On October 7, 23, Hamas invaded Israel.

They murdered over 1,200 defenseless people, including children.

They raped, tortured, pillaged, and took 250 hostages.

The next day, large crowds gathered in western cities, London, Paris, New York, and on college

campuses, not to condemn the Hamas terrorists, but to endorse their actions.

History will regard this shocking sequence of events in one of two ways, either as the

unofficial end of Western civilization or the shock that finally awakened enough people to save it?

I say this because Israel personifies the values we associate with Western civilization,

both as a source of those values and their modern manifestation, everything from the Ten Commandments

to Biotechnology. Israel's enemies, those who attacked on October 7, do not share these values.

They have no interest in representative democracy, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion.

Hamas and its patron Iran run brutal dictatorships. They make no pretense about their immediate goal,

the total destruction of the Jewish state. Their ultimate goal, the subjugation

of all non-Muslims. To compare them to the Nazis in their Jew hatred is entirely apt, except for

one perverse distinction. The Nazis worked hard to hide their crimes. Hamas brags about theirs.

This was a defining feature of the October 7 massacre. The terrorists used

GoPro cameras to broadcast it to the world. When the hostages arrived back in Gaza, many

bloodied and brutalized, cheering crowds filled the streets. Hamas likely assumed the past would be

prologue, that after a limited military incursion,

Israel would back down under international pressure as it had under previous wars in 2008, 2012,

2014, and 2021. But this time was different. Even as it was restrained by the Biden administration,

Israel pushed past all previous

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