The invasion of Israel by Hamas gunmen is an obscene assault on national sovereignty and the Jewish people. Details remain murky, but the facts we have are horrifying. Around 2,500 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, some reaching as far as Jerusalem. Dozens of Hamas jihadists have paraglided and driven into Israeli territory. They’ve stormed villages and towns – 14 locations in total, according to Haaretz. And they’re reportedly shooting civilians. At the time of writing, Israel’s emergency services say at least 20 people are dead. ‘We are at war’, says Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yes, you are.

It has the whiff of a pogrom. It feels like a hateful onslaught against a people dressed up as ‘resistance’. Images of weeping Israeli kids running for the bomb shelters alongside video clips allegedly showing Hamas supporters cheering over the dead body of an Israeli soldier speak to the existential nature of this unconscionable attack on a sovereign nation. Hamas is a radical Islamist movement. Its founding charter committed it to an apocalyptic ‘struggle against the Jews’. As recently as 2021, its one-time interior minister was publicly calling on people to ‘cut off the heads of the Jews with knives’. Today’s invasion of Israel is no mere clash of nations, no mere tussle over borders – it’s a hate crime of global proportions.

No nation would be expected to tolerate such a militant violation of its borders. Buildings are on fire in Sderot, people are fleeing cars engulfed in flames in Ashkelon, the Be’eri kibbutz in Negev is reportedly under siege. ‘Please send troops. There are burning houses’, whispered a kibbutz resident through the local TV channel. Imagine it was Brighton or Plymouth, and scores of armed men were pouring in. We’d act. Israel has the right to act, too. The anti-Israel left will disagree. They’re quiet now that Israel’s being attacked, but they’ll pipe up when it responds. It is a testament to the unhinged Israelphobia and outright moral decay of the modern left that today’s leftists really believe Israel should let itself be attacked. ‘You deserve it’, they think, and sometimes say. They say it about no other nation on Earth.