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“Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to ‘demolish Hamas’ as his troops prepared to move into the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas militants whose deadly rampage through Israeli border towns shocked the world. Israel has urged exhausted Gazans to evacuate south, which hundreds of thousands have already done in the besieged enclave that is home to more than 2 million people. Hamas, which runs Gaza, has told people to ignore Israel's message.” Reuters
“Truckloads of aid idled at Egypt’s border with Gaza as residents and humanitarian groups pleaded Monday for water, food and fuel for dying generators, saying the tiny Palestinian territory sealed off by Israel after last week’s rampage by Hamas was near total collapse. U.S. President Joe Biden planned to travel to Israel on Wednesday to signal White House support for the country and to Jordan to meet with Arab leaders.” AP News
The right supports Israel’s military efforts in Gaza, and argues that Hamas is responsible for any civilian casualties.
“One accusation is that Israel’s bombing of Gaza is a form of unjust ‘collective punishment’ against Palestinians. But Hamas runs the government in Gaza, which it has ruled since its election in 2006 and its forcible ouster of its Palestinian rivals in 2007. Governments that launch wars from their territory invite attacks on that territory… If Mexico launched an assault on El Paso from Ciudad Juárez, the U.S. would send in the military to find the killers and destroy their sanctuaries…
“Hamas has ordered Gazans not to flee, and its leaders hide weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques. Israel built bomb shelters for its citizens. Hamas built a network of tunnels for its combatants but keeps its civilians above ground, where they can be used as human shields or casualties showcased on TV… Responsibility for civilian casualties in Gaza lies with the jihadists.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Hamas leaders put their assets in civilian buildings not in hopes that Israel will hold fire, but in a cold calculation that the retaliation will do terrible harm to Palestinian civilians—despite the extraordinary efforts Israel’s army makes to avoid it. Hamas is working to maximize, not minimize, that harm. This is to generate international pressure on Israel to end its retaliation—and to strengthen Israel’s enemies in their depiction of the Jewish state as a villain…
“It is unprecedented for a party to adopt a war strategy to maximize civilian deaths on its own side. This is so strange and evil that it should appall any decent person. Contrary to conventional commentary, this is not a human shield strategy. It’s a human sacrifice strategy… Innocent Palestinians deserve sympathy. But when Americans, Europeans, and others misdirect their outrage at Israel, failing to grasp Hamas’s responsibility, they are encouraging the very cruelty they intend to condemn.”
Douglas J. Feith, Free Press
“The military commander is obliged to try to minimize collateral damage, but not to the point of refraining from attacking important military targets. If important targets are not hit, wars last far longer, and there’s nothing humanitarian about insisting on more carnage. The object of war is not to achieve a stalemate. It is to defeat the enemy…
“Israel is doing the best it can – far more, I daresay than any other country would – to minimize collateral damage. Indeed, it is going many extra miles to create corridors for civilian safe-passage from Gaza battlefields, which will undoubtedly enable many Hamas jihadists to escape. Nevertheless, this concern for non-combatant elements of the enemy does not supersede the imperative of defeating the enemy.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, New York Post
The left worries about civilian casualties in Gaza, arguing that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law.
The left worries about civilian casualties in Gaza, arguing that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law.
“The Associated Press reported on Sunday that clean water has run out in U.N. shelters across Gaza. On Saturday, UNICEF reported that, according to local sources, more than 700 children in Gaza had been killed. The number by now is surely higher. Some readers, I suspect, will respond that while this is all terrible, it is also all Hamas’s fault. In many ways, I agree. Hamas’s terror is clearly the immediate cause of the hell raining down on Gaza; most countries attacked as Israel was attacked would respond with war…
“That does not, however, license Israeli indifference, or worse, to the lives of civilians. Israelis have a right to their rage; I imagine that if I were Israeli, I would share it. But incitement against Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom have nothing to do with Hamas terrorism, is leading us toward somewhere even darker than where we are right now.”
Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
“The last time legislative elections were held in Palestine was in 2006. In that election, 76 percent of voters turned out and Hamas won a 44 percent plurality of the vote. Overall, then, only a third of all voters who were eligible at the time cast ballots for Hamas—and most contemporary Gazans were not even alive at the time these elections were held. Nonetheless, the party has forcibly retained control over the Gaza Strip ever since…
“It’s also true that, for more than a decade, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly sought to bolster Hamas in order to divide Palestinians against one another and discredit the Palestinian cause. As recently as 2019, Netanyahu is on record telling Likud Party representatives in the Knesset that ‘anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is a part of our strategy.’ Indeed, it has been part of Israeli hard-liners’ strategy since Hamas’s origin.”
Musa al-Gharbi, The Nation
“There is nothing utopian about insisting that the Israeli military abide by the requirements of international humanitarian law. These requirements are not a concoction of human rights groups. They are rules agreed to by all governments including Israel’s. They are not meant as a nice thing to do except when the going gets rough; they are requirements even in the most extreme circumstances, when a nation is at war, when its people are slaughtered…
“For the sake of Palestinian civilians, the Western governments that are embracing Israel’s unquestionable right to respond to Hamas’s vicious assault should also insist that Israel abide by the same rules that make Hamas’s targeting of civilians an unlawful way to fight against Israel’s occupation.”
Kenneth Roth, The Guardian
