Israel: the liberation of Gaza

By Richard North - October 17, 2023

With no sign yet (of which we are aware) of the IDF entering the Gaza strip in force, it is difficult to predict what the next few days may bring.

Nor am I particularly keen to pursue the line taken by the Telegraph which offers “six scenarios for the endgame of Israel’s invasion of Gaza”.

To me, it’s ironic that the paper should choose six. I remember talking to the very senior officer who led the Falklands Task Force, when he ruminated that he and his staff worked out six scenarios for their campaign, only to find that the enemy had worked out a seventh that they hadn’t predicted.

The Telegraph tells us that any battle with Hamas would be long, hard and costly for Israel, not least because “the Islamist group has at least 30,000 well-armed and trained fighters who will have the advantage of defending territory they know extremely well”.

It wouldn’t surprise me though if the Israelis pulled the rabbit out of the hat and came up with a modus operandi which none of the pundits had thought of, and somehow made short work of what seems otherwise to be an intractable task. Or not – we just have no means of knowing.

That said, there are a few straws in the wind that suggest that there is room for optimism. This time round, the Israelis might get the time they need to do whatever job it is that they feel is needed.

One of those straws was yesterday’s Times leading article on what it described as Hamas and “the longest hatred”.

Despite the “victimhood” schtick from Hamas running at full throttle, the paper has decided that “the group’s atrocities are born not of desperation but of antisemitic fanaticism”. Thus, it concludes: “The Jewish state and the Jewish people are entitled to the support of the civilised world”.

In getting to that point, it is the considered view of the paper that the Jewish state has not only the right but the duty to protect its civilians by defeating the Hamas “death cult”, which openly declares its aim of destroying Israel.

In seeking to rescue hostages, it says, Israel’s defence forces must simultaneously protect civilian lives in Gaza. And as Hamas deliberately embeds itself in areas of high civilian density, this is excruciatingly difficult.

While Israel should preserve humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and the delivery of food and medicines, the tragic reality is that Hamas is a catastrophe for Gaza, and for the just cause of Palestinian statehood alongside a secure Israel, as well as for the Jews.

In that context, the Israelis might benefit from changing the narrative. Rather than talking about a ground invasion, it could profitably describe the operation in terms of the liberation of Gaza – in much the same manner as the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944 were seen as the liberation of Europe, killing many innocent French citizens in the process (over 3,000 in Caen alone).

While what we might call the “progressive” tendency here and elsewhere glibly talks of Gaza being “occupied” by the Israelis – which it isn’t – it would be accurate to describe the strip as being occupied by Hamas, where the people are deemed expendable. If the “peace-loving” Gazans can be taken at their word, then they should welcome their liberators.

Needless to say, it is never that simple and one only has to listen to the declamatory rhetoric from some of the people in Gaza to realise that many blame the Israelis for their predicament and are supportive of Hamas.

Here, though, one has to take the view that, those people who support the oppressors themselves become the oppressors. In so doing, they void any claim to their victim status and become part of the problem. The people of Gaza themselves need to decide which side they are on, or have that decision made for them.

The point here, that so many people skirt around, is that The Times description of Hamas is adequate but hardly goes far enough. Not only is it a murderous “death cult” driven by antisemitic fanaticism, but it is also a criminal gang, looting what little wealth that comes to Gaza, with leaders who, in any civilised society would be locked up in prison.

To expect Israel, or any other democratic nation wedded to the rule of law, to come to terms with this organisation, is entirely unreasonable. The only just response to Hamas is to seek its extermination.

But the essential part of the problem is that the self-defined Palestinians form the “sea” in which the “fishes” of Hamas swim. To get to the fish, one must dig deep into the sea.

In practical terms, the blockade of Gaza is a logical step. We have seen recently a small example of the way Hamas behaves, with the report that the terrorists during their murderous rampage last week used Unicef first aid kits during assault, kits distributed by the UN for the welfare of the people of Gaza.

As the report tells us, Hamas has a history of repurposing foreign aid shipments into makeshift weapons, with a story circulating elsewhere of how it stole pipework supplied for the strip’s water system and used them as casings for the rockets they launched at Israel.

Given the structured larceny of Hamas, which ruthlessly exploits its position as Gaza’s government, it is near impossible for Israel to intercept its supplies, by way of a blockade, without also affecting the rest of the people.

It is this which Israel has implemented as part of its programme to bring down Hamas, only to have the progressives squealing about “collective punishment”. Yet its actions bring to mind the Blockade of Germany during the First World War, when the prolonged naval blockade conducted by the Allies during is considered one of the key elements in the eventual Allied victory.

As the time, the German Board of Public Health claimed that 763,000 German civilians had died from starvation and disease by the end of 1918 as a direct result of the blockade, while an independent academic study done in 1928 put the death toll at 424,000 – with a possible additional 100,000 deaths arising from the post-armistice continuation of the blockade in 1919.

By that measure, the Israelis have some way to go but, considering that they are at war with Hamas, one has to ask where the difference lies between the Allied actions between 1914-19 and the current blockade on Gaza – which undoubtedly will have a much shorter duration.

In that context, it is all very well the BBC emoting about the collapse of the health system and hospitals in Gaze – with the complicity of UN “aid chief” Martin Griffith who complains that there is no power, water or fuel. But what is Israel to do if supplies of fuel oil to fire up the city hospital’s generators are siphoned off by Hamas to support their war machine, enabling it to fire more rockets over the border?

What we are facing is the march of the internationalists who are seeking to define state conduct, applying it to those who respect the rule of law, and ignoring those who don’t.

Thus, Griffiths bleats: “Even wars have rules, and these rules must be upheld, at all times, and by all sides”, notwithstanding that Hamas break every rule in the book – and some. “Civilians”, he also says, “must be allowed to leave for safer areas. And whether they move or stay, constant care must be taken to spare them”.

And there lies the different story of how to manage the population of Gaza. Through the day, yesterday, we saw the ongoing drama of the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, where the barrier to the Gazans moving to safer areas is not Israel but Egypt – as well as Hamas which is hindering movement.

From this drama, it becomes evident that Egypt simply doesn’t want the Palestinians on its territory, having a long history of dealing with Muslim fundamentalism and not wanting to repeat an experience that cost the life of its president Anwar Sadat.

Given then that the Palestinians have been ejected from Jordan , after trying to take over the country, and then from Lebanon after seeking refuge there, it is hardly surprising that the Egyptians don’t want them either. They are trouble wherever they go.

It is Israel’s very great misfortune that it is the country left to bite the bullet, and deal with the Palestinians, but it could be said that it is the Palestinians’ great fortune that it is Israel in the hot seat. They complain about the treatment, but they would be treated far more roughly by their Arab brothers.