Moshe Levi is a freelance columnist.
The phrase that has been echoed by leaders across the nominally democratic world at Israel is “the day after”. It is demanded that the nation which was attacked not only keep providing vital supplies to its attackers, not only stand trial in an international court for fighting against the people who loudly proclaim their goal of exterminating its citizens to the last man, but also be ready to take full responsibility for this enemy state the moment - may it be soon -the war can be declared won.
This raises a counter-question: What does America have planned for “the day after”? What about the United Kingdom, the European Union?
Do they have a plan for the fact that this war showed that thousands of their own citizens could be considered a fifth column? They may not have sirens going off as Hamas and Hezbollahrockets pelt their cities and towns, but they have rioters in the streets chanting for death and downfall to any people, politicians or state who stand in the way of their radical Islamist ideals.
Campuses exploded with support for a terrorist army - for two of them, in fact, with the addition of those who glorify the Houthis. The Ayatollah of Iran called these protesters a part of the ‘resistance’, a word which in his mouth means opposition to democracy and the spreading of Islamic supremacy. Jews have been pursued by mobs, harassed online, barred from public spaces and attacked in private ones.
How many of these people, steeped in self-loathing for their status as part of the “Western world” or “imperial core”, would hesitate if an Islamist leader demanded they “decolonize” the White House or the Senate? If flags have been burnt, campuses have been occupied, shuls attacked, would it be so shocking for the Houses of Parliament to be stormed by a crowd chanting for revolution and murder? Every vandal or demagogue arrested becomes a martyr for these people to weep over as a symbol of their oppression - their term for experiencing consequences to their actions. This snowball only grows larger as it rolls.
These countries, which point fingers at Israel, act blind to their own circumstances. The youth of their next generation reject anything their country or culture gives them. They have been taught to think of the states they live in as irredeemably evil; “colonialist powers exploiting the global south” and rife with “institutional prejudices” as well.
Israelis, on the other hand, can believe in a better government. Speak to any Israeli and they will tell you exactly how the country could be better, under which party or coalition. Arguing politics is a national pastime.
In these left circles, though, there is no such belief. They call for countries to burn down and crumble, puppeteered on a drip-feed of anti-Western hate. Let the nations infected by this phenomenon sweep around their own doorsteps first, or there could be no “day after” of which they can speak.