Back in October 2023, I wrote a letter about Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’ raid on Israel that killed 1,200 and captured 251 that month (“Will history repeat in Gaza?”). What made Israel’s response especially horrific was that it did not just target the militants that conducted the raid; it targeted the civilian population, as well, laying siege to the whole of Gaza, destroying hospitals and “cutting off electricity, food, water, fuel and other needed supplies for the over 2 million people.” I pointed out that, if Israel’s armed forces attacked, there would be no way to distinguish Hamas from non-Hamas. Therefore, wiping out Hamas could easily have the look of genocide.
We have now reached that point where it is very difficult to see what Israel is doing in any other light. Since when is the butchering of over 60,000 people, including thousands of women and children, justified as a way of defeating Hamas? Now, with the continued withholding of food and clean water, and the further decision to fully occupy Gaza, it looks as if Hamas has succeeded in its main war aim: Turn Israel into a pariah. According to Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal political needs have overridden Israel’s national security interests, creating a “pariah state” that is increasingly isolated internationally (June 10).
There is no doubt that Hamas had to pay a price for its Oct. 7 savagery, but to equate this group of terrorist thugs with all Palestinians is no more intelligent than equating Netanyahu and his extremist gang with all Israelis. I agree with the U.N. commission that concluded that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza constitutes genocide.
Frederick Longacre
Hockessin
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
