Rubén Herrero de Castro, PhD, International Relations Professor, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Since 1947, Israel has been waging a never-ending war on terror. Since then, it has fought several conventional wars, all of which were declared by its arab enemies. In all of them Israel has been victorious and has shown a clemency that their enemies would never have granted him. Obviously, after each conflict, Israel, whenever possible, increased its strategic defense space, trying to interpose ground between itself and its adversaries, in case of future conflicts.
Parallel to these wars, since the 1960s, Israel has faced an unparalleled siege from multiple terrorist groups characterized by their religious and/or political fanaticism, the most significant being Fatah-Al-Aqsa Martyrs, Islamic Jihad-Al-Quds Brigade and Hezbollah. In this scenario, the unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli army in 2004, decided by Ariel Sharon, opened the way to a civil confrontation between the different Palestinian factions, but also to a settlement and strengthening of the Hamas terrorist group, which ended up controlling the Gaza Strip, turning it into the territorial base for planning and extending its terrorist activities against Israeli interests and citizens. The latest bloody chapter of this criminal group was written on October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered 1400 citizens of Israel and took around 240 hostages.
The brutality exhibited by Hamas included murder, abhorrent torture, and rape, massacring even newborn children. Of course, Israel has since responded with intense, but justified, force to Hamas’s declaration of war. Israel’s right to defense has been endorsed by all democratic european, american, and asian countries. Also noteworthy within the European Union is the support that Israel has received, from the Visegrad 4 Group, not only now but at other times, when defending Israel was not politically correct. For years, Israel and the Visegrad 4 member countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) have shared a vision on issues such as security, immigration, threat perception, and the war on terror. Now, sadly, that shared vision is being cruelly displayed, with the brutal attacks in Israel and the security crisis on the territory of the European Union. Also, within the European Union there is an exception, Spain’s far-left socialist government, presided over by Pedro Sánchez, a political pygmy who dreams of being a sordid Lukashenko in the South of Europe.
Inadmissible statements by Pedro Sánchez himself and some of his ministers have led Israel to withdraw its Ambassador from Spanish territory, an unprecedented event given the circumstances. While the entire civilized world is siding with Israel, the Spanish government offends by proposing to recognize the Palestinian state and Pedro Sánchez, its president, went so far as to describe as an anecdote, the viewing of the video where he was shown the atrocities committed by Hamas against men, women and children.
We must point out that for the most part, support for Israel is accompanied by a naïve appeal to international humanitarian law. In the current situation, there is no place for such an issue. Right now, there is a war between civilization and barbarism. In that war that affects us all and on that shared front, Israel is our first line of defense. If barbarism wins, our way of life is doomed. There is no room for appeals to the suffering of Palestinian civil society. Anything bad that may happen, despite Israel’s efforts to prevent it, is the sole responsibility of Hamas and its allies. These murderers were very „brave” against the elderly, women and children, on October 7, but they exhibit an astonishing cowardice, when they face real soldiers and miserably protect themselves behind the population they claim to defend and hide in schools and hospitals. Israel did not declare any war, nor has it attacked anyone for no reason. Israel defends itself as we all should if we were attacked in a similar way as Hamas did. The future of the West is at stake in the Middle East, there is no room for the usual European lukewarmness, not shared for Visegrad 4 acountries and various European patriotic formations. This is not the moment to look the other way, nor to look for excuses or bizarre arguments justifying Palestinian terror. We must fight terror with Israel, there is no better ally.
Rubén Herrero de Castro, Political Science and International Relations PhD., Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He collaborates with various media, contributes with several chapters in scientific works, is an author in several scientific publications and to date has written three books:
-Invented reality. Perceptions and decision-making process in Foreign Policy (prologue by Robert Jervis), Plaza and Valdés 2007
-John F. Kenney and Vietnam: The Fall of Camelot, Plaza and Valdés 2011
-Allies. Transatlantic Relations: Security and Images of the 21st Century, Plaza and Valdés 2015.
