MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Women raped and defiled. Children snatched. A post-Holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ has now witnessed the slaughter of Jews… How in hell could anyone defend these monsters?
If there is a face to the unprecedented terror attacks unfolding in Israel, it’s 25-year-old Noa Argamani.
This young Israeli woman was one of countless revelers kidnapped at a desert rave on Saturday, forced onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away by armed savages as she screams, ‘Don’t kill me! No! No! No!’
What has become of her, as of this writing, is unknown.
At least 260 people were slaughtered by Hamas at this festival alone – with rockets, grenades and assault weapons. The event was billed as a tribute to ‘friends, love, and infinite freedom.’
You know, all the things Islamist fundamentalists hate.
The BBC reports that Hamas, backed by Iran, were ordered to kill on sight, as they attacked Israel by land, sea and air, using motorized paragliders to rain death from the sky.
At least 150 Israelis have been taken hostage. Over 900 already lay dead.
If there is a face to the unprecedented terror attacks unfolding in Israel, it’s 25-year-old Noa Argamani. What has become of her, as of this writing, is unknown.
This young Israeli woman was one of countless revelers kidnapped at a desert rave on Saturday, forced onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away by armed savages as she screams, ‘Don’t kill me! No! No! No!’
How is it that Hamas has defenders? How does barbarism have any place in our modern age? How could those who think the ‘Palestinian cause’ righteous ever defend this unprovoked carnage?
A post-Holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ has, this weekend, witnessed Jews ripped from the safety of their homes and places of business.
Hamas is now threatening to execute one hostage for every strike by Israel that comes without warning — executions they vow to film and release.
Who among us hasn’t heard the pleas of mothers, fathers, siblings, husbands and wives, begging for the safe return of their loved ones and felt their abject fear?
I think especially of the women and girls of Israel, going about their day as we might in the West, and try to conjure the surreality of being snatched by armed militants, beaten and stripped and made to walk through the streets while men spit and jeer, subjected to atrocities too obscene to print.
This is ISIS-level terror, moving from hard targets — planes, buildings, stadiums, subways — to a mass extinction event, innocent civilians picked off one-by-one.
The horrors accrue: A young Israeli couple managed to stash their 10-month-old twins in a hidden shelter before terrorists broke down their door and shot them to death, the babies miraculously surviving.
Blood-curdling video of a terrified, weeping Shiri Silberman-Bibas and her babies — one aged 3, the other nine-months — being taken hostage at gunpoint.
The testimony of Gaya Kalderon, a 21-year-old student living in Tel Aviv, who told reporters that her entire family was abducted from Nir Oz in southern Israel.
‘I was terrified to wake up Saturday morning and receive messages like, “The terrorists are in my bedroom”, she said. ‘Now I can’t do anything.’
Her 16-year-old sister, father and 10-year-old brother were all taken.
Yoni Asher told the New York Times that his wife Doron called him in blind panic as Hamas invaded her mother’s home.
His mother-in-law and his two small daughters were with her. They were all kidnapped. ‘Two little babies,’ he cried. ‘I can’t sleep — I’m living outside my own body.’
How is it that Hamas has defenders? How does barbarism have any place in our modern age? A post-Holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ has, this weekend, witnessed Jews ripped from the safety of their homes and places of business. (Pictured: A hostage is held by Hamas).
To call this the depths of depravity isn’t nearly enough.
Just look at the footage of armed men cheering over the body of young tattoo artist Shani Louk, naked but for her underwear, limp and face-down in the back of a pick-up truck.
They chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ – ‘God is great’. One militant grabs Louk by her hair. Others spit on her corpse.
Make no mistake: This isn’t just about land control. This is about fundamentalism and a deep, centuries-abiding hatred of women. These would-be warriors, targeting society’s most defenseless, are cowards.
Which brings us to those who would defend Hamas.
Let’s begin with that dubious D.C. cohort known as ‘The Squad,’ led by four Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
One would think that U.S. women in power would stand up for other women and girls who are being brutalized as we speak.
But no. Never underestimate the ability of the hard-Left to sink beneath subterranean depths.
Here was AOC calling for a ‘ceasefire’ — really, telling Israel not to defend itself or its civilian hostages — followed by Tlaib and fellow Democrat Cori Bush blaming U.S. aid to Israel for provoking, in part, this barbarous attack.
Tlaib actually called it Palestinian ‘resistance’, leading to swift condemnation from New York Democrat Ritchie Torres.
‘Shame on anyone who glorifies as “resistance” the largest single-day mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust,’ he slammed. ‘It is reprehensible and repulsive.’
Yet we see such sentiment thriving on the Left.
To call this the depths of depravity isn’t nearly enough. Just look at the footage of armed men cheering over the body of young tattoo artist Shani Louk (pictured), naked but for her underwear, limp and face-down in the back of a pick-up truck.
They chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ – ‘God is great’. One militant grabs Louk by her hair. Others spit on her corpse. Make no mistake: This isn’t just about land control. This is about fundamentalism and a deep, centuries-abiding hatred of women. These would-be warriors, targeting society’s most defenseless, are cowards.
Thirty-one Harvard organizations, including their branch of Amnesty International, have said Israel is ‘entirely responsible’.
The New York Times ran a story Monday morning headlined: ‘Across the Mideast, a Surge of Support for Palestinians as War Erupts in Gaza.’
War didn’t ‘erupt.’ Israel was blindsided in an unprovoked terrorist attack on a scale and scope to rival 9/11.
The attack was further characterized in this piece as an ‘eruption of violence’ – as if both sides were to blame.
The American Jewish Committee reported that the Times never once used the word ‘terrorist’ in their Saturday coverage.
As for the supercilious female congresswomen who were so quick to excuse these atrocities — AOC especially, that self-described firebrand feminist — they should be shamed out of office.
Not least because their sophomoric, simple-minded stance is complete repudiation of what happens to women in war, a historical atrocity that dates back at least to the ancient Greeks. Rape has been used to terrorize the enemy, psychologically destabilize or to ethnically cleanse. In Rwanda in the 1990s, Tutsi women were raped by HIV-positive men recruited especially for just that purpose.
So commonplace was rape as a weapon that the United Nations didn’t declare it a war crime until 1995.
As for the shouts this weekend of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ over the naked, brutalized bodies of women, alive or dead, paraded through the streets — let us not shy away from this either, although some media outlets, the aforementioned New York Times and CNN among them, certainly are.
What a betrayal. What a cowardly refusal to report the truth. Ever since Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip in 2006, the region has been subjected to Taliban-level repressions.
One would think that U.S. women in power would stand up for other women and girls who are being brutalized as we speak. But no. Never underestimate the ability of the hard-Left to sink beneath subterranean depths. (Pictured: Hamas terrorists capture an elderly Israeli woman).
Supercilious female congresswomen who were so quick to excuse these atrocities — AOC especially, that self-described firebrand feminist — should be shamed out of office. (Pictured: Israeli police evacuate a woman and child from the site of a rocket blast).
Women and girls have been forced to wear the hijab since 2007. Two years later, females were forbidden to ride behind men on scooters or to dance — ever. An Islamic group called Swords of Truth threatened female TV personalities with beheading if they refused to conform to strict dress codes.
Hamas promotes Sharia law, which metes out punishments for the smallest infractions through honor killings, amputations, crucifixions, beheadings, stoning, beating.
We are now seeing such horrors writ large on the nation of Israel.
On 9/11, the world — the sane part, those nations that value freedom of thought and movement and equality for all — rallied around America and came to our aid in the face of unspeakable Islamist terror. Israel deserves no less.
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