After more than 660 days of war with no real end in sight, the daily loss of additional IDF warriors, the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, 50 hostages (some dead, some barely alive) still held captive in Gaza under inhumane conditions, tens of thousands of dead Gazans, untold numbers of injured on both sides whose lives have been changed forever, and no credible, or even non-credible, plan by our government for what happens the “day after,” we may very well have crossed the threshold into an unjust war.
It is a very painful concept to consider. After all, there was no war on October 6. We did not invade Gaza to start this war, and we had no plans to do so.
Hamas chose to believe that nine months of civil strife in Israel had made us sufficiently vulnerable for them to launch an invasion aimed at killing and destroying as much as they could lay their hands on, and that was in reach of their firepower.
Fortunately for us, they got lost once they arrived in Israel and could not find their way out of the Gaza border communities to cause damage even beyond what they actually succeeded in doing.
Without question, they bear responsibility for the ensuing war, while we bear the responsibility of being ill-prepared for their invasion. So far, so good. Clearly, we had every reason to retaliate, and, for one brief moment, the world agreed with us.
I still have seared into my brain the empowering sight of Canadian concert pianist Kevin Chen, who opened his solo performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall on October 20 by playing “Hatikvah” as a sign of support for Israel. Chen, who won first prize in the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv earlier that year, made no introduction, but the audience immediately responded, many of whom sang the words as well.
Fast forward 21 months, and the story has rotated 180 degrees. If he were to do that today, most likely a good percentage of the audience would leave the hall in protest.
No Gaza genocide
As I have written previously, Israel’s war in Gaza is not a genocide. It is a war for a just cause: the elimination of a cruel, fanatical, potentially genocidal terrorist organization that oppresses its own people, holds innocent hostages, and will pose a severe danger to the State of Israel so long as it holds power.
Hamas’s refusal to obey the laws of war, its unwillingness to surrender no matter how much its own people suffer, its willingness to accept famine rather than give up control of humanitarian aid, its inclination to let ceasefire negotiations spin endlessly in the apparent hope that international pressure will save it from defeat have all been well documented.
As righteous as our cause may be, and it certainly is a righteous one, there is still an obligation toward us, the citizenry, for our government to share not only the objectives in continuing the conflict but also how those objectives will be met and how long it will take to do so.
It is not enough to say, as we hear regularly, that we will not stop the fighting until Hamas is destroyed unless the government can share with us, at least in broad terms, how we intend to achieve that goal when it still has not been achieved after more than 660 days.
It is not enough to say we will not stop until all the hostages are returned unless the government can share with us, again at least in broad detail, how we intend to get all of them out and soon. We will have a real civil problem on our hands if, God forbid, they all come back dead.
It is not enough to avoid having a “day after” plan, because we know that, when that day comes, if we do successfully rout Hamas from the Gaza Strip, the responsibility will be ours to manage that area for the foreseeable future. How will we do that? What will we need to sacrifice to do so? Where will we get the resources? Is anyone cogitating on these questions?
Because we don’t have real answers to any of these basic questions, the only conclusion one can draw is that we simply have no justification for continuing the conflict, which then leads to only one judgment: What was a just war two years ago is now an unjust war and must be ended.
This longest war
If this war is no longer just, distasteful as it might be, we may just have to admit we have done all we could do, that we and our people are exhausted from this longest war in Israel’s history, and thus agree to withdraw our troops and close off the Gaza Strip once again.
We may feel good about US President Donald Trump telling us to finish the job, but he has no skin in the game and will continue playing golf as often as he can whatever happens here. For us living here, however, we may have to, once again, watch the bloody power struggles play out in an isolated Gaza and accept that some kind of terrorist threat will be harbored there for years to come but do a better job of protecting ourselves from it.
Mark Twain is quoted as having said, “There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one.” Frankly, it is difficult to think of any war in history that has been both just and honorable, and our war with Hamas is no different.
It may just be time to tell Hamas, “Release the hostages, and we will pull all our troops out of Gaza. We’re done with this insanity.” If, in the face of such an offer, they still refuse, then we will have the right to flatten the place and suffer condemnation of the world; the world that stood by silently and watched it all happen.
The writer is founder and chair of the American State Offices Association, former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, and a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.