Even so, the video, which has been replayed by dozens of news outlets, seems to confirm what Israel has long claimed, that Hamas uses innocent Palestinians as barricades by installing their headquarters and arsenals beneath schools, hospitals and other public institutions in a vast complex of subterranean tunnels.
It’s unfortunate that so many people took to the streets to protest Israel when so little was known about the inner workings of Hamas and so little was understood about Israel’s survival imperative. It’s horrible that so many innocent Palestinians have died, but the blame for this war belongs to Hamas. Its surprise attack on Oct. 7 brought death on both sides.
Was Israel’s response disproportionate, as some argue? Its forces have reportedly killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, compared with 1,200 Israelis dead. I know only that there is no number of dead on either side that could end this debate. Israel has promised to keep pushing forward until all Israeli hostages, estimated to be 243, are released, and that’s understandable. But Hamas wants to perpetuate the war.
The terrorist group was obviously not looking to provoke a measured response from Israel. It needed a full-frontal assault and lots of casualties. Terrorism is only partly about killing people; the rest is PR. By hiding underground and putting innocent civilians in the line of fire, Hamas counted on exactly what has played out. The world, seeing Israel’s powerful response, turned against the only functional democracy in the Middle East.
This sort of calculation works only if the intended audience is sufficiently credulous. It didn’t take long for people, many of them antisemites, in the United States, and elsewhere, to find common cause with Hamas.
Over the past month, I’ve tried to imagine how Americans would have responded had similar atrocities been committed on our turf. We know what happened following 9/11. In some ways, the murders of almost 3,000 people in Manhattan’s twin towers, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania were similar to the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7. But 9/11 was abstract and mechanical — metal against metal, airplanes against buildings, not quite real, notwithstanding the very human horror inside. What happened in Israel was in many instances face-to-face, intimate. The Hamas militants looked their victims in the eyes before slitting their throats, or mowing down their children, or setting fire to the living.
Their cruelty is inconceivable to any normal person, and yet they laughed and celebrated with whoops as they killed and killed and killed. What was funny? One of the killers called his parents to brag about killing 10 Jews “with my own hands,” calling himself a hero, according to a phone recording released by the IDF on X. Using a victim’s phone, he apparently sent photos of his human bounty.
How could anyone find common cause with such a person?
Those who have protested Israel’s response should watch the footage of the atrocities captured by militants’ body cams and dash cams. They owe the victims that much.
Self-defense is a powerful and necessary instinct. Hamas forced Israel to defend itself. How much response would have been enough, and by whose calculation? The international consensus seems to be that it’s time to stop, and I’m all for that. But, as the victim, Israel has every right to fight this war as it sees fit.
My own anger is mitigated by empathy for innocent Palestinians, who are also victims of Hamas. The death toll is staggering and the stories, heartbreaking. It’s unbearable to hear of hospital patients and the premature babies who died because their incubators lost power. These deaths were the result of Israeli artillery, to be sure. But members of Hamas, by hiding among the innocent, are also responsible.
Israel has offered to send incubators and other aid to Gaza and has created safe corridors for Palestinian civilians to flee the violence. But Hamas doesn’t want the people to escape. The terrorists don’t care about those babies, or the safe passage of innocent citizens.
Like millions of others, I am outraged. And it’s clear why Israel was outraged, too.
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