On the 7th of October 2023, Israel woke up to her worst nightmare. As the sirens blared and citizens of Israel looked for shelter, a couple of thousand Islamic terrorists from Hamas attacked the bewildered civilians from air, sea, and land. As thousands of rockets and missiles rained down on Israel leaving in its wake destruction and a trail of dead bodies strewn on the streets, hundreds of terrorists on motorbikes, on foot, and followed by tractors breached the fence separating Israel from Gaza. Simultaneously, terrorists also attached the beaches of Israel riding on motorbikes, overwhelming the unsuspecting Israeli soldiers. As the embers and smoke engulfed Israel, some of the Islamic terrorists descended on paragliders.
After descending on Israel, the terrorists went city to city, village to village, and kibbutz to kibbutz hunting down women, children, and men alike. The world saw images of charred bodies, burnt babies, raped and dishonored women, and bloodied and murdered men. Several Jews were taken hostage by the terrorists as they cried and screamed for help, amidst the chants of Allahu Akbar, they were beaten, spat on, dishonored, and kidnapped – carried at the back of their trucks to Gaza.
If the massacre on the 7th wasn’t enough, as Israel vowed to eradicate Hamas and started pounding them, the world, at least the part of the world that had no moral compunctions in asking Israel to simply roll over and die, put the battered and bruised nation on trial. It was almost as if a section of the global media wanted to guilt-trip Israel into accepting its annihilation. The moral burden of a war they did not start was put squarely on their shoulder – shoulders that had not been granted the time to even carry their dead. One would not be off the mark if one were to observe that far more than the guns and rocket battle that rages on between Israel and Hamas, it is the war of the moral burden that Israel has been battling to manage. The main theme of this battle of morality was a section of the world telling Israel that it must stop the war in Palestine because civilians were dying – again – a war that Israel did not want, did not start, and had done everything to avoid till over 1300 of their innocent civilians were butchered.
However, as I walked around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv earlier in January as a part of the Sharaka delegation, talking to several people – from the Orthodox to the Conservatives and even the Leftists, I began to understand that an overwhelming sentiment among the people of Israel was that Hamas had to be obliterated and at this point, there was no way Israel could achieve that without the ongoing war. As a Hindu, the moral clarity that the Jews displayed was – as incorrect as it may sound under the circumstances – refreshing. Encountering people who were mostly in agreement about the fundamental problem was a paradigm I was hardly used to.
While Israel mostly agrees on the fundamentals of the beast, they have hotly contested ideas of what the Nation’s priorities must be and which priority would be morally a just one for the state of Israel and its people. I must add here, that there certainly does exist a section of the Jewish community, who in their radical Left bubble, believe that Israel’s battle against the manifestation of pure evil could or maybe already has translated into a mindless ‘genocide’ in Palestine. However, as my conversations revealed, there seems to be a remarkable shift in the discourse post the attack of 7th October where even sections of the Left are reconsidering the paradigms they believed in – Is it only Hamas that is evil and what does Israel need to do to not only tell its story here on, but also – survive.
Expectations of puritanic morals while walking through hell
The most predominant narrative in the global corporate media against the ongoing war is that Israel’s campaign to obliterate Hamas is not commensurate action versus what was done by Hamas – Hamas killed 1300, Israel is killing thousands, millions more (numbers depend on which media you choose to follow – if it is the Hamas media, then the numbers could be more than the combined population of Africa) in their bloodlust, in their search for retribution.
To make it simpler – the predominant narrative against Israel is that Hamas is an ‘extremist organization’ that murdered 1300 people and took hundreds as a hostage. Against this onslaught, Israel has a right to defend itself, however, in their quest for defense and the obliteration of Hamas, they are claiming the lives of thousands of civilians in Palestine – innocent women and children included. There is a seemingly large section that believes that Hamas’ actions were the ‘language of the oppressed’ and the ‘language of resistance’ – which is to say that Israel deserves its fate at the hands of Hamas because there is no peaceful road to resistance and fighting supposed occupation.
In Israel, I posed this question to many – what about the civilian lives being lost in Palestine? In Gaza? Does Israel have a moral compunction when it comes to the rules of war?
Voices from Israel
At the hostage square in Tel Aviv, thousands gather regularly to demand the return of hostages. There are prayer circles, a tunnel of messages, an empty Shabat table with the hostage names on it, and several tents for different purposes – one for example – was of Kibbutz Nahal Oz – remembering the hostages taken from that Kibbutz and demanding their return.
Walking around, I met a couple who had come to the hostage square to show their solidarity – grieve with their community. They spoke at length about the war upon Israel and how it was one they did not start. “In a war, you attack soldiers. Not civilians. Soldiers are supposed to fight with each other. Why take our children and our daughters”, the wife said, inching towards tears.
The husband was far more emotional, I could see, however, his emotions manifested more in rage than tears. When I asked him how he felt about the accusations that Israel was committing a genocide of Palestinians and killing several more civilians than Hamas had killed, he was livid. “It is not true, and even if it is, I don’t care”. The wife shot him a look, saying, “We can’t say that. We can’t say it’s ok for innocent people to die”.
