On December 10, in a Palestinian refugee “camp” within the Lebanese city of Tyre, there was a major explosion at a mosque associated with Hamas. Despite the terrorist group’s initial claims to the contrary, the explosion came from a large cache of munitions and arms it stored beneath the house of worship. At the funeral for a Hamas operative killed in the blast, a gunfight ensued, possibly between Hamas and Fatah. These events are evidence of a much more troubling fact: the Gaza-based jihadist group has been building up its forces in Lebanon so that it can attack Israel from multiple fronts during the next war. Yoni Ben Menachem explains:

This new Hamas infrastructure was already used during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, when their operatives fired several rockets at northern Israel. . . . Hamas’s military infrastructure in Lebanon includes several hundred Palestinian operatives in the Palestinian refugee camps and was established with the approval of Hizballah and Iran and with the blind eye of the Lebanese government.

Hamas’s working theory is that Israel should be militarily engaged on two simultaneous fronts in the event of a war on the Gaza Strip border. This would prevent Hizballah from being held responsible for attacking Israel from southern Lebanon.

The Israeli security establishment assesses that at the moment, the goal of Hamas’s military infrastructure in Lebanon is mainly to harass Israel by firing rockets in a measured manner that would not lead to war in southern Lebanon.

According to Israeli security sources, Iran is instructing Hamas operatives in southern Lebanon how to manufacture rockets and drones. Hamas’s manufacturing system in Lebanon is part of the organization’s “construction department” and includes several workshops under the command of Majed Khader, who was based in Turkey and was transferred to Lebanon last year. . . . Workshops and rockets are hidden in civilian buildings, including in residential buildings and businesses.

On Friday night, a Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing outside a Jerusalem synagogue, killing seven and wounding several others. The day before, the IDF had been drawn into a gunfight in the West Bank city of Jenin while trying to arrest members of a terrorist cell. Of the nine Palestinians killed in the raid, only one appears to have been a noncombatant. Lahav Harkov compares the responses to the two events, beginning with the more recent:

President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to denounce the attack, offer his condolences, and express his commitment to Israel’s security. Other leaders released supportive statements as well. Governments across Europe condemned the attack. Turkey’s foreign ministry did the same, as did Israel’s Abraham Accords partners the UAE and Bahrain. Even Saudi Arabia released a statement against the killing of civilians in Jerusalem.

It feels wrong to criticize those statements. . . . But the condemnations should be full-throated, not spoken out of one side of the mouth while the other is wishy-washy about what it takes to stave off terrorism. These very same leaders and ministries were tsk-tsking at Israel for doing just that only a day before the attacks in Jerusalem.

The context didn’t seem to matter to some countries that are friendly to Israel. It didn’t matter that Israel was trying to stop jihadists from attacking civilians; it didn’t matter that IDF soldiers were attacked on the way.

It’s very easy for some to be sad when Jews are murdered. Yet, at the same time, so many of them are uncomfortable with Jews asserting themselves, protecting themselves, arming themselves against the bloodthirsty horde that would hand out bonbons to celebrate their deaths. It’s a reminder of how important it is that we do just that, and how essential the state of Israel is.