Israel eliminated two of its greatest enemies this week — Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah second-in-command Fu’ad Shukr — and the media, predictably, misinterpreted both events.
Analysts on both CNN and the BBC said that the deaths of these two terrorists would mark an “escalation” of hostilities within the region, echoing the propagandist bluster of Iran, Syria, and other anti-Western regimes.
But it is also possible that the killing of these two mass murderers will help avert a wider war that places civilians at risk, at least for the moment.
We have seen this phenomenon before — when the United States was led by President Donald Trump, who ordered the airstrike that eliminated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Then-candidate Joe Biden, like other Democrats, predicted war; instead, there was calm.
Israel followed the Trump model, and went even further: not only did it eliminate two senior terrorists, but it did so in the heart of the enemy capitals, Tehran and Beirut, where the terrorists believed themselves to be most secure.
The fact that Israel could reach Haniyeh in Tehran — after the presidential inauguration, no less —sent a signal to the Aytollahs and their internal opponents alike that the regime cannot defend itself.
Neither CNN nor the BBC could grasp that.
CNN went even further in its comical misunderstanding of the situation, describing Haniyeh as a “moderate.”
Haniyeh was a cruel terrorist mastermind who had become a billionaire by exploiting his own people and condemning them to lives of violent misery. The only “moderate” thing about him was his preference for five-star hotels in Doha rather than underground bunkers in Gaza.
One CNN analyst speculated that Israel killed Haniyeh because it wanted to end the hostage talks with Hamas in which Haniyeh had been taking part.
That is preposterous, and in fact killing Haniyeh could increase the chance of a deal.
The only agreement that remained possible was one in which Israel convinced Hamas leaders they would pay with their own lives unless they freed the hostages. That point has now been made.
Another point has been made: that Israel will defend all of its citizens: Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, Bedouin and Druze.
The murder of 12 Druze Arab children in the remote mountain village of Majdal Shams by a Hezbollah rocket prompted Israel to act as it did. In doing so, Israel reinforced a sense of national unity — a unity that had frayed in recent years over domestic tensions, often stoked by the Biden administration.
Hours before the attacks in Beirut and Tehran, I stood in Majdal Shams, at the soccer field where the rocket had landed on Saturday. The cries of a grieving mother arriving at the site for the first time since the attack is a sound I will never forget.
Though the death of the terrorist who sent the rocket to Majdal Shams will not bring back her son, I found it gratifying to know that justice had been delivered so quickly and so effectively.
Our media, and the political party they serve, never contemplate such decisive actions because they do not value what Israel and the United States are defending.
On Saturday evening, when news of the atrocity in Majdal Shams broke, I was at the Sea of Galilee with a group of Christian pastors traveling with the Aliyah Foundation, a nonprofit organization that connects Christians with the Jewish roots of their faith in Israel.
The pastors prayed together for the victims, their families, and their community. Though our guide warned that the incident could lead to the outbreak of a long-anticipated wider war between Israel and Hezbollah along the tense border to the north, no one seemed afraid, or inclined to leave the trip.
For many Christians, Israel is a spiritual home — and one does not abandon one’s home when it is threatened.
I was deeply moved by the faith of the Christian men and women whom I accompanied.
There is, of course, no unitary Christian approach to Israel: some denominations have been openly hostile to Israel. These have followed an approach with its roots in the old idea of “replacement theology,” according to which the Jewish connection to God was supplanted by Christianity, and Jewish claims to sovereignty are therefore absurd.
But for other Christians, including but not limited to evangelical Christians, the restoration of a Jewish state is evidence of God’s plan, the fulfillment of prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments.
We stood on Mount Precipice, outside Nazareth, where Jesus escaped execution by a mob, according to the Gospel of Luke (4:29-30). From the peak of the mountain, one can see almost all of northern Israel, beautiful and flourishing.
Our guide pointed to Jeremiah 31:6, in which the prophet predicts that the “guards” or the “watchmen” will allow the Jews to return to Zion. The Hebrew word for “guardians” in that passage is notzrim, which is also the same Hebrew word for “Christians.” (The word Notzrim is related to the word for Nazareth, Natzeret, the city where Jesus grew). Today, Christians are indeed the guardians who have helped Jews to return to Israel.
That point is driven home by the Friends of Zion museum in Jerusalem, a new center that honors the many Christians and others outside the Jewish community who enabled the resurrection of the Jewish state and who continue to defend it to this day. The museum fills in some important historical gaps in the familiar pro-Israel narrative, and confirms for Christians that they, too, are an integral part of Israel’s miraculous success.
Within the “America First” movement, there are some who believe that the U.S. does too much to support Israel. And there is no small degree of envy: why is Israel allowed to fight evil, and we Americans are not?
The answer is that Israel, for all its flaws, still has leaders who care about their citizens, even Druze children from a remote mountain village.
We Americans can have that again; those are the stakes in November.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.