Dr. Shmuel Katz, a leading activist in the US for Israel advocacy, and one of the founders of Stand With Us spoke to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News as Israel continues its war against Hamas in Gaza, and particularly in Rafah, the terrorist organization's last stronghold there.
Dr. Katz says he “would like to make sure that everyone understands that this process is not a retaliation of Israel against Hamas. Israel was attacked by Hamas. Hamas are vicious killers who respect nobody. They don't respect Jews. They don't respect Christians. They don't respect even their own people, Muslims or not. Israel is trying to free hostages, innocent civilians, that were taken away by Hamas. The Hamas leadership has promised to repeat all the atrocities again and again, in order to eliminate the Jewish state and once they achieve that, guess what, everybody else comes next.”
Dr. Katz continues to emphasize: “It is crucial for people to understand that if you take a terrorist and give him money and political power, you will not transform him into an angel. You will create a better-financed terrorist, who is going to be much more aggressive, and he will not respect even those who financed him in the early stages. For this reason, I think that giving a free hand to terrorists is a huge mistake. This should really worry any person who is thinking long-term about the safety of freedom across the globe. It is not only an Israeli problem; it is a free world problem.”
Dr. Katz recommends that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take the following strategic steps in southern Israel, in order “To remove the leadership of Hamas who promised to continue killing all Jews, gentiles and everybody else in the region. They are even killing their own people. But, the most important element will include a solid educational effort in the schools in Gaza, in Israel, in Judea and Samaria, and across the globe, because one of the biggest problems that is that people are not aware of the situation and are being hit by propaganda and deception, promoted by billions of terrorist dollars. You don't want the terrorists to run the show, in the same way, you don't want UNRWA to run the show. They demonstrated that they are a branch of Hamas, so you need to have some kind of an entity that is going to be open to supervision by Israel and other countries to make sure that the education in the street in Gaza is up to par. We have to make sure that the people are hoping for a better future for themselves and for their families. If we get those people to help move the process forward, we may have a hope, a couple of years down the road, of a better future for everybody. It doesn't happen overnight it will take many years to accomplish.”
On the displacement of nearly 100,000 residents of northern Israel due to the threat of Hezbollah rocket attacks this week, Dr. Katz feels that “when Hezbollah, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis are feeling that there is no solid unity among the nations and support for Israel defensive measurements, they get some incentive to push forward with their agenda. The way to stop this is to make sure that they feel the pain. They should understand that they cannot play around with the lives of Israelis, or anybody else, because many people of many countries around the globe were affected by the activities of Hamas, Hezbollah, and others and, therefore, they should have some serious consequences.
Dr. Katz explains: “Lebanon is practically occupied by Hezbollah and controlled by Iran and if they don't feel the pressure on themselves and don’t feel the consequences, they may continue with their activities. Therefore, Israel, the US, and EU, and every other peace-loving individual must stand up united against this network of terrorists. The sanctions should be put back again on all these entities, and they should be personally responsible for their actions. If they put our lives in jeopardy and the lives of the free people in jeopardy, they should not be having a free run. People have to understand that if you give a terrorist a free hand, he won't say thank you, he will just try to become more violent, and this has to stop.”
Dr. Katz responded to the situation in US college campuses, with videos showing otherwise intelligent students echoing the rhetoric of a terrorist organization, saying: “Unfortunately this situation has been brewing for many years. We know that Billions of dollars have been delivered by certain nefarious actors, such as Qatar, Iran, and other sources even within the US, such as organizations who would like to undermine the governing system of the US and of the free world. They put so much money into the educational system, which allowed them to appoint professors and chairs of departments with a certain ideology. If the professor has a certain ideology and he's sharing it with his students, guess what? The student wants to get good grades on his tests and will follow the directives of these professors. Slowly they'll buy into this messaging because they don't hear other opinions which will give them a little bit more of wisdom to understand that their own future is on the line.”
Dr. Katz continued to explain that, “If they fall for a regime, like Iran, Yemen or Lebanon, sooner or later, they are not going to be able to function in a normal society, because once you have bad people running the show, everybody is going to lose in the end. So, we have to make sure that the education is very well-balanced on the campuses. If we have professors who have associations with terror organizations and people of that sort, they should not keep their positions in that university. They don't deserve it and they should not be there. The university should know that money coming to them from dubious resources should not be utilized to brainwash the next generation. Universities should be there to educate free-thinking, great debate, and understanding the details, because today if you ask a student ‘Where is the river and what is the sea, and what is going on in between them,’ they have no clue what you're talking about. They don't understand that the message ‘from the river to the sea’ is to kill all the Jews who live there, in Judea and Samaria, in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, and everywhere else in Israel. Also, this is not only about the Jewish people who are there, but the many Christians and Muslims. So, they are protesting genocide; but they are promoting genocide, and this is the insanity of the system, that people don't understand what they're talking about. Therefore, education is key.”
Dr. Katz concluded by emphasizing the importance of, “A major effort by a variety of nations to try and educate the next generation, because if this won't change sooner or later Paris is going to be like Beirut, and London and New York are going to be the same. We already have all kinds of radicals running around causing harm and trouble to the free society, to the people who just want to live their lives, and hope for a better future for themselves. If you let these people reign, everybody is going to lose. These activists work in a very interesting way. They don't put out their ideology as ‘good versus evil,’ because then no student will follow them, but claim ‘occupier versus oppressor,’ and genocide and all kinds of interesting words, which have nothing to do with reality. The kids who have no education, no knowledge, and no understanding of what those situations mean, will go with the waves, and they don't understand that there are consequences to every action that they take.”