“Innocent? Civilians from Palestine came and killed us. These were people who used to work for us. They had work permits. They would come to Israel to earn and we were good to them. We thought peace was possible. Then they do this”, he said.
“I know it is not nice to say this. But I don’t care how many people die. They are dying because Hamas did not let them leave. We asked them to leave. Israel needs to finish Hamas and I don’t care what the price is”.
“How can they say we are worse? Did we rape more of their women? Kill more of their toddlers in their sleep? In their homes? Did we say they took 200 hostages so we will take 500 of their innocents? I understand people are dying, but they are dying in a war where their own government (Hamas) did not let them evacuate. How can the world hold Israel responsible for wanting to end the terrorist organization that did this to us?”, he said.
I spoke to another woman who was manning a tent in the memory of those kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz – one which is 800 meters from Gaza. She spoke at length about how she grew up so close to Gaza that as children, they would simply cross over to shop – since the produce was always cheaper there. She said she grew up with the hope that peace was possible and that they could live in harmony and brotherhood. But then, one day, so many she knew died or were kidnapped – 5 from her Kibbutz itself.
Perhaps we should go a step further. While decent people would feel inherent guilt when blamed for the “death of civilians”, how does one expect Israelis to feel sympathy when it is the elected government – Hamas – that prevented their citizens from moving to safety? Would it even be fair to place moral responsibility of those deaths on the shoulders of the victims who are not trying to weed out the perpetrators?
In the course of understanding this moral conundrum of the Israelis, I posed this question to Lieut-Maj. Ran Bar-Yehoshafat. He had returned from the war in Gaza only a couple of days ago before our delegation interacted with him.
In his hour-long talk, Lieut Maj Ran Bar Yehoshafat spoke on the bravery of Israeli citizens who neutralized terrorists on the 7th of October even before IDF responded, and the overall intelligence failure of Israel. However, there was one part of his talk that stood out – what he said while fighting in Gaza after the 7th October massacre.
Lieut Maj Ran Bar Yehoshafat spoke about how in every house they entered, they were confronted with the ugly face of terrorism – they would enter a house and see articles that would make them believe that these people were “normal” – just like them. But then, he would touch a bag of diapers and realize that grenades were hidden in it.
He further spoke about how there were about 40,000 “card-carrying members” of Hamas, however, several thousand others were belonging to other Jihadi organizations like Islamic Jihad and so on, and how there were several thousand average civilians who were not attached to a terrorist group but were terrorists who would, kill Israelis or celebrate the murder of Israelis. He spoke about how when the bodies of the Israeli civilians were taken back to Gaza, there were “civilians” who were spitting at the hostages.
Narrating another story, he says that Israel had asked Gazans to evacuate. It was Hamas who had forced them to go back North. Explaining why Hamas did that, Lieut Maj Ran Bar Yehoshafat says that Hamas is throwing civilians at the IDF so when the IDF would shoot them, they would know their positions. “If you are a soldier, and you see two people covered in black coming towards you in a war, what do you do? You shoot them. Hamas knows this”, he said.
Now, the general tone of what Lieut-Maj. Ran Bar-Yehoshafat said was not limited to him. I met several reservist soldiers who narrated similar experiences while fighting in Gaza. They also reiterated, over and over again, including Lieut-Maj. Ran Bar-Yehoshafat, that IDF was not seeking civilians to kill. That IDF was not actively on a mission to find babies and women to murder. However, if Hamas itself wants to use civilians in a war with an Army, the moral burden of that decision could not be placed on the shoulders of Israel.
War is messy. It is never easy and certainly, never bloodless. We know for a fact that average Palestinians were involved in the 7th October attack, not just in the active commission of crimes but also in passing information before the attack. Further, we also know that the average Palestinians celebrated the 7th October massacre when hostages and Israeli dead bodies were taken back to Gaza. Through various accounts, it is evident that what the world chooses to call “civilian casualty” is not all “civilian” but includes those who partook in the massacre, gave information for the massacre, celebrated the massacre, and those who “appear” to be civilians but are, as Mr Chikli explained, those who keep their Kalashnikovs in their homes – to be used at an appropriate time against Israelis. it is also a documented, fact that Israel had urged Gazans to travel to the north before the war began and it is indeed Hamas that ensured civilians were not allowed to leave so they could be used as human shields.
If this complexity isn’t enough, Israel realizes that unless Hamas is eradicated, its very existence will continually be threatened – a realization that is far more cavernous given the massacre of 7th October.
Now, if it is the elected government of the Palestinians that has decided to use them as a shield against an army, the moral burden of that decision has to rest on the shoulders of Hamas. What the world wants, essentially, is for Israel to take vicarious responsibility for the actions of Hamas and give up on their right to self-preservation and fight against terror, because they are morally obligated to preserve lives – lives which more often than not – are either motivated to murder or celebrate the murder of Israelis.
There is something almost Machiavellian about the guilt-tripping of the Jews in this case. They have been asked, nay, forced, to prove their moral superiority by not only understanding their massacre and feeling burdened by their legitimate campaign of self-preservation but also, being morally responsible for the actions of the very people who perpetrated the massacre against them.