Fifty Shades of Gaza

Photographs of over one thousand persons killed, missing or abducted in the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 are displayed on empty seats in an exhibit held under the motto "UNITED AGAINST TERRORISM" in the Smolarz Auditorium at Tel Aviv University, on Oct. 22, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

Israel is rightly fighting a just war, and while the loss of life in Gaza is terrible, it is also unavoidable. There is no chance that Israel’s military campaign will further drive the Palestinians of Gaza into Hamas’s arms. Gazans are already there; they were there well before October 7th. 

The people of Gaza hated Israeli Jews enough to murder, torture, and rape their way across the peaceful communities of southern Israel. Gazans cannot possibly hate the Jews more than they already do.

Most Gazans have shown no remorse for the attacks of October 7th. Nor have their supporters around the world displayed any contrition. Gazans seem to be willing to pillage aid deliveries. But, they are not willing to confront Hamas and take their lives back. Why not? Because many Gazans support Hamas, both its hatred and its genocidal intent.

Palestinians’ indoctrination of genocidal hatred of Jews predates Hamas. Palestine’s existence is predicated on resistance to―and the destruction of―Israel. Palestinian TV shows, summer camp activities, cartoons, and schoolbooks provide ample evidence of indoctrination and Palestinian self-poisoning.

Palestinians displaced in 1948 and thereafter, or those who found themselves living under Israeli control after the shifting of borders in 1967, are the ultimate losers in this conflict. Unfortunately, their experience is nothing new. Population transfers frequently accompany war and geopolitical shifts, as with the partition of India and Pakistan or, more recently, following the fracturing of Yugoslavia. 

Palestinians weren’t the only people displaced as a result of Israel’s creation and subsequent wars. After 1948, Arab countries purged their societies of Jewish citizens, liquidating Jewish communities that had existed for thousands of years in places like Yemen and Iraq. Israel opened its arms, gave these exiles refuge, and assimilated them into society. In contrast, Arab countries did nothing like this to integrate Levantine Arabs displaced as a result of wars fought to extirpate Israel. 

The Palestinian story could have been very different. Israelis and Arabs are a remarkable study in contrasts on so many levels. Israel embraced its kinsmen, but Arab countries pushed the Palestinians to the margins, forcing them into statelessness and victimhood that left them ripe for exploitation as proxy forces by the Soviets during the Cold War, and now by Iran. Despite being surrounded and threatened by annihilation, Israelis created a vibrant country. Israelis literally made the desert bloom, developed a thriving market economy, and became a global hub of technological innovation. Israel is the “Start-up Nation,” whereas any advancements to be found in Arab countries were purchased with petrodollars and came from without.

Communist bloc operatives were creatively brilliant in guiding Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization into rebranding their terror campaign as a struggle for human rights and liberty. The Palestinians pioneered the use of modern international terrorism in the 1960s as a method for marketing their struggle to the West. Sadly, the West responded not by condemning Fatah and the PLO but by allowing itself to be manipulated. The West accepted the Palestinian narrative at face value and legitimized the movement. Worse, the West subsidized Palestinian terrorism by funding UNRWA, the PLO, and other international organizations and NGOs, even by directly funding Hamas itself.

We truly live in an upside-down world. The Western liberal order pretends that China is not persecuting the Uyghurs and hasn’t conducted a campaign of cultural genocide against the Tibetan people. The Western liberal order is also happy for the Kurds to battle ISIS on behalf of all civilized nations but will never support Kurdish independence. All three groups, the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Kurds have contributed to the global good. None have made a practice of hijacking airplanes or murdering people to advance their aspirations for independence. And certainly, none have done what Hamas did when it orchestrated the Palestinian rampage on October 7th which achieved levels of barbarism that would have made even Viking berserkers uncomfortable.

It is baffling how well the Palestinians have done at cultivating Western sympathies when nearly everything Palestinians stand for is antithetical to Western liberal values. In a sane world, the UN would have pressed Arab countries to follow Israel’s example by patriating Palestinians into societies with which they were already culturally, ethnically, and religiously congruent.

Leaders, academics, and commentators the world over criticize Israel for its ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Critics want Israel to stop its campaign and end its blockade, which would leave Hamas in place. Critics say that they want the suffering to cease. But the only chance Gaza has for peace and eventual economic prosperity depends on an Israeli victory. The most practical way to enable the delivery of much needed aid, goods, and services is to get out of Israel’s way.

Israel is excising Hamas and other militants from Gaza out of necessity. No one else is going to do this for them. Gaza presents a wickedly complex operational challenge. No other Army could accomplish what Israel has to date or inflicted fewer civilian casualties without putting their own soldiers at greater risk. 

Perhaps we must accept the fact that a majority in the Global South along with Western leftists and liberals will never be on Israel’s side, no matter how many horrors are perpetrated against its citizens. But it is more than troubling, it is alarming, when people in the middle, and even those on Israel’s side, claim that Israel is losing the information war, is headed for a strategic defeat, and shouldn’t clear Rafa because that is not necessary. These people, to include world leaders like President Biden, or defense chiefs like Secretary of Defense Austin, are actively complicit in advancing Hamas’s narrative over Israel. 

Rank and file Palestinian supporters justify Palestinian terrorism by saying that Palestinians have no choice but to use violence in order to be seen and heard after decades of occupation and subjugation. Unfortunately, Western leaders grant this excuse explanatory power whenever they promote the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as the way to permanently resolve the issue as if that will take care of the Palestinians’ hostility towards Israelis.

The nature of the violence that Palestinians unleashed on Israeli communities on October 7th and widespread Palestinian support or, at best, silent acceptance of it, should be proof positive that a two-state solution will not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any real opportunity for a two-state solution didn’t just die on October 7th, but had a stake driven through its heart. Israel needs to be recognized as the only sovereign within the post-1967 borders. The West needs to end its life-support of Palestinian national aspirations.

Western, specifically American, military leaders almost uniformly argue that Israel should scale back its operations, target Hamas more surgically, and limit its war aims. But Israel is not fighting a counterinsurgency. It is waging a war, and it must seek either the unconditional surrender of Hamas or Hamas’s destruction. American military and political leaders should be able to understand the necessity of this after their own lengthy military campaign to destroy ISIS’s caliphate. Along those lines, leaders who criticize Israel for not having planned well enough to put Gaza back together again with a corresponding way to govern it are being hypocritical. The U.S. and the global coalition to defeat ISIS have not even come close to figuring out a durable political solution for the areas of Syria ISIS once governed. 

I have to assume that American military leaders are either viewing the war in Gaza through the prism of counterinsurgency or are overlaying population-centric counterinsurgency principles they tried to employ in Afghanistan and Iraq onto Israel’s showdown with Hamas. But both views are equally misguided. The first mischaracterizes Israel’s challenge by giving credence to the Palestinian liberation narrative. The second reflects how tactically myopic U.S. military leaders have become since 9/11. The Israelis are applying military power in the most effective way possible considering their goal to defeat Hamas. The Israelis aren’t ignoring Gazans as a factor in the war. But they are keeping the main thing the main thing―which is to defeat Hamas. Theirs is a strategic decision.

The United States and other Western countries have it within their power to enable Israel to defeat Hamas and achieve a decisive strategic victory. However, this requires choosing to support Israel’s cause over Hamas’s narrative. Feeling guilty or apologetic about Israel’s need to crush what is, in effect, a terror state in Gaza is only prolonging the suffering of Gazans by impeding Israel’s progress and supporting a Palestinian fantasy of independence. The world needs to wake up and realize that it owes nothing to the Palestinian people.

J.B. Books is an experienced expert in the region and on military matters.