Of all the important lines in US President Joe Biden’s remarkable Tuesday evening address about the events in Israel, some of the most striking came at the start of his remarks.
“You know,” he said, “there are moments in this life – and I mean this literally – when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas – a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews. This was an act of sheer evil.”
Biden went on to detail the carnage.
“More than 1,000 civilians slaughtered – not just killed, slaughtered – in Israel,” he said. “Among them, at least 14 American citizens killed. Parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach-turning reports of babies being killed. Entire families slain. Young people massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace – to celebrate peace. Women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”
“The brutality of Hamas, this bloodthirstiness, brings to mind the worst, the worst rampages of ISIS,” Biden said.
He was echoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made the same comparison on Monday.
“The savage attacks that Hamas perpetrated against innocent Israelis are mind-boggling,” Netanyahu said. “Slaughtering families in their homes, massacring hundreds of young people at an outdoor festival, kidnapping scores of women, children and elderly, even Holocaust survivors.”
“Hamas terrorists bound, burned, and executed children,” he said. “They are savages. Hamas is ISIS.”
They are both right.
For years, Hamas had been viewed by many as a terrorist organization, but one that could be reasoned with. The burden of governing the Gaza Strip, which it seized in a violent coup in 2007, would force it to moderate, we were told. Ultimately, the experts said, they were concerned about their people’s well-being, and economic gestures such as letting Palestinians work in Israel and enabling goods to flow into the Gaza Strip would keep them content.
All of that exploded in our faces on Saturday morning.
If Hamas is ISIS, we must treat them as such.
What was on display was the organization Hamas has always been, has always said it was, but which many chose to ignore: a fundamentalist, Islamist organization utterly committed, in word and deed, to the destruction of the State of Israel and the wanton slaughter of all Jews.
The world is recoiling at the savagery, which is reminiscent of that exhibited by ISIS and, in some ways, perhaps even worse.
Hamas is indeed the Palestinian ISIS, and Gaza is a territory held and controlled by the Palestinian ISIS. If that wasn’t obvious before, it is now.
The question, of course, is what can be done about it?
When ISIS rose to gruesome prominence and started sweeping across Iraq and Syria in 2014, the world mobilized in response. An international coalition led by the United States carried out a massive military campaign that succeeded in pushing back ISIS’s territorial gains and containing the threat it posed.
ISIS supporters were identified throughout the world, and they were deported from their countries of residence; in many cases, they were stripped of their citizenship. Bank accounts associated with ISIS were shut down, and their funding sources were choked off.
That is precisely what must happen to Hamas, the Palestinian ISIS, now.
While Israel is leading the military charge against Hamas, it must receive full and unequivocal support from its allies in the West, including military aid and assistance, if necessary. Those who express support for Hamas must be arrested, prosecuted, and, if necessary, deported from their countries of residence. Any entity found to be providing material support to Hamas must be shut down, and the organization’s sources of funding must be eliminated.
This is a war against a cruel and relentless enemy driven by bloodlust and hate. Hamas cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be contained. It must be resolutely defeated, and that defeat must be crushing and unforgiving.
That is Israel’s task in the days and weeks ahead. The world must have Israel’s back – if not for Israel’s sake then for its own.