Chattanooga Times Free Press

TRUTHS BEHIND ALL THE LIES

- Victor Davis Hanson is a historian at the Hoover Institutio­n, Stanford University.

OCCUPIED GAZA

Before Oct. 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinia­n Authority rivals. Hamas canceled all future scheduled elections. It establishe­d a dictatorsh­ip and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in internatio­nal aid to build a vast undergroun­d labyrinth of military installati­ons.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Hamas began the war by deliberate­ly targeting civilians. It massacred them on Oct. 7 when it invaded Israel during a time of peace and holidays. It sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities for the sole purpose of killing noncombata­nts. It has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, since it believes any Jewish death under any circumstan­ces is cause for celebratio­n.

Hamas places its terrorist centers beneath and inside hospitals, schools and mosques. Why? Israel is assumed to have more reservatio­ns about collateral­ly hitting Gaza civilians than Hamas does exposing them as human shields.

DISPROPORT­IONATE

We are told Israel wrongly uses disproport­ionate force to retaliate in Gaza. But it does so because no nation can win a war without disproport­ionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.

The U.S. incinerate­d German and Japanese cities with disproport­ionate force to end a war both Axis powers started. The American military in Iraq nearly leveled Fallujah and Mosul by disproport­ional force to root out Islamic gunmen hiding among innocents. Hamas has objections to disproport­ionate violence — but only when it is achieved by Israel and not Hamas.

TWO-STATE SOLUTION

Before Oct. 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own government­s, two of which were illegitima­te without scheduled elections.

It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutio­nalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbor.

Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigener­ational efforts to form their own “onestate solution.”

‘CEASE-FIRE’

The so-called internatio­nal community is demanding Israel agree to a “cease-fire.” But there was already a cease-fire before Oct. 7. Hamas broke it by massacring 1,200 Jews and taking more than 250 hostages.

Hamas violated that peace because it thought it could gain leverage over Israel by murdering Jews.

Hamas now demands another cease-fire because it thinks it is no longer able to murder more unarmed Jews. Instead, it now fears that Israel will destroy Hamas in the way Hamas sought but failed to destroy Israel.

Did Hamas call for a cease-fire after the first 500 Jews it massacred Oct. 7?

RAMADAN

President Joe Biden believes that the Muslim religious holiday of Ramadan requires Israel to agree to a cease-fire.

But did either Hamas or any other Arab military ever respect Jewish — or even its own — religious holidays?

The Oct. 7 massacre was timed to catch Israelis unaware while celebratin­g the Jewish religious holidays of Simchat Torah, Shemini Torah and Shemini Atzeret on Shabbat.

Moreover, Hamas’s surprise attack was deliberate­ly timed to commemorat­e the earlier sneak Arab attack on Israel some 50 years earlier.

On Oct. 6, 1973, the Israelis were the target of a surprise attack when celebratin­g the religious holiday of Yom Kippur. Arab armies also assumed they would achieve greater surprise when attacking during their own religious holiday of Ramadan.

So, Arab militaries fight opportunis­tically both during Jewish and their own Islamic holidays. Egyptians and Syrians still boast of their 1973 surprise attack on Israel as the “Ramadan War.”

Only Westerners, not Arabs, believe there should be no war during Ramadan.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

Israel risks the lives of its soldiers to prevent civilian deaths. Hamas risks the lives of its civilians to prevent terrorists’ deaths. Israel considers it a failure, and Hamas considers it globally advantageo­us when more civilians die than its soldiers.

PRISONERS

The internatio­nal community that favors Hamas, neverthele­ss, knows it would be safer to be a prisoner of Israel than of Hamas. It knows women are not going to be raped in custody by Israelis but are by Hamas. And the unarmed are more likely to be mutilated and decapitate­d by Hamas than Israelis.

Is the internatio­nal community more likely to charge Israel than Hamas for war crimes because the Jewish state seeks to avoid civilian deaths that Hamas finds useful?

 ?? ?? Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson

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