I’m seeing a lot of calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Several things are astonishing to me about that. The first is that the calls for a ceasefire invariably mean that the authors think that Israel should stop making war on Hamas not that Hamas should stop making war against Israel. They seem to be unaware that Hamas has been firing missiles at Israeli civilians truly indiscriminately since October 7.
Another thing that surprises me is how various news outlets bend over backwards to exonerate Palestinians, generally, from the attacks. Here, for example, is a snippet from the editors of the Washington Post’s endorsement of a ceasefire:
Israel’s legitimate war aims do not include reoccupying Gaza or expelling its population. Nor are Palestinians generally its enemy — only Hamas. Israel’s highest officials need to make that clear to the world, repeatedly. Israeli politicos who suggest otherwise need to be disavowed. Israel has to swiftly contain violence against Palestinians by settlers on the West Bank.
I have scoured the archives of the New York Times and Washington Post for editorials written during World War II making similar claims about the Germans, e.g. that we aren’t making war against Germany but against the Nazis. “Germans” and “Nazis” seem to be used interchangeably until after the war when a distinction began to be made.
In a related vein the New York Times columnist David Brooks is calling for an “Arab-led intervention” to administer Gaza:
And then the third thing which the administration is thinking about is what comes after. And so that’s a very tricky situation, but somehow it can’t be the U.S. side, it can’t be Israel then, obviously, but, somehow, somebody has to organize probably an Arab-led intervention force to administer Gaza.
And that force has to do counterterrorism, which is going to be calling upon a lot of it, because we don’t want Israel to be doing counterterrorism in Gaza after this. And so these are all different ways you can separate the population from Hamas. And that’s what — that has to be the strategy here.
Let’s engage in a little thought experiment. Imagine that such a thing took place (the evidence against it ever taking place is overwhelming). What would happen then?
One last point in this post. The assertions that leadership decapitation or, indeed, any sort of armed opposition to terrorist groups are ineffective are everywhere. I suggest that they study Jordan’s handling of Black September. It’s one of the few examples of the actual elimination of a terrorist group. It was not non-violent.
Update
At Newsweek Josh Hammer says something about a ceasefire that needed saying:
In reality, there is an extraordinarily simple way to expedite the end of all hostilities in Gaza: Hamas releases all hostages taken on Oct. 7 and unconditionally surrenders to Israel, just as Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers to end World War II. If Hamas did that, the war would end tomorrow. There would be no further casualties. The conversation would instead shift to what the Gaza Strip will look like once freed from Hamas’ jackboot.
As a reminder Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2007. Gaza’s problems didn’t end when Israel’s occupation ended there.
