When word of the atrocities that Hamas perpetrated against Israeli citizens first came out, the world was nearly universally supportive of Israel.
Just in case you forgot, on October 7, 2023 – a date now as firmly entrenched in the Israeli collective consciousness as September 11, 2001 is in the United States – Hamas launched a vicious strike against Israel.
Hamas fired thousands of missiles at Israel, not only at the usual towns in the South (since 2001), but at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as well. The terrorists breached the border with Israel in dozens of places, driving bulldozers right through the fence that was supposed to protect Israel, with some terrorists in paragliders flying over the fence.
That day was the most horrific day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. To put it in another perspective, on a per capita basis, 1,400 dead with a population of less than 10 million is equivalent to 15 times 9/11 in the US. Everyone knows someone who lost someone.
But that was a few weeks ago. Now that Israel is striking back and has launched a major ground offensive to remove Hamas’s ability to harm us, the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza have many people calling on Israel to exercise restraint. There are calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Israel was founded on 'Never again'
That is not going to happen.
Israel has been shaken to its core. Israel was founded on the basis of “Never Again!”
Never again should Jews be victims of pogroms, murdered en masse for simply being Jews. Yet here we are, less than 80 years after the Holocaust, once again living through a pogrom, through an inconceivable nightmare.
Hamas is ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. These are not militant groups. They are not freedom fighters. They are brutal terrorists.
A friend posted a comment to something I wrote on Facebook, a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind.”
Nicholas Kristoff, a New York Times commentator I often agree with, wrote a piece titled, “We must not kill Gazan children to try to protect Israel’s children.”
Many people seem to think that because deaths in Gaza are already triple or more the number of Israeli deaths, the Israeli response has not been “proportional,” or that Israel is committing “genocide.”
People are saying that the death toll in Gaza is because Israel is exacting revenge, or is following a biblical prescription of an eye for an eye, or is not proportional, are all mistaken, and reading these views leaves those of us in Israel feeling alone.
Israel is not targeting innocent people
No doubt there are some Israelis who want revenge. Even leftist peace-loving Israelis, such as myself and most of my friends, believe that Hamas must be stopped. Our government has an obligation to protect us, and that means removing Hamas’s ability to do us harm – which will mean a lengthy and difficult ground operation, and many deaths, of both combatants and sadly, civilians, including children.
What Kristoff gets wrong is that Israel is not intending to kill Gazan children to protect Israeli children – unlike Hamas, who intentionally targeted the weakest members of our society.
The blame for the deaths of children in Gaza is squarely on the shoulders of Hamas.
According to the Red Cross, proportionality means the number of civilian deaths in a particular attack should be proportional to the military value of the target. In other words, a high-value military target justifies a higher number of civilian casualties than a low-value target.
But Hamas tries to “game the system.” Instead of protecting its civilians – as Israel tries to do – Hamas uses them as human shields, to make sure that there is a high price in civilian deaths for Israel to accomplish any military objective.
Yet the world somehow expects Israel to care more about the lives of Gazans than Hamas does.
I understand that a child blown up by an Israeli bomb is just as dead as a child who was decapitated by a terrorist.
But surely any reasonable person can see that there is a difference between a terrorist who intentionally targets children and a child who dies in a strike targeting a military objective because its own government used it as a human shield.
My heart breaks for the innocents of Gaza
It is said that there is nothing like a little antisemitism to inspire Jewish unity, and sadly it is true. I have never seen Israelis so united.
Even the most peace-loving Israelis I know, people deeply committed to and involved in interfaith work and people who are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, agree that Hamas cannot be allowed to retain the ability to hurt us in this way.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Israel signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) that would have given the Palestinians control over their borders, including a seaport of their own.
But in 2006, Hamas came to power and in a violent struggle with the PA that left over 100 dead, rejected any deals with Israel. Instead, Hamas reaffirmed its desire to expel all Jews from “the river to the sea,” meaning all of Israel. Instead of building a little Singapore on the Mediterranean, Hamas chose a path of violence and oppression.
My heart does break for the innocents in Gaza. Their life has been misery, and now it is worse.
But the blame does not lay with Israel. It lies with Hamas. What Israel is doing is not revenge. It is self-defense.
The writer is a rabbi and former entrepreneur who divides his time between Jerusalem and New Mexico. One of his daughters got married in Jerusalem on the third day of the war.