Emerging details suggest that the recent attack against Israel didn’t just take months to plan, but years — Reuters even reported that the assault “followed two years of subterfuge” to lull Israel into a false sense of peace and safety — and after all that scheming, Hamas terrorists didn’t seek to destroy critical infrastructure, they didn’t attempt disrupt supply chains, they didn’t prioritize the obliteration of the “occupying” government’s buildings, and they didn’t go for strategic points like airfields and energy depots.  They specifically targeted ordinary citizens, spreading absolute terror and brutality.  As my colleague Andrea Widburg noted yesterday:

Islam fights war now exactly as it did during Muhammed’s heyday: Civilians aren’t just legitimate targets; they are desired targets.

Many of these civilians were caught completely off guard, and the fallout has been exactly what you’d expect from a group of terrorists who don’t adhere to rules of war underpinned by Judeo-Christian morality — stories of beheaded babies, images of desecrated human bodies, videos of caged toddlers — but one woman, Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, took decisive early action and led a team of neighbors to defend her kibbutz from the invaders.  Nir Am became an “impenetrable fortress.”  From a New York Post item describing the events:

Inbar [sic] Lieberman, the security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am since December 2022, heard explosions early Saturday[.] ...

She realized that the sounds were different than those heard during the usual rocket attacks on the kibbutz — located near Sderot and a stone’s throw from the Gaza Strip.

So Lieberman rushed to open the armory, distributed guns to the 12-member security team and coordinated their decisive response amid the unfolding attack.

She placed her squad of kibbutzniks in strategic positions across the settlement and set up ambushes that caught the gunmen off guard and turned the tables on them during their mission to inflict mass casualties.

There are conflicting reports on how many jihadists Inbal and her team killed and wounded (some say 25 terrorists were neutralized; some say only one or two), but Inbal’s decision “not to wait” meant that Nir Am became the sole kibbutz in the “entire surrounding area” that emerged from the violence largely unscathed.  Another report highlighted Inbal’s decision ordering that power not be restored, so no one could open the gates to the kibbutz.

Now, I certainly have questions to which I can’t definitively know the answers regarding this attack, but what we do know is that Hamas fighters are subhuman in the way they wage war, and they had every intention of kidnapping, torturing, and executing the people of Nir Am — so stories like this, in which evildoers are gloriously thwarted and reap the harvest of their wickedness, are a salve to the soul.

Inbal’s heroism is a story of righteous wrath and justice (personally, my favorite kind), but it also iterates the absolute necessity of firearms actually in the hands of good guys who will use them to administer justice, secure law and order, and protect the innocent.  This is the militia in action.  By the grace of God, Inbal’s intuition served her well, and her team made it to that armory on time, but a weapon is only useful for self-defense when the operator actually has the opportunity to use it.  Firearms securely locked away adds an element of great risk, and when the barbarians ready to rape and behead could literally be at the gate, it is not a risk worth taking.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.