A Lot of Innocent People Will be Impacted, but Israel’s Territorial Sovereignty Must Be Secured

It is impossible to watch the news today and not feel sorry for the scores of innocent people in Gaza who are unable to escape the territory due to the fact that they are being held hostage by Hamas and Egypt. Hamas has burrowed itself to take cover from within and underneath civilian populations. And Egypt, as of this moment, has refused to open the Rafah crossing even for US nationals, in spite of being the recipient of decades of largess from the US government. We are at risk of a civilian catastrophe of epic proportions as Gazans are manipulated by terrorist organizations as well as other Arab states that seem eager to use their plight to always paint an image of Israel as the aggressor.

It is also impossible not to be concerned about the Arab students at Western universities who are now, like their Jewish counterparts, at risk of bullying and aggressive and threatening behavior. Their safety and speech must be protected. However, there must be no excuse for the moral confusion that is now pervasive through the Ivy League and other prestigious universities that is causing some to posit that it is acceptable to murder concertgoers and other civilians en masse, to behead babies, to rape women, and to take large numbers of civilian hostages. These universities need to establish minimum requirements pertaining to the laws of human behavior and expel and deny continued employment to those whose behavior indicates so clearly that they don't meet them.

In the days that will come the extreme right and the extreme left - as they have through history - will find common ground in their anti-Semitism and opposition to anyone who does not look like them to argue that Israel does not have the right to respond, or is not responding measurably. We must remember that Israel's right to respond is absolute and unequivocal and limited only by its own just discretion. The State's actions must be understood with the context of securing its very existence and its freedom from any sort of incursion like 10/7 ever again.