Let’s get one thing straight. If a death cult kicks down your door, slaughters your children and livestreams it, you’re allowed to hit back. That’s not controversial. That’s physics.

So when Israel responded to Hamas’s October 7th pogrom with overwhelming force, it wasn’t Goliath smashing a shepherd. It wasn’t revenge. It was survival.

And yet here we are. The only democracy in the Middle East, fighting for its life, stands accused of genocide. Not the fanatics who filmed mass rape. Not the jihadists who hide rockets under crèches. No — Israel is in the dock of fashionable outrage while the butchers get fan mail from the BBC.

Israel is winning the war for existence, but losing the war for reputation. How? Why? And what can those of us still capable of moral reasoning do about it?

The Genocide Olympics

Let’s start with the G-word. Genocide. Once it meant gas chambers. Now it means urban warfare with civilian casualties. Orwell called it semantic inflation. I call it bollocks.

Yes, innocents are dying. But here’s a radical thought: blame the ones who started the war and use children as shields. Hamas wants civilians dead on camera. It’s its military strategy and its media campaign.

Major Andrew Fox, a British infantry officer embedded with the IDF, has seen the war up close. His report? The Israeli military is “obsessed” with avoiding civilian casualties. Airstrikes are aborted mid-flight. Leaflets are dropped. Humanitarian corridors are opened. No modern army has fought with more legal caution or moral hesitation.

And yet, Fox notes, that very restraint prolongs the war and feeds the lie that Israel is bloodthirsty.

Compare that to Dresden. Or Hiroshima. Or Russia in Ukraine. Tens of thousands burned alive in the name of victory or ideology and no UN resolution. But Israel, under constant existential threat, is called genocidal for showing restraint.

Where’s the outrage over Assad’s barrel bombs? Iran’s morality police? Or China’s sterilisation clinics in Xinjiang? No TikTok grief reels for them. But bomb a Hamas tunnel and suddenly Sky News starts weeping.

The Cowardice of the West

Then we get to the Western leadership class — the chin-stroking cowards who moralise in press releases and tremble before hashtags.

Keir Starmer, once brave enough to affirm Israel’s right to defend itself, now croaks about “proportionality” like a man trying to appease Twitter while sitting on a greased fence post.

Emmanuel Macron, the thinking man’s Emmanuel Macron, warns Israel to show restraint while France burns with Islamist riots he won’t even name.

And Canada’s Mark Carney — Ottawa’s answer to a migraine — says Israel is “complicit” in war crimes. Not Hamas. Israel.

Now, these same leaders are falling over themselves to recognise a Palestinian state — not after Hamas disarms or returns hostages, but while it still rules Gaza. Even the Arab League has more moral sense, demanding Hamas step down first.

When Riyadh shows more moral clarity than Westminster, Paris, or Ottawa, we’re not just through the looking glass. We’re playing hopscotch on the shards.

Yes, Israel Has a Netanyahu Problem

Israel’s problems aren’t only external. The face of its wartime government is Benjamin Netanyahu. Indicted, isolated, and increasingly irrelevant. A majority of Israelis no longer trust him. And who can blame them?

After October 7th, Netanyahu had a rare opportunity to unify a traumatised nation and recast Israel as a beleaguered democracy facing an existential threat. Instead, he chose to tether his war cabinet to the ideological fringe — elevating men like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, whose contribution to statesmanship begins and ends with shouting ‘Death to Arabs’ through a bullhorn.

Now, to be fair, history offers grim precedents: Churchill allied with Stalin not out of affection but necessity. Sometimes, politics demands unpleasant bedfellows. But there’s a difference between tolerating the odious and handing them the keys to the narrative. In this case, pragmatism may have curdled into self-sabotage. When Israel’s enemies are busy painting it as racist and authoritarian, appointing men who confirm the caricature is a masterclass in how to win a coalition and lose the argument. 

As if to prove my point, the Security Cabinet’s vote on August 7th to “conquer” Gaza ignored the IDF’s own warnings. The military brass called it madness; Hamas called it propaganda. Everyone else saw a desperate prime minister trying to outflank his far‑Right partners. That isn’t strategy. It’s political theatre at the expense of Israel’s moral high ground.

If Israel wants to reclaim its moral footing and strategic narrative, its people must confront the democratic deficit festering in its own house. What the moment demands is a Churchill, not a bunker-bound Stalin mistaking survival for statesmanship.

Say Less, Show More

Israel fights like Rambo but talks like an irate IT manager. Meanwhile, Hamas has Oscar-winning crisis actors, drone footage and TikTok-ready sob stories.

The algorithm doesn’t care who fired the rocket that killed that child. It cares who cries better on camera.

Every press briefing from Israel should open with: ‘They burned babies alive.’ Show the tunnels. The hostages. The rocket launchers in mosques. Quote the Hamas charter:

Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it. The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.

That’s not resistance. That’s genocidal fascism in a keffiyeh.

It’s time to stop pretending neutrality is noble. It’s cowardice with a fair-trade tote bag. “From the river to the sea” is not a mindfulness mantra. It’s a blood libel on repeat.

If Hamas were any more honest about its aims, it’d be flogging souvenir machetes at the Rafah border and half the Labour Party would still buy them.

The same people who spent a decade covering up Islamic rape gangs now want us to believe Hamas is Che Guevara in a headscarf. They wouldn’t recognise a death cult if it livestreamed beheadings in 4K. Which, of course, it already has.

A Reckoning is Coming

A reckoning is overdue. For Israel, that means dumping Netanyahu and reclaiming moral credibility. For Palestinians and the Arab League, it means exiling Hamas to the trash heap of history. And for the West, it means waking up.

We must stop indulging fundamentalist Islamism as if it were just another culture to be respected. It’s not. It’s a political theology that seeks dominion, not coexistence. It is a theocratic death cult bent on subjugation, not coexistence. A threat to the West as grave as any in modern history.

To excuse Hamas is to embolden an ideology that would torch every liberal democracy from within. This is not a regional dispute. It’s a global test of our resolve. This war must end with Hamas gone, not rewarded – and with Israel led by someone worthy of the nation he defends.

The BBC can call that controversial. The Guardian can emote. But history will judge those who sided with sophistry over civilisation.

Unless we draw the line here with clarity, consistency and courage, we’re not just letting Israel fall. We’re handing over the future of Judeo-Christian culture to those who would behead it.

Clive Pinder is the host of CeaseFire on KVEC TalkRadio and a columnist for the SLO Tribune. He offends Islamists and the metropolitan political establishment in equal measure on Substack.