Beyond the Numbers

Regarding the story “Pro-Palestinian Protesters Call on Rep. Carbajal to Push for Arms Embargo on Israel”:

The atrocities of October 7 and the terrible toll on civilians in Gaza since then are both abhorrent beyond words, but the protestors outside Congressmember Salud Carbajal’s office want to reduce the tragedy to a ludicrous numbers game — there have been far more civilian deaths in Gaza, so Israel is the problem, end of story. According to these protestors, the United States should enact an arms embargo against Israel.

The reality is very different. Hamas set this war in motion with a monstrous act of terrorism, and to this day Hamas maintains its vow to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish people. To lay all blame for the suffering and death in Gaza on Israel is to ignore the fact that Israel is literally fighting for its survival. And the threat is not from Hamas alone. The day after October 7, Hezbollah started sending rockets into northern Israel and has continued these attacks ever since, upending the lives of tens of thousands of Israelis. More recently, Yemen began attacking Israel from the south and Iran from the east, launching more than 180 ballistic missiles into Israel in a single night.

The protestors aren’t calling on Israel to exercise more care and restraint in defending itself. They want America to abandon Israel entirely, knowing that Israel cannot survive without support from the United States. Israel’s enemies are hate-filled and pitiless, and lives of 9.5 million Israelis — not only Jews, but Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bahai and other faiths as well — hang in the balance. An arms embargo against Israel is a horrifying, unthinkable proposition.