technical win, but everybody loses when boycotts and anti-normalization measures poison young minds.
One bizarre incident took place last week in Tournai, Belgium. Around 100 masked pro-Palestinian activists broke into the plant of OIP, a Belgian subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Far from harming Israel’s defensive war in Gaza, the protesters damaged tanks destined to help Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression.
The extraordinary red-green alliance – tying the far-Left to Islamists in their hatred of Israel – results in a murky brown, obscuring context let alone nuance.
Last week’s election of Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor is an obvious example. He openly supports the slogan “Globalize the intifada.” Here’s a reminder of what the mantra means: 82-year-old Keren Diamond died this week of wounds sustained on June 1 when Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw Molotov cocktails at participants of a peaceful rally in Boulder, Colorado, calling for the release of Oct. 7 hostages held in Gaza.
Mamdani posted on X that he was “heartbroken” at Diamond’s death and that “we must constantly work to eradicate hatred and violence.” He’s good at spouting slogans whose meaning he doesn’t understand.
Former hostage Noa Argamani, who was rescued from Hamas captivity by the IDF last year, faced a harrowing reminder of evil while addressing an event in Canada last week. Argamani, who was captured with her boyfriend Avinatan Or, is fighting for his release together with all 50 remaining hostages, only 20 of them believed to be alive.
During the event, people reported to be members of the University of Windsor’s Palestinian Solidarity Group yelled at the former captive, among other things: “Hamas are coming.” The identification with the terrorist organization is clear.
Argamani and Or were among the 44 people kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7. More than 360 unarmed partygoers were murdered by Hamas-led terrorists there – many of them first raped and mutilated. It made Israelis extra sensitive to last week’s incidents at the Glastonbury music fest in southern England.
In what Tom Slater of Spiked called: “The banality of the new antisemitism,” punk rap duo Bob Vylan led chants of: “Death, death to the IDF.” The duo, by the way, was the warm-up act for anti-Israel Irish group Kneecap.
As Slater noted: “They weren’t opposing war. They were calling for war, and on the one army on Earth charged with protecting Jews from genocide.”
The BBC later drew flak for its handling of the affair. But as Commentary’s Seth Mandel wrote: “I don’t necessarily blame the BBC for carrying a music festival live. And anyway, ‘death to the IDF’ isn’t much of a deviation from the state broadcaster’s regular fare. That seems to be the real takeaway here: British mass popular culture is just naturally similar to a 20th-century Munich beer hall. You can expect an eclectic mix of melodic ballads and pre-pogrom snarling.”
And here lies the crux: Antisemitism mixed with support for Islamist jihad is making its way around the global village like killer drones – rogue weapons of rogue regimes that can spread death and destruction anywhere.