By Suzanne Bowdey

It felt like one of the few places untouched by war. Children, running carefree across a soccer field, laughing and cheering as if their country wasn’t fighting for its very survival. But in an instant — a single flash — everything changed. “I heard the explosion, everything shook,” Israel’s Fahid Safadi said later. “I stepped outside the supermarket where I was and saw in front of me the horrors. Screaming, crying, people running.” The carnage that laid before him was unlike anything he’d ever seen. It is an image, he explained emotionally, “that will remain with my soul for a lifetime.”

A warning sign had sounded in the Israeli village of Majdal Shams, but it was too late. The Hezbollah rocket detonated in the middle of the children’s match, killing a dozen boys and girls — all under the age of 16. In a video taken by an eyewitness, you can hear a woman yelling hauntingly in Arabic, “They are all children!”

Several other boys and girls remained in critical or serious condition, “many with permanent injuries,” doctors announced somberly. “They underwent surgery for a large part of the night. They have multi-system injuries — to their heads and bodies. In the coming days, we will focus on stabilizing them. We hope for a speedy recovery,” the director of Ziv Medical Center said. “Sadly, we are used to mass casualty events,” he admitted, “but it’s children. It’s a massive tragedy for the area.” Incredibly, one official told a local news station, as many as five of the victims may have been from the same family.

Despite a vicious battle that will have lasted 300 days this week, Saturday’s slaughter was the single deadliest Hezbollah attack since their terrorists started pummeling northern Israel last October. “There is no doubt that [these terrorists] crossed all red lines,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry warned ominously. “We are facing an all-out war.”

Already, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Lt. General Herzi Halevi said the military is preparing for the next stage of fighting in the north. “There will be more challenges,” he acknowledged. As the ministry pointed out, “This is not an army fighting another army, rather it is a terrorist organization deliberately shooting at civilians.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been on a crucial trip in the U.S. to rally support for Israel’s cause, rushed home — cutting short his visit to grieve Saturday’s massacre with fellow citizens and plot next steps in what has become a powder keg on the country’s northern border. “Like you, I was shocked. I was shocked to see the terrible pictures following the murderous attack by Hezbollah on Majdal Shams,” Netanyahu posted. “Since I was informed of the disaster, I have been holding continuous security consultations, and I have decided to bring forward our return to Israel. I will immediately enter the security cabinet upon my arrival.”

This all comes as Kamala Harris, the presumed Democratic nominee for president, is drowning in criticism for bashing Israel in the press after a private meeting with Netanyahu. “I … expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza,” Harris said in remarks afterward, “including the death of far too many innocent civilians. And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over two million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.”

Harris also announced her support for a two-state solution and demanded that Netanyahu accept a ceasefire deal. “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” the vice president declared, adding that she “will not be silent.” Of course, this also comes on the heels of her interview earlier this month, where she condoned the violent and destructive anti-Israel protests, insisting that these mobs “are expressing exactly the human emotion that is appropriate in response to Gaza.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) begged to differ, blasting the riot just blocks from the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday that escalated to a level that shocked local police. “You know, those protesters went out there not only ripped down and burned the American flags off of Union Station,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill,” “they also spray-painted and defaced monuments [with] Hamas messages and profanity. … [They] defaced it, desecrated it.” “It was just outrageous,” he shook his head. “It enrages us. … It is not a First Amendment expression to destroy public property.”

There are “truly are a lot of young people who are completely misled,” the speaker continued. “They do not understand that when you wave a Hamas flag … that that is a vicious, evil terrorist organization that murdered innocent women and infant children in the raid on October 7th in Israel. It is a demonic thing.”

As for Harris’s other claims — that Israel is intentionally starving Gazans — Netanyahu was flabbergasted, calling the vice president’s accusations “a complete fabrication” and “utter nonsense.” “If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food,” he retorted, “it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it.” The rest of the Israeli delegation seemed stunned by the vice president’s tone, noting that the meeting between the two leaders had been cordial.

Her framing of the situation is dangerous, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) cautioned on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “What I’m worried about is Iranian-backed terrorists continuing to blow up innocent children in Israel. … [Yet] this week, Kamala Harris, in her very first statement — and still, to my knowledge, only statement — on a matter of great public importance, came out after a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and equivocated between Hamas and Israel, and effectively blamed Israel for civilian casualties in Gaza or for the lack of food in Gaza that Hamas is diverting from aid stations.”

And what does that do? It makes it “harder to get a peace deal,” the Army veteran argued. “It makes it harder to have stability in the Middle East. And frankly, it emboldens Iran and terrorist groups like Hezbollah because they believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will continue to put more pressure on Israel than it puts on Iran and its terrorists that are encircling Israel with the stated objective to destroy Israel,” he said. “What we should do is back Israel to the hilt, not put pressure on Israel, not scramble behind the scenes to try to stop Israel from retaliating appropriately for this heinous attack that killed more than a dozen people, including children.”

Not to mention, Cotton pointed out, “Where is the condemnation for this heinous attack by Hezbollah [Saturday] that blew up 12 children as we came on the air? Kamala Harris and her campaign has still not said anything to condemn Hezbollah for that attack. Again, this is only a week into her presidential campaign, and we see why she is a dangerous liberal. I saw Kamala Harris up close for four years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. What the American people see this week is just a small sampling of what she would do to make America less safe and make the world more chaotic. This is who Kamala Harris always has been,” he warned. “This is who she will be — a San Francisco liberal who cannot keep this country safe.”

Her opponent, Donald Trump, could only shake his head. “She is a radical left person,” he said frankly. “I actually don’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her, but that’s up to them.” This horrible attack, the former president declared, will go down as another moment in history created by a weak and ineffective United States president and vice president,“

At the end of the day, Johnson underscored, "This is not just two different political opinions. This is good versus evil, light versus darkness, as [Netanyahu said], civilization versus barbarism. And there is no question which side we should be on,” he told Perkins. “It’s a battle between principalities, as Scripture talks about.” But he was clear, “We don’t hate the people involved on the other side — we hate the evil that’s being represented. And we should and we must … work to stamp it out.” For America, for the world, “This is a moment for moral clarity,” the speaker urged. “And we need every leader in the country, especially those in Congress and the White House, to stand unequivocally and say, ‘This is wrong, and we will not stand for it.’”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.