ISRAEL’S outrage
by what United Nations secretary general António Guterres had to say on Wednesday about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel was entirely predictable.
Guterres’s greatest sin was to contextualise the conflict by daring to say that the Hamas atrocities on October 7 – out-andout acts of unspeakable and murderous terror – did not happen in a vacuum. He said: ‘The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.’
This didn’t reveal any error at all on the part of the UN secretary general. Rather it displayed his remarkable courage, knowing that his remarks would draw savage rebukes from Israel. His words were twisted and turned by Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan who said Guterres’s speech meant that Israel was guilty for the actions of Hamas. Which is nonsense.
Israel’s furious reaction is a classic example of how not to make friends, how not to influence anybody towards your point of view. Such reaction also, one suspects deliberately, fails to acknowledge the difference between explaining and justifying.
What Hamas did on October 7 by killing more than 1,400 people, injuring 3,500 others and kidnapping over 200 people as hostages, can never be justified. Ever. And, as a direct consequence of that outrage, Israel has the right to go after the genocidal Hamas terror organisation and dismantle it, top to bottom.
Failure to do just that would mean Israel accepts a future where maniacal murderers may invade the homes of their citizens and kill, in the most horrifying way, innocent men, women and children. And Israel has a duty never to accept that. So now we have this bloody, vicious war. (Is there any other kind?)
However, that does not give a blank cheque to Israel to act without let or hindrance. They have to ensure that innocent civilians are not killed in their thousands as they conduct search-and-destroy attacks on Hamas. Two things can be true at the very same time. One: Israel is entitled (indeed has a responsibility) to turn full lethal force on Hamas in order to wipe them out. Two: Israel may also be committing war crimes while engaging in number one.
Already, well over 7,000 Palestinians, including nearly 3,000 children, have reportedly died as Israel continues to bombard Gaza. There is no reason to believe Israel has any intention of stopping.
Guterres accused Israel of ‘clear violations of international law’ and judging by the scale of the onslaught so far it’s hard to disagree with him. We can see it for ourselves every day on the television. We’re not blind. Bomb, more bombs, and then some.