Reply To: They won’t will they?

[Siderite]

I think in this debate many lose sight of what started this, which was that Hamas decided to launch a pogrom specifically to kill civilians. None of what has happened would have happened without that. Now many Israeli citizens are kept hostage by the extremists who committed this.

It’s easy to pontificate, but what should Israel do? Do nothing? That is a signal for Hamas that this can work and they can do it again without consequences. Never mind the pressure to save the hostages from concerned Israelis and family or friends of the victims. To do nothing is unpalatable.

Then what can Israel do? How do they rescue hostages and protect themselves from an Islamist fanatical cult without military action? How do they commit military actions without deaths of civilians? Hamas have deliberately embedded themselves within society, placing their related ammunition stores and infrastructure near schools and hospitals. If they are to be removed, how is that addressed without casualty? Again, to ignore this allows Hamas to use resources to target Jews. No other country would be expected to allow themselves to be at risk of death.

Genocide is a very emotive term, but it also has a specific definition which includes intent to murder another ethnicity because of their ethnicity. It’s not simply about large number of civilian deaths of one ethnicity or nationality. Otherwise events like the siege of Sarajevo, the Irish famine, 9/11 etc could be classified as genocide. I do not see an intent from Israel to kill Palestinians. They have specifically told them to escape in order to avoid getting caught up in the conflict. If Israel didn’t do this, they’d be accused of genocide for maximising civilian casualties, yet this isn’t good enough. Seemingly doing nothing in response to mass murder and hostage taking is the only acceptable outcome for some. Hamas won’t entertain diplomacy without massive concessions, and why should Israel make concessions to a fanatical cult which wants Jews dead?

I am saddened by it, because it will mean dead Palestinians and suffering of them. I cannot see how Israel cannot react though. What Hamas undertook over a week ago was an act of war. Maybe, if they didn’t want Israel to engage in a war, they shouldn’t have been the aggressor. I would like to see NGOs deliver aid, but it has to go to the people, not be handed over to Hamas for them to pocket as they often do. Previous attempts to give them water pipes were useless, because Hamas dug them up to use as rocket launchers for Israel.

I think there’s a lack of understanding from some quarters as to what Hamas is. There is some understanding that they’re not just your idealised freedom fighter, but there’s still this jaded view that they must be reacting to Israeli aggression all the time. Yet, they’re not just that. They’re an Islamist cult whose aims towards Jews are not hidden; their charter makes it clear what they want to do with Jews. From the river to the sea is an explicit signal of their intention to destroy Israel. Anyone who thinks there can be peace in Israel with Hamas’s existence is kidding themselves. Hamas won’t be happy until Israel and its Jews are destroyed.

It’s easy for the hard left, like Rivkah Brown, Michael Walker, Aaron Bastani et al., to go gooey eyed over Hamas thugs spilling over the border to massacre civilians as part of some ‘resistance’ of the virtuous oppressed. However, this is a position of privilege which does not match with the reality of Hamas’s beliefs and actions. They are no better than the Nazis and have led Palestine to oblivion. For too long many in the Palestinian movement has apologised, obfuscated and dismissed concerns about them. They have allied with sympathetic speakers for years under the guise of resistance, swallowing their propaganda. What they have done is destroy any chance of Palestinian sovereignty, which I do support, because it has become entangled with Islamism.