Published: 9 April 2024
Last updated: 9 April 2024
Israel did not start the war in Gaza. It defended itself after Hamas’ vicious murders, rapes, and kidnappings on October 7, 2023.
The war’s two stated aims were the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas, a terrorist organisation which rules Gaza and is constitutionally committed to Israel’s complete destruction.
In October, the war was as justified as war can be. Any country attacked in this way would have done the same, and Western governments comprehensively supported Israel’s right to defend itself.
But if the initial reasons for the war are clear, the case for it continuing as we pass the six month mark is no longer convincing. Israel did not start the war, but Israel must end it now, for its own sake as well as for any hope for a peaceful future.
Fundamentally, the Israel-Hamas War has been a failure. It has not achieved the release of the hostages and it has not – and never could have – eliminated Hamas. In part, this is because the two stated aims are contradictory: Israel needs Hamas to be intact and functioning to be able to return the hostages.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have achieved as much as they could in disabling Hamas temporarily, but they have done so at a terrible and continuing cost to Gazan civilians, to Israel’s commitment to human rights, and to Israel’s international standing. Israelis have also paid a significant price in IDF casualties and in the displacement of about 100,000 residents from the Gaza border and the north.
Comments2
Wesley Parish10 April at 08:31 am
Re: “Any country attacked in this way would have done the same, and Western governments comprehensively supported Israel’s right to defend itself.”
I’m wondering, during the Great March of Return 2018-2019, unarmed Palestinians were regularly shot by IDF marksmen. The narrative over the term of my natural life has been that “Israel is always justified in anything it does, whereas the Palestinians are born terrorists and deserve no sympathy for anything”. Replace “Israel” with “Germany”, and “Palestinian” with “Jew” and you wind up with the Nazi German spiel. That incidentally killed off my distant Krakow relatives.
If a similar thing happened in a metropolitan Western state such as France, where foreign workers were protesting peacefully, and the French army opened fire, what would the response be? That France has the inalienable right to do what it likes to whoever it likes on its own territory?
Or to take a more Australian example, just think of the various similar incidents that are slowly being brought to life in the British treatment of the Australian First Nations.
David Frankel9 April at 08:49 pm
I find your naiveite, shocking. You seem to be like Neville Chamberland, war is too hard and too costly. We have to admit, we can’t defeat Hamas because of their strategy of using Human shields, propaganda and international Anti Semitism. We can rely on the international community to ensure peace. Apart from the fact that the UN is meant to keep Hezbollah in check, how is that working out? Winston Churchill warned, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.”