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Hamas Bears Ultimate Responsibility for the Suffering in Gaza
(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Jake Wallis Simons - Former Israeli minister Ron Dermer explained this week that suffering in war is not in itself proof of genocide. Given the circumstances in which the war arose, Israel's defensive campaign is evidence of the evils of Hamas, not the other side. It is necessary to look at the evidence rather than the scale of the devastation. In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, there were 16.6 million Jews in the world. Six million were murdered, including 2/3 of European Jewry. Eight decades later, the global Jewish population has still not recovered to its pre-war level; that is what a systematic campaign of extermination looks like. More Gazans are alive today than on Oct. 7, 2023. We know that Israel repeatedly warned civilians before it struck. It dropped leaflets, sent text messages, made phone calls and announced evacuation routes. Why would an army bent on killing civilians go to such lengths to warn them to get out of the way? Hamas built a vast tunnel network. It could have sheltered civilians in those tunnels; instead, it kept them for its fighters. The world's reaction gave Hamas a perverse incentive: the more Palestinian civilians suffered, the greater the pressure on Israel to give up the campaign before it had achieved victory. Israel allowed large quantities of food, medicine and other aid supplies into Gaza throughout the war. Israel took part in vaccination campaigns and other humanitarian operations. All this is evidence that Israel had not sought the physical destruction of Gaza's people. The IDF's firepower dwarfs anything Hamas possesses. Had Israel's aim been to kill as many Palestinians as possible, it could have fulfilled an aim of genocide in a single afternoon.