Israel was at the centre of an international outcry last week for having the audacity to target terrorists in Qatar. These weren’t just any old terrorists. They were the last remaining leaders of Hamas. The last men standing to have planned the genocidal October 7 massacre.
In the wake of that dark day, Israel’s political leaders and security services made a solemn vow to hunt down those responsible and ensure that Hamas never had the capacity to deliver on its own promise to repeat its butchery again and again. That is precisely what Israel has been doing for the last two years.
Along the way, Israel has been physically attacked by terrorists and countries from seven different directions, as well as subjected to an unprecedented misinformation campaign.
With everything stacked against it, the IDF have achieved the previously unthinkable, including demolishing the world’s most heavily armed terror group (Hezbollah in Lebanon used to have as many as 150,000 rockets pointed at every inch of Israel), and humiliated Iran by degrading its nuclear programme, army, and terror proxies.
The Jewish state has found one arm tied behind its back throughout, as many of its Western allies dialled up diplomatic pressure after succumbing to Hamas propaganda and domestic political pressure from a mix of internal Islamist extremists and those civilians who have simply never had to countenance living in a country where you’re surrounded by fanatical terrorists armed to the teeth.
Keir Starmer's latest double standard on Israel gives a free pass to fanatical terrorists - Jonathan Conricus
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The hypocrisy behind the condemnatory words this week from Prime Minister Starmer and others is outrageous. The double standard is so blindingly obvious.
The UK has itself conducted targeted killings outside of active warzones as an act of self-defence in recent times. The RAF deployed Reaper drones to assassinate two British members of ISIS in Syria in 2015, as well as an ISIS-linked arms dealer in Syria in 2022. The Government correctly asserted that such strikes were “necessary and proportionate”.
It is Turkey’s performative outrage about this week’s strike that pushes the hypocrisy scale to breaking point. This once promising democracy has fallen under the thumb of its Muslim Brotherhood fanatic President Erdogan and is doing everything it can to save its Hamas bedfellows. Are we supposed to forget that Turkey has itself undertaken this sort of strike in Iraq this decade, including on a hospital?
As ideological brothers of Hamas, Turkey’s position can be understood. But the response of the West has been so self-defeating. The post-9/11 world, which we poignantly remember today, has necessitated a different way of war.
Western democracies are now confronted by non-state actors who fight from within civilian areas. And unlike the military leaders of the West, the puppet masters of these terror armies often live in luxury far from the battlefield.
Hamas’ so-called ‘political leaders’ have been enjoying exactly that in Qatar. Welcomed by Qatar’s regime as heroes and fellow Islamist travellers, Hamas’ leaders have grown fat on wealth.
Absurdly, they had been rebranded as ‘peace negotiators’. No, these were the men who planned 7th October and who were filmed that day celebrating the footage of the onslaught they had unleashed.
The problem here is that it isn’t just Hamas terrorists who have grown fat from Qatari largesse. Western capitals have themselves become dependent upon Qatari investment over the last several decades as their economies stagnated.
The Emirate has methodically secured controlling stakes in critical national infrastructure and businesses and is pushing its Islamist messaging on young minds through its investments in universities.
London is just as guilty as the rest, as revealed by a recent GB News story, which showed that the Qatari Royal Family owns more of London than His Majesty King Charles III.
It should surprise no one that Qatar is lashing out in the wake of Israel’s airstrike. But you should be worried about the UK’s reaction.
It doesn’t strike me as being in the UK’s interests to defend a country with a tradition of hosting the world’s deadliest terror groups.
And it certainly doesn’t make sense to condemn Israel when tomorrow it could be the UK that is compelled to take the same difficult action in the defence of its own national security.v