The Moral Confusion of the World
The world hates Israel. This is not new information. I have used that line before, and every time it rings just as true. The world cannot understand reality in the Jewish nation, because it does not want to understand. We all know why this is so; it is not an accident that the most divisive foreign policy issue across literally the entire world just happens to concern the only Jewish state in that world. Even Israel’s most fervent haters must at times realize they give far too much credit to the relatively small nation. At just over ten million people and approximately the size of New Jersey, they are the smallest (alleged) nuclear power in our world. They do not have the manpower to wage war like Russia, nor even like Ukraine.
To compensate for this, they got smart. The Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow—these are technological miracles of purely defensive purpose unmatched in modern warfare. And if they didn’t have them, then the death toll from every war in the region against Israel would be orders of magnitude higher. Because terrorists—and there are many terrorists attacking Israel constantly—love nothing more than civilian casualties, especially casualties from their own “side”.
This was Hamas’s game plan from the start. They wanted Israel to level Gaza. That was the purpose of billions of dollars of concrete poured underneath the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. To get to Hamas, Israel had to go through entire cities. And they did. But they did so not in the way Hamas wanted; no, over the past year and a half of fighting Israel has managed to achieve the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in the history of modern warfare. The ‘knock-bomb’, pamphlets and phone banks, Israeli tanks guarding civilian evacuation routes—you all know these things. I talk about them with some frequency; and yet, the world still cannot grasp that this war, started by Hamas on October 7th, is one of the great humanitarian achievements by Israel in history. Israelis have managed to protect and defend the sanctity of life even while their most vicious enemies parade around the bodies of their neighbors as trophies.
So we come to the present day. Not only do you all already know that fighting has now resumed in Gaza, but as I type these words the fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon may resume as well. There are only so many unprovoked rocket attacks Israel will tolerate now before they respond. And these are terrorists that are attacking Israel and Israeli civilians—never forget that. They would see our entire world burn for the sake of their stupid, stupid fundamentalist ideologies. There is no atrocity they will not commit in furtherance of their ambitions.
Yet, when negotiations between Hamas and Israel broke down, the immediate assumption seems to have been that Israel was somehow at fault. For breaking a “ceasefire” that had already expired—‘Phase One’ ended with the final bodies of the hostages released weeks ago, and the negotiations for ‘Phase Two’ never concluded. Because Hamas refused to release the hostages they still have. They will not release more hostages, because once they do they are completely out of leverage and will be destroyed. They may be monsters, but they are clever enough to realize that much. They cannot give up their leverage because they cannot give up their fight. It is too fundamental in their fundamentalist brains.
And let’s not forget that these are literally negotiations with TERRORISTS. How can the world forget that so easily? How can the disgrace to humanity currently sitting as UN Secretary General, one Mr. António Guterres, pretend like Israel is the sole responsible party for this war? If you had instead pressured your buddies in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Guterres, they could have had their terrorist proxies release all the hostages and end the war in 2023. Yet, here we are. Your outrage has always been directed at the wrong entity, and it is the primary reason this war has dragged on so long.
Of course every Israeli and every supporter of Israel is heartbroken that the remaining hostages could not be saved in negotiations. Maybe something more could have been done by the Israeli government to secure their release. It’s certainly your right to think that Bibi failed you once again. I believe that Hamas realizes now that the game is over; and I’m not sure there’s anything anyone can give them that would change their minds on giving up their last leverage in the world.
War is hell. I won’t pretend I know what it’s like to see buddies blown to bits right next to me. I study war with the express intent of burying the concept in the pages of history. If Justice can be achieved at all, it will be in a world without war. But the one thing I have learned above all, the foil to my ‘peacenik’ state of mind is that: if someone wants war badly enough, there may be no choice but to give it to them. Godspeed, Israel. The hope of the decent world is on your shoulders.