Deaths and self-inflicted wounds
Six months after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel has lost a significant amount of the moral high ground it needs to defeat Hamas.
The Israeli missile strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1 is an affront to the international humanitarian effort in Gaza, and another loss of Israel’s moral high ground as it engages in an increasingly bogged-down war with Hamas.
Military officials claimed the errant attack — which occurred the same day Israel was able to stage a pinpoint air raid on the Iranian embassy complex in Syria — was the result of a series of mistakes, missed communications and violations of its rules of engagement. The families of the dead and the rest of the world deserve a comprehensive, independent investigation of what happened. The United Nations has reported that more than 200 aid workers have been killed so far in the conflict.
But it would be obscene to discuss these very high-profile deaths outside the context of what’s estimated to be more than 30,000 Palestinians who have died in the six months since Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel, killed an estimated 1,139 Israelis and took scores of hostages — many of whom remain prisoners or are among the missing. As this editorial board wrote just days after that savage attack, Israel has every right to defend itself — against terrorism as well as more conventional military assaults — and hunt down those who planned and perpetrated the Oct. 7 atrocities.
But President Benjamin Netanyahu’s pursuit of that righteous goal has turned disastrous for almost everyone involved — except, perhaps, for the Hamas leaders who have been able to capitalize on growing global outrage at the number of Palestinian casualties and the destruction of vast swaths of Gaza.
The Associated Press noted last week that more than 80 percent of the region’s population has been displaced, and more than 1 million people are close to starvation. These conditions devastate innocent people, and while they might deter terrorism in the short term they are the breeding ground for new generations of terrorists eager to lash out.
To borrow a phrase from past U.S. military quagmires, there is no end in sight and precious little planning for what might follow the armed conflict, except for the fact that Mr. Netanyahu has foreclosed on the possibility of a Palestinian state. Amid a new wave of anti-netanyahu protests in Israel, his government last week shut down the Qatari-owned news outlet Al Jazeera under a new law that allows Israel to temporarily ban any media organization deemed to be a security threat — a move that the White House has correctly expressed concern over, and one that puts Israel in the questionable company of regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.
It is not anti-israel — and it is certainly not antisemitic — to criticize the military tactics being deployed by Mr. Netanyahu and his Cabinet. It is, to the contrary, incumbent on supporters of Israel to speak out against these failures and demand a change. That is why President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer have soured on Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership in recent weeks, and have increased pressure on Israel to do more to ensure that the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza can increase without the fear that aid workers will be wiped out by the next bloody mistake. Even former President Donald J. Trump has grown impatient with Mr. Netanyahu, who he said was “absolutely losing the PR war.”
Six months after the Oct. 7 attacks, these things are true:
While the survival of Israel, like that of any nation, depends on its ability to preserve its security, its only means of accomplishing that is preserving the support of its allies around the globe — support its own actions have placed in jeopardy.
Hamas needs to be eliminated root and branch, but Palestinian civilians should not be forced to live in terror of sudden death from above or slow death from starvation.
The Israeli hostages should be freed immediately.
And the only path to a just peace in the region is a two-state solution.