Last Monday marked one year since the brutal invasion of Israel by Iran, via it’s animalistic proxy army Hamas, which burned, raped, tortured and murdered its way through peaceful southern kibbutzim before slinking back into Gaza with around 250, mostly civilian, captives in tow. About 100 of them are still in Gaza. Some might still be alive, whatever that means being in the cruel clutches of Hamas terrorists.

The anniversary of the horror was marked by vigils and other acts of remembrance by the local Jewish community, for whom the attacks are a still-open wound. Rubbing salt into that wound were the other commemorations, if you will, of that day; the celebration — yes, celebration — of the atrocities by pro-Hamas protestors whose sickening displays of ignorance, mob-fueled hatred and ideological delusion we are becoming all-too accustomed to.

Most people by now know the familiar chants and signs proclaiming “from the river to the sea”, blah, blah, blah, are nothing short of calls for genocide, the eradication of Israel, a plea for the Iranian proxy groups to finish the job Hitler started; whether implicitly or explicitly, knowingly out of pure ideological malice, or simply because their mate that hooks them up with the good drugs said it was the thing to do.

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Tragically, here in the Western World, that indulgence of antisemitic hatred is, superficially, the most defining characteristic the past year and the event that initiated it. That that is so, and that we are becoming accustomed to such filth, is a condemnation of the direction we are going down as a society.

Oct. 7, 2023 taught us, as though we needed yet another lesson, evil exists, and the depths to which its depravity can occupy some humans minds. It also offered another lesson in what is required to counter such evil, a lesson which doesn’t seem to take in most Western governments.

The Israelis have taken that lesson to heart, out of existential necessity. They have responded to the attacks — and subsequent ones — with an admirable level of skill, tenacity, courage, determination and, yes, restraint. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the far left, the IDF has gone to excessive lengths to minimize civilian casualties, to the point of absorbing more of their own than strictly necessary. The contrast between the two sides could not be starker.

The overall reaction of most of the world has been something less than honorable. The UN, which at times seems to exist for no purpose beyond condemning Israel and waging an ongoing war on reason and morality, was at its worst, as one would expect. But why did much of Europe need to play along?

As for the U.S., to say the response in defense of our greatest regional ally in the Middle East has been confusingly awkward would risk understatement. For every ostentatious declaration of support and pro forma recognition of Israel’s right to defend itself, there has been a corresponding undermining of Israel’s efforts to do so. President Joe Biden is to be commended for his early support for Israel, but his administration’s follow through has done little beyond emboldening Iran and eroding America’s deterrent effect.

If it seems overlooked by some of our officials that the conflict is about Iran, then the grander scheme is entirely lost on them. Iran is part of an evolving bloc of what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in one of his periodic moments of clarity, termed “a ‘coalition of resistance,’ led by Russia, Iran and North Korea: brutal, authoritarian regimes that use their opposition to the U.S.-led world of inclusion to justify militarizing their societies and maintaining an iron grip on power.”

Republicans’ response specific to Israel has generally been better and more crystallized than the administration’s, but the flirtation with isolationism suggests the larger picture is cloudy for them as well. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s constant hovering over Taiwan and Iran’s aggressiveness toward Israel are all connected at some level. We delude ourselves, perhaps lethally so, by ignoring that.

History’s lesson to Israel and its people, punctuated in the last year, is they can rely on nobody but themselves, and themselves alone, for their defense. It is our duty, historically, morally and in interest of our own preservation, to prove that wrong.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.