“Occupied Gaza”
Before October 7, there were approximately 2 million Arabs in Israel, but no Jews in Gaza. Gazans voted for Hamas to rule in 2006. It summarily executed rivals of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has canceled all upcoming elections. He established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to construct a vast underground labyrinth of military facilities.
“Collateral damage”
Hamas started the war by deliberately targeting civilians. On October 7, during a period of peace and holidays, they invaded Israel and massacred them. He sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities with the sole purpose of killing non-combatants. The group has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, as it believes Jewish deaths should be celebrated under any circumstances.
Hamas has terror centers underground or inside hospitals, schools, and mosques. why? Israel appears to be reluctant to attack Gazan civilians as a collateral threat, rather than allowing Hamas to expose them as human shields.
“unbalance”
We have heard that Israel is disproportionately using force in retaliation in Gaza. But they do so because no nation can win a war without disproportionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.
The United States used disproportionate force to burn down German and Japanese cities to end a war started by both Axis powers. U.S. forces in Iraq nearly captured Fallujah and Mosul using unreasonable force in order to eradicate Islamic insurgents hiding among innocent people. Hamas opposes disproportionate violence, but only when it is achieved by Israel rather than Hamas.
“Two-state solution”
Considering that prior to October 7, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegal states with no scheduled elections. Then there was a de facto three-state solution.
It was the peoples of Gaza and the West Bank, not Israel, who institutionalized the “from the river to the sea” plan to destroy their neighbors.
Israel would have been content to live next door to the Arab autonomous regions of Gaza and the West Bank, which did not seek to destroy it in a generations-long effort to form its own “one-state solution.”
“ceasefire”
The so-called international community is demanding that Israel agree to a “ceasefire.” However, a ceasefire had already been established before October 7. Hamas massacred 1,200 Jews and took over 250 hostages, breaking the ceasefire.
Hamas violated that peace because it believed it could gain influence over Israel by killing Jews.
Hamas now believes it cannot continue killing unarmed Jews and is calling for another ceasefire. Rather, he is now worried that Israel will destroy Hamas in the way Hamas tried and failed to destroy Israel.
Did Hamas call a cease-fire after slaughtering the first 500 Jews on October 7?
“Ramadan”
President Joe Biden believes Israel should agree to a ceasefire during the Islamic religious holiday of Ramadan.
But did Hamas or other Arab militaries ever respect Jewish or uniquely Jewish religious holidays?
The October 7 massacre was timed so that Israelis would not be aware of it while celebrating the Jewish religious holidays of Simchat Torah, Shemini Torah, and Shemini Atzeret on the Sabbath.
Furthermore, Hamas’s surprise attack was deliberately timed to commemorate the Arab raid on Israel nearly 50 years ago.
On October 6, 1973, Israelis celebrating the religious holiday of Yom Kippur were targeted in a surprise attack. Arab forces also assumed that attacking during the religious holiday of Ramadan would give them greater surprise.
As a result, Arab armies opportunistically conduct battles on both Jewish and Islamic holidays. Egyptians and Syrians still boast of the 1973 surprise attack on Israel as the “Ramadan War.”
Only Westerners, not Arabs, believe there should be no war during Ramadan.
“civilian casualties”
Israel risks the lives of its soldiers to prevent civilian deaths. Hamas risks the lives of civilians to prevent the deaths of terrorists. Israel considers this a failure, and Hamas considers it globally advantageous to have civilians die rather than soldiers.
“Foreign aid”
The Biden administration has threatened to cut off or suspend aid to Israel if it continues to retaliate against Hamas despite starting the war. The administration has therefore promised to give Gaza more aid after the October 7 Hamas massacre than it did before the Hamas attack.
“Prisoners”
Nevertheless, the international community that supports Hamas knows that it is safer to be captured by Israel than by Hamas. We know that women are raped in custody not by Israelis but by Hamas. And unarmed people are more likely to be mutilated and beheaded by Hamas than Israelis.
Is the international community more likely to accuse Israel of war crimes than Hamas, because the Jewish state seeks to avoid the deaths of civilians it deems beneficial to Hamas?
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of Basic Books’ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.You can contact him via email authorvdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
