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<\/p>\nHere is what happened to one Israeli family three weeks ago today, on the morning of Saturday, October 7, at their home on a kibbutz in south Israel. I am relying on the evidence of reputable journalists who have seen the footage and who believe it to be incontrovertible.<\/p>\n
At about 6am we see the father emerge from sleep. He is clearly frightened by the gunfire he can hear outside. He grabs his two young sons, both of whom appear to be under ten, and for a few moments they mill around in panic, all three still in their boxer shorts.<\/p>\n
They go to the front door and then retreat because it seems too dangerous outside \u2014 until the father decides to make a break for it. They rush for a shelter but before they have time to seal themselves inside, a Hamas terrorist jumps over the wall and throws a grenade in after them.<\/p>\n
There is a blinding flash in the shelter. The father comes out and dies in a pool of blood. His badly injured sons follow, \u00adstepping over their father\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
The scene cuts to the kitchen. The boys are on the floor. The terrorist is getting a drink from the fridge. He first takes some cold water, then drops the jug and finds some cola, which he chugs back.<\/p>\n
One boy sets up a piteous wail: \u2018Why am I alive? Why are we alive? Brother, this is not a prank, our father is dead.\u2019 Then they discuss the other child\u2019s badly bleeding eye. He can\u2019t see, he says; and that is the last we see of them.<\/p>\n
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The October 7 massacre was among the most sickening and depraved events in all the history of human cruelty, writes BORIS JOHNSON. Pictured,\u00a0Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip,\u00a0in Ashkelon, southern Israel<\/p>\n
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We are reflexively treating Hamas, pictured, and Israel as two belligerent parties in an ancient quarrel, where there are faults on both sides; and we are therefore ignoring, or minimising, what actually happened<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t know what happened to the boys. All this was on a 43-minute \u00adcompilation of footage \u2014 from CCTV, from Hamas body\u00adcams, first-responder cameras, and so on. It was shown a few days ago, by the Israeli government, to dozens of experienced international journalists, and it was by no means the most horrific episode.<\/p>\n
They saw a young girl \u2014 maybe seven years old \u2014 being chased under a desk, and then shot at point-blank range.<\/p>\n
They saw people being tortured, burned, beheaded. Members of the audience were seen to retch involuntarily, to weep and to beg \u2018Make it stop\u2019.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is a reason why these images do not appear in papers such as this one. They are simply too gruesome, and they are not published because these victims are innocent human beings who in their lives had beauty and grace and worth, and who do not deserve to be exhibited to the world in the final extremities of their suffering.<\/p>\n
But we know enough, far, far more than enough. We know that the October 7 massacre was among the most sickening and depraved events in all the history of human cruelty. So it is incredible that in the three weeks since the murder of 1,400 Jews we seem \u2014 in Britain and around the world \u2014 to have lost all moral clarity.<\/p>\n
A fog has descended. We have forgotten which way is up. We are reflexively treating Hamas and Israel as two belligerent parties in an ancient quarrel, where there are faults on both sides; and we are therefore ignoring, or minimising, what actually happened.<\/p>\n
At one point in the film a young Hamas terrorist can be seen \u00adringing his parents in Gaza. \u2018I have killed ten Jews today,\u2019 he boasts, as they weep for joy. \u2018I am a hero! I have killed ten Jews!\u2019<\/p>\n
Who is this young man \u2014 boasting about \u00adkilling innocent and defenceless people?<\/p>\n
He is a member of Hamas, and Hamas is the government \u2014 I repeat, the government \u2014 of Gaza. This jihadi didn\u2019t just go on a \u00adcasual anti-Semitic shooting spree. He was part of a long-meditated and deep-laid plan to kill as many Jews as possible, in circumstances as humiliating and degrading as possible; and that plan was devised by Hamas, the government of Gaza.<\/p>\n
These are the very same people whose casualty statistics are spouted so trustingly by the BBC; the same people who claimed that it was an Israeli bomb that killed those poor people at the hospital \u2014 an assertion that turned out to be a lie.<\/p>\n
Now we are told that we must listen to Hamas when they protest that Gaza is running out of fuel (which also seems to be doubtful when you look at Hamas fuel stocks), and now more and more people are calling for a \u2018ceasefire\u2019, as if this was a war between two powers that basically respect the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war.<\/p>\n
It is no such thing.<\/p>\n
This is now an attempt by a decent, civilised and democratic society to deal with an Islamist death cult.<\/p>\n
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We grieve for the innocent \u00adPalestinians who are losing their lives \u2014 and so do Israelis. But it is Hamas that has thrust those \u00advictims in the line of fire. Pictured, an Israeli airstrike on Gaza<\/p>\n
On the one side \u2014 it can never be said too often \u2014 we see Israeli Defense Forces that are trying to minimise civilian casualties.<\/p>\n
On the other side, Hamas terrorists who want to maximise civilian casualties, and who brag about how many Jews they have killed and maimed and raped.<\/p>\n
We grieve for the innocent \u00adPalestinians who are losing their lives \u2014 and so do Israelis. But it is Hamas that has thrust those \u00advictims in the line of fire.<\/p>\n
What has gone wrong with us that we cannot see it?<\/p>\n
Shame on broadcasters for \u00adrefusing to call Hamas terrorists. Shame on those tens of thousands of people, in this country, who took to the streets after the \u00adOctober 7 massacre to show their support \u2014 for the Palestinians!<\/p>\n
What message do you think you are sending to Hamas, all you who wave your Palestinian flags, your disgusting Nazi-era banners with images of the Star of David being thrown in the bin?<\/p>\n
You are effectively sending a message of support, and that means, I am afraid, that you are giving succour and \u00adencouragement to the baby-killers of Hamas.<\/p>\n
If you say that it is all relative, and that there are faults on both sides, then again I am afraid you are failing to think clearly, and you are making a moral equation between deeds that cannot be equated, between terrorism and self-defence.<\/p>\n
I want a two state-solution, and I will continue to work for it, and for peace.<\/p>\n
I want the Palestinians to have their own homeland \u2014 though you have to wonder how the Israelis will ever trust them to make it work after the catastrophic consequences of letting Hamas run Gaza.<\/p>\n
If you step back and look at the broad sweep of post-war history, you also have to wonder why this is the one territorial dispute that continues to excite such viciousness and such hatred.<\/p>\n
Think of the colossal movements of people around the world after 1945, the tens of millions who were turned into refugees as the maps were re-drawn.<\/p>\n
Why has this question proved so insoluble? Is it just Israeli \u00adintransigence? Or is it also the recurring virus of anti-Semitism that continues to be so prevalent, not just in the Middle East but around the world?<\/p>\n
After the horrors of the early 20th century, the international community had no choice. We had to create a homeland, in Palestine, where Jewish people could feel safe.<\/p>\n
After some of the responses to the October 7 massacre \u2014 including, I am sad to say, in the UK \u2014 I am more glad than ever that we did.<\/p>\n
It is plain that Israel is agonising about how to deal with Gaza, whether and how to launch a ground attack.<\/p>\n
We must pray for restraint and proportionality. We must pray for the minimum loss of civilian life. We must pray that Israel has the wisdom not to set up another cycle of hatred and revenge.<\/p>\n
But please can we stop equating Hamas and Israel, because that ubiquitous tendency to moral equivalence is wrong; it is sick; and it is doing the terrorists\u2019 work for them. We need to snap out of it.<\/p>\n