Israeli lawmaker to JNS: Israel must regain control of Gaza

(JNS) — The only moral and rational conclusion that can be drawn from the horrors of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre is that Israel must regain control of the Gaza Strip, Knesset member Amit Halevi (Likud) told JNS.

“Israel had disengaged from Gaza, it was essentially a Palestinian state. The outcome was Oct. 7,” Halevi said on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference Hungary on Thursday.

“From the river to the sea, Israel will be free: this should be the slogan chanted at Columbia University, Harvard, Yale and Berkeley,” he added.

On Sept. 12, 2005, the Israel Defense Forces completed then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza, as the last soldier left the coastal enclave after almost 40 years.

The Strip was soon thereafter conquered by Hamas in a bloody coup against the ruling Fatah faction. Since then, Israel has fought several minor conflicts and five wars against Hamas—in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and the current one triggered by the Palestinian terror group’s massacre of 1,200 Israelis.

“When I hear the Biden administration talk about a Palestinian state, I ask myself, in a modern world where rationality and morality are leading values, how is this even possible?” Halevi told JNS. 

The Israeli lawmaker warned that the “disengagement” taking place from suburban predominantly Muslim areas in major European capitals could lead to catastrophic scenarios similar to the one suffered by Israel on Oct. 7. 

“In France, Belgium, Spain and wherever Europeans disengage, wherever the police can’t enter, it will be the same,” he said. 

“It might take 17 years but we are seeing the same religious, philosophical and ideological infrastructure put in place, the same cruel methods, barbarian tools and targets,” he added. 

Taking over Europe, Halevi said, is part of the Islamic Republic’s grand vision. 

“We must focus on the big picture. Iran wants totalitarian control over the world. To achieve it, they’ve designed a multi-stage strategy,” Halevi said. 

“They will stabilize their own regime internally, then they will take over the Middle East, including Mecca, Saudi Arabia, through nuclear weapons and proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the Palestinian territories and Jordan. Finally, Iran will move on to conquer Europe and the United States,” he added. 

Tehran is already well advanced in European capitals and is seeking to weaponize restive Islamic populations to achieve its goal, he continued.

“The fight for sovereignty and individual freedom can only be won through unity and a clearer vision by our Western allies,” he said. 

“Our enemies are the enemies of the Biden administration, they are probably just unable to see it yet.”

At CPAC, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah and Iran took center stage. The conference was also attended by Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Gila Gamliel (Likud) and Knesset member Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism).

In addition to Israeli lawmakers, thousands of Hungarian conservatives and hundreds of international guests converged on Budapest for the event. 

“We Hungarian conservatives stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel. Hungary and the local conservative leadership is the most important and maybe the only remaining ally of Israel in the European Union,”  Miklos Szantho, director general of the Center for Fundamental Rights (CFR) and chairman of CPAC Hungary told JNS. 

“The Hungarian government has opposed all the different resolutions condemning Israel this year and in the previous years. In Budapest, unlike in Brussels, Berlin or even New York, there are no pro-Hamas or pro-terror events happening on the street,” he added. 

In this fight of good versus evil for the survival of Western civilization, Szantho said the Jewish nation has true friends in conservatives across the world. 

“The left not only in Europe but also in the United States, as we saw in the past few months, supports officially or unofficially the terror that happened in Israel,” he continued. 

“They support pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel forces all over the western campuses and in major world cities,” he told JNS.

CPAC was hosted by CFR, a Hungarian think tank which deals with political and legal analysis and considers preserving national identity, sovereignty and Judeo-Christian social traditions its primary mission. 

Speakers included Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán; Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom; Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.); and Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Keith Self (R-Texas). 

“The liberal progressive hegemony has made the world a worse place. It instigated war where there was peace, brought chaos where there was order, it intended to eradicate countries and families and it wanted to wipe our nations away from the face of the earth,” Orban told the crowd on Thursday. 

“This year, we wish to drive them away. Let the age of sovereignty return, let us return to the place where the world is great again. Make America great again, make Europe great again,” he concluded.