The way the media covered the war in Gaza over winter break, you would think that the Israeli army got bored one day and decided it hadn’t bombed anything in a while. The way the media covered it, you would think that the primary objective of the Israeli army was not to stop Hamas from committing acts of terror against its people, but rather target practice. The media spent the whole time tallying up the Palestinian death toll while completely ignoring the fact that close to two-thirds of the Palestinian casualties were armed Hamas fighters.
Why should I care if a terrorist is killed? Why should I care if someone, whose main goal in life is to harm innocent Israeli civilians, is killed? Why should anyone care? Do Americans shed tears every single time the United States kills an al-Qaida terrorist? So then why is it that everyone wails and whines and bemoans the fate of the Palestinians whenever Israel decides that it has finally had enough? Israel has tried diplomacy and has been met with violence. After all, the Israeli government was willing to renew the shittiest cease-fire in the history of cease-fires. In every other part of the world a cease-fire means that no one gets to shoot. In Israel a cease-fire means that Israel isn’t allowed to shoot and it’s a good day when Hamas limits themselves to only three missiles. Hamas belligerently refused to re-up the cease-fire that clearly worked to their advantage and if anyone had any doubt about their intentions on the day the cease-fire ended, Hamas marked it with an especially intense rocket barrage.
The blood of every innocent Palestinian who was killed is on the hands of Hamas. They triggered the Israeli reprisal and their use of human shields should leave no doubt about how much they care for their own people. Hamas stole humanitarian supplies from various aid agencies over the course of the conflict and killed many of their own that they considered to be collaborating with Israel. Hamas doesn’t care about the Palestinians; Hamas cares about Hamas. They smuggled arms through tunnels that ran under civilian homes and stockpiled weapons and ammunition in schools. A Hamas command bunker was built under a Gaza hospital. International law does not forbid any government from using lethal force in a civilian area, provided that the target is military. A target ceases to be a civilian target when weapons and enemy combatants occupy it. At no point during this conflict did Israel conduct an operation. Nor did they drop a bomb or fire artillery with the express purpose of harming non-combatants, though that would be inevitable, as a Hamas rocket team was firing from a playground.
But what about proportionality, you might ask? How can you say that Israel’s response was self-defense when responding with such overwhelming force? The casualty figures were used as the main argument against Israel’s use of force, citing that it wasn’t proportional to the Israeli death toll so far. I’m sorry, did I miss something? Are you actually trying to tell me that Israel shouldn’t have tried to prevent Israeli civilian deaths? That the Israeli government should have waited till enough Israelis had been killed before they said “enough is enough”? How about the fact that Hamas, to date, has launched 10,000 missiles at Israel? What about all the playgrounds that Hamas hit with their rockets? In that case Israel’s response was perfectly proportional to Hamas’. Israel’s only crime is that their bombs are better than Hamas’.
The fact of the matter is that the blame for this conflict rests solely on Hamas. They started it and they had the power to end it. Do you know why so few Israelis have died in the last four years? Because the Israeli government built bomb shelters and developed a rocket warning system. What did Hamas spend their aid money on? Ammunition, guns, explosives and all the things that they needed to carry out their charter to destroy Israel at any cost. It’s a shame that the Israeli government, the global community and the average college student cares more about the Palestinians than their own government does.