Israel is doing the right thing

The shrill protests of students, staffers, diplomats and artists are meaningless to the hostages in Gaza.

The only thing “looming” in Gaza are the headlines—I received an email from Reuters with a subject “Invasion of Gaza looms,” echoing the New York Times. A large number of Israeli troops are sitting on the border of Gaza, ready to go in. Israel continues pounding specific targets inside Gaza where militants operate, launching thousands of rockets into Israeli cities and homes.

A Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, Poland. Photo by Tomasz Brengos on Unsplash

The slanted ledes, like this one from Reuters, declare “Israel levelled a northern Gaza district on Friday after giving families a half-hour warning to escape…” when Israel has warned residents of northern Gaza to evacuate for a week without starting its operation. Pictures showing craters and rubble (I can’t publish them here, as they are licensed and we can’t pay the cost) give the lie to Hamas claims that Israeli bombs took out the parking lot at the Gaza Baptist hospital. Israel correctly noted that their bombs leave craters, while Hamas rockets do not.

The fact, for the whole world to see, is that Israel has not invaded with 300,000 troops, tanks, and armored bulldozers, turning the Gaza strip into a parking lot of death. They could have. I’m sure Hamas has nasty surprises planned, like booby traps, minefields, and human shields. The body count will be horrific, when and if Israel goes in. I am imagining how much restraint it takes for Israeli commanders to tell their troops “sit and wait” when every single one of them knows someone or has personally lost someone close to them in a brutal attack where armed terrorists killed unarmed civilians, including the elderly and even babies.

Yet Israel largely sits and waits. They absorb the rocket strikes, the cost of each Tamir II missile (around $40,000)—two are launched for each target identified by the Iron Dome system; they absorb the condemnation of those who think Israel shouldn’t exist in the first place. They absorb the anti-semitism boiling just below the surface of otherwise civilized political people, who think Jews are responsible for the ills of the world, and Israel’s existence means Jews can’t be erased from history.

Good for Israel! They are doing the right thing.

What the headlines frequently ignore, and what even President Biden, in his otherwise excellent speech last night didn’t fully address, is the presence of a few hundred hostages being held by Hamas and whose lives are threatened every hour. These include at least 13 Americans.

“As I told the families of Americans being held captive by Hamas, we’re pursuing every avenue to bring their loved ones home,” Biden said. “As president, there is no higher priority for me than the safety of Americans held hostage.” And that’s it. Biden is asking Congress to continue to fund the “arsenal of democracy,” while nudging Israel to “operate by the laws of war.”

Israel has operated by the laws of war, the same rules that the U.S. used in Afghanistan and Iraq, where at least 250,000 non-combatants were killed by our weapons. Israel has not gone into Gaza and slaughtered civilians wholesale, like Hamas wants them to. Israel has held back, and it’s admirable, yet Biden didn’t offer any words to that effect.

The biggest weapon Hamas has is not in the military domain of warfare—its in the information domain. Hamas counts on news organizations to rush to report their version of events, and then relies on dog-whistling the victim-worshiping leftists in western nations who believe that not enough Jews are dying, so there’s something inherently unfair about the plight of Palestinians whose rulers steal from them and act like emperors bestowing fiefdoms according to nothing more than unbridled loyalty.

The U.S. Department of State is loaded with people like this, and has a long history of looking down its nose at Jews. Josh Paul, a State Department staffer, is resigning in protest of Biden’s “blind support” for Israel, Vanity Fair reported.

Since resigning, Paul said he has received considerable support from State Department colleagues and congressional staffers. “A lot of people are wrestling with this being the current policy and are finding it to be deeply problematic,” he told the Times. “I’ve really been quite moved by some of the folks who have reached out to say that they understand where I’m coming from. They respect my decision. It’s been very supportive.” His resignation was first reported by HuffPost.

The State Department’s role is to implement the president’s foreign policy. I suppose it’s proper to resign if you work there and vehemently disagree with that policy. But it also makes you a colossal jerk to spout to the media as if your opinion of yourself as a beacon of righteousness has special meaning. The same for 400 Capitol Hill staffers who signed an open letter calling for cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. They are not members of Congress, they are staffers. Their voice is both shrill and powerless. They should resign.

The same for San Francisco high school students who walked out in support of a cease fire. They are students, who will later regret their insensitive actions when Israeli students who have lost family members in Israel think they are colossal jerks. Maybe they’ll never gain that level of self-awareness. Maybe they really don’t care about Hamas taking hostages.

Israel is restraining itself. Hamas must give up its hostages. Anyone perishing in Gaza due to lack of electricity, water, medical supplies or food is perishing because Hamas started this. They are perishing while the leader of Hamas feasts at the Four Seasons hotel in Doha. Hamas wants Israel to do a full invasion, not to save Palestinians, but to ensure more of them die, at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Hamas refuses to accept any responsibility—even the least bit—for the current situation. They refuse to stop firing rockets. They refuse to give up hostages. They refuse to take any measure to de-escalate or punish those who committed atrocities. They don’t consider their actions to be atrocities. They believe their authority comes from Allah.

Israel has every right to invade Gaza to extract Hamas from power and remove its ability to make war and terror. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, it was in the hope that the Palestinian people would adopt a cooperative stance, and work with Israelis for mutual prosperity. Instead, Palestinians burned the farms and homes Israelis left behind (being forcibly evicted by their own army), because Jews lived in them. Gazans elected Hamas to represent them instead of the PLO, because Hamas promised to evict Israel “from the river to the sea.”

Hamas has acted on those wishes, and the current humanitarian crisis is the price of Palestinians doing business with their death cult. Israel is restraining itself to keep more Gazans from dying, but Gazans are dying because Hamas wants death. To Hamas, it’s either Israelis (Jews) must die or Palestinians must die trying to kill Jews. They are getting their way, but not killing any more Jews. Israel is preserving Jewish and Palestinian life. This is the moral thing to do.

But it won’t last forever. Time is on Israel’s side. But only until the information war turns enough of the world against them that it begins to affect other domains of warfare. Hamas hopes to destabilize our government, and other governments through use of an information campaign, and weaponized media. So we have pockets of shrill protest, which will build into violent protests, and then into conspiracies, and then into political movements, which will blame Jews worldwide for the ills of Gazans who made a deal with a death cult.

Before this death flower blooms, Israel will have to go in and take out Hamas. Then the information war will intensify, but at least the source of it will be removed—if Israel succeeds.

I would consider it a success if Hamas releases its hostages. I don’t believe it will happen, but miracles do happen. Maybe we can avoid the mass carnage. That’s my prayer.