Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Fighting for peace in the Middle East
A firsthand look at the war in Israel
I just returned from a humanitarian/fact finding mission to Israel, where we visited destroyed Kibbutzim on the Gaza border and the ruins of the Nova music festival.
I learned of the brutality of the attacks on innocent civilians living peacefully beside Gaza. In fact, most of Hamas’ victims were from the political left who believed in reconciliation and cooperation with the Palestinians.
The kibbutznicks of Nir Oz, which I personally visited and saw the burnt out homes with blood still on the floor, had invited Gazan workers and friends into their communities who in turn used the information they learned to plan their attacks. Our hotel in Tel Aviv was filled with refugees of Sderot, who saw their town destroyed.
One man said he left his home on the Gaza border having 18 family members. He will return to his home alone. Everyone was killed.
But the one thing that surprised me from my visit is the threat that is now coming from the North.
Communities in northern Israel are virtually ghost towns, while the world’s attention is focused on the war in Gaza. Those towns in the north mirror the villages near Gaza that were decimated and evacuated on 10/7. The Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah has fired hundreds of lethal rockets at Israeli civilians and soldiers in solidarity with Hamas.
These heavily-armed and well-funded terrorists are primarily viewed as an existential threat to Israel, but they also have killed hundreds of Americans
across the Middle East, while raising funds in America with plans to carry out future attacks in the U.S. This serves Iran’s ideology of attacking ‘Big Satan’ and ‘Little Satan,’ America and Israel.
Israel is fighting an existential war against Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and we Americans should be grateful that Israel is doing so.
Make no mistake, Hamas and Hezbollah are no different than Isis which we Americans fought following 9/11. U.S. intelligence officials recently warned that Hezbollah is capable of attacking the American homeland.
The news report, published in Politico, describes Hezbollah’s “expansive international network of operatives that could carry out an attack in the U.S.” A 2022 security review of Hezbollah-affiliated activity in America revealed that more than 100 individuals have been sentenced for providing support, mainly in money laundering and smuggling of goods.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested two trained Hezbollah agents in America in 2017 after they carried out surveillance of potential targets. A former defense dept. official recently stated that “we should expect Iran-backed attacks on U.S. soldiers to resume, mostly because we know that Iran continues to arm, fund and train these groups.”
Hezbollah has attacked American citizens in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, killing 63, including 17 Americans; the U.S. Marine barracks bombing in October 1983 which killed 241 American and 58 French servicemen; the bombing of the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in 1984 which killed 24; the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985 in which a Navy diver was shot in the head and his body dumped on the tarmac; and the Khobar Towers housing attack in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19 U.S. airmen.
I was inspired by the people of Israel’s resolve to fight Iran and it’s proxies’ extremism. I lament the suffering of innocent people in Gaza. We all do, but the terror network of Hamas and Hezbollah must be eliminated and hostages brought home safely for there to be a ceasefire in Gaza and an enduring peace in the Middle East.