Hardly a day goes by without the media reporting on civilian causalities in Gaza (with an emphasis on women and children) killed or injured by Israel’s military. No one with a sense of humanity would not be moved.
As the American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is hell.” This same sense of resignation is what presumably justified the British blockade of Germany in World War I. “Starve them” was the battle cry and starve them the British did, leading to Germany’s surrender, with its army in France largely intact.
This led an unknown German Corporal, named Adolph Hitler, to falsely claim the Reich was “sold out by the home front.” Civilian casualties on both sides in World War II were even higher, including six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. But the Allied war effort also took its toll on civilians -- the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, followed by the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American atomic bombs. Horrendous civilian causalities did not end with World War II. They have reoccurred in every major war and military engagement since 1945.
The political theorists tell us there is a difference between “just” and “unjust” wars. The cynic among us would say the difference is in the eye of the beholder. But if there was ever a just war, it is bound up in Israel’s stated goal to dismantle Hamas’ military capability, a legitimate response to the wanton slaughter of more than 1,200 Israeli and other civilians by Hamas terrorists on October 7 of last year.
Israel has a moral obligation not to target civilians. It has made mistakes, some it has admitted. Hamas has a moral obligation, too, to safeguard and protect the civilian population, not use it as a human shield in the hope of encouraging Israel’s friends to turn against it when Arab civilians are killed by Israeli air and missile strikes.
This is a conflict between Israel and Iran which supports jihadist terrorists
Leaving aside recent headlines, the larger conflict is not between Israel and Hamas but between Israel (and friendly countries, a half dozen or so Arab states) and Iran, the principal supporter of jihadis terrorists in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and, yes, Gaza. At its essence the conflict is binomial. To proclaim a “curse on both of your houses” is the moral equivalent of kicking the tin can down the alley. It encourages more of the same terror and instability.
What is the solution? The answer most often heard is a call for an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Unfortunately, the Palestinian Arabs have rejected a two-state solution at every turn, beginning with the partition plan proposed by the United Nations in 1947, a year before the creation of the State of Israel. Their mantra has been and still is “From the River to the Sea is Arab”, i.e. from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, in other words goodbye to the State of Israel and its seven million Jews.
2 View gallery
Anti-Israel protesters chant 'from the river to the sea' at Colombia University
(Photo: AP)
The origins of the conflict go back at least as far as the Balfour Declaration in 1917 when the British government proclaimed that “His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object…” Palestine was then a British mandate. The Balfour Declaration contextualized the 2,000-year yearning of the Jewish people to return to their ancestorial homeland.
When and where in human history have two distinct nationalities occupied a single land in peace? Mark Twain’s famous saying, “There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed” is probably closer to the truth than the goodwill advocates among us are ready to admit. Moreover, a half dozen cycles ago Palestine was a Jewish homeland, not Arab.
Netanyahu and his extremist partners will be gone but Israel deserves to endure along with democracies
If we’re going to return land to its rightful owners, why not go back to 1848 when American won the West from Mexico in what American General U.S. Grant called “the most unjust (war) ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” There goes California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The same could be said for every piece of land on the globe.
Alfred H. MosesPhoto: Mark MannPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel nor are the extremist members of his government. They will pass, probably sooner rather than later, but the Jewish State of Israel is larger than those governing it at any given time and deserves to endure along with democracies everywhere, led by the United States, in the undeclared war against Iran, Russia, China and North Korea.
Israel’s battle is existential if it loses to those proclaiming, “From the River to the Sea is Arab.” There will be no more Israel and possibly in time no more Jewish people. General Sherman was right, war is hell. But for a nation its total destruction may be worse than hell.
- Alfred H. Moses is a former American ambassador, special Presidential envoy, and senior advisor and special counsel to the U.S. President. He is the author of Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey From Darkness to Light, published in 2018 by Brookings Institution Press, as well as numerous other writings in journals and newspapers in America and Europe. He lives in Washington, DC.