by Victor Davis Hanson
October 17, 2023

“Apartheid”. Like most leftist smears, it reflects projection. Arab citizens inside Israel—over half of whom are Muslims—vote, run for office, and have organized political parties. As a fifth of the population, they enjoy more security, prosperity, and freedom than do their counterparts in the surrounding Arab nations.

In contrast, can one envision non-Arab Christian or Jewish residents of Gaza voting, running for office, forming political parties, or criticizing Hamas? This projected charge of apartheid, it applies to Hamas, which considers anyone other than Arab Muslims as inferiors to be kept out of Gaza.

“Ceasefire”.  A ceasefire, truce, or armistice rarely ends the conflict for good unless both sides are worn out, and mutually agree that neither can win and the war is thus regrettable—a rare phenomenon in military history. More often, ceasefires are mere breathers for one or both sides to frantically resupply and rearm for rounds two, three, four…

Ultimately, wars—even those that last decades—end when one side loses and the other wins (often most clearly via ‘unconditional’ surrender), or both suffer such calamitous losses that each believes victory is unachievable and will in the future continue to be so. Unless the antithetical political agendas that lead to war are resolved, then breathers and truces and time-outs eventually ensure lengthy or multiple wars. Victory leading to the loser’s abandonment of political agendas more often leads to lasting peace.

“Disproportionate”. Can anyone recall a war won by proportionate measures?

When war is proportionate it more often turns into a Stalingrad—or perhaps an Ukraine—until one side finds a disproportionate response that will change endless stasis to victory.

World War II was not won by a proportionate response to Pearl Harbor. And what would be a proportionate response to the murder of a thousand civilians?

Under the logic of “proportionality,” ought the Israeli state then invade Gaza and likewise murder a thousand of its civilians? The whole concept of a “proportionate” response to an unprovoked massacre of women and children asleep in their homes and during a peace is absurd.

“Civilian casualties”. In this war, almost all intentional civilian deaths are due to Hamas. The civilian dead consist of three unfortunate categories:

1) Over a thousand Jewish civilians, at a time of holiday, butchered by invading Hamas killer squads.

2) Gazan civilian shields whose homes and places of work are deliberately used to protect and enable Hamas rocketeers and shooters to wage war with impunity—in the expectation that Israel regards Gazan life as more valuable than does Hamas, and therefore won’t retaliate to missile launches by indiscriminately killing civilian shields. Hamas expects, even hopes, that they will be killed and thus bring them political advantage by their numerous deaths.

3) The general population of Gaza. The charter of Hamas ensures that its apparat will wage perpetual war at any cost against Israel. Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution, lasting armistices, or using billions of dollars in foreign aid to ensure modern power, water, and sewage plants for its people. Instead, it treats its own population as expendable and subordinate to its own tunnel-making and rocket-launching.

“Cycle of violence”. This phrase almost suggests that violence is organic, autonomous, without culpability, and thus not incited by one side. War, however, never works that way. Instead, there is usually definable 51% and more culpability on one side.

In the case of October 7, who invaded the country of another to enact a year-long preplanned plan of savagely murdering and mutilating women and children?

Was Israel intent on violence or was Hamas? Did Hamas call up their intended targets and urge them to flee before they arrived? Is that IDF trait even conceivable within Hamas?

While Hamas spent the year planning the precivilizational massacres of Jewish women and children, Israel—naively convinced that Hamas was concentrating on domestic affairs rather than its usual savage agenda of torching, stabbing, and shooting Jews—was at the time negotiating détente with Saudi Arabia and inviting nearly 20,000 Gazans a day to enter Israel to work and earn a living?

“Innocents”. All collateral damage is tragic, and, for example, children in Gaza are obviously innocent. But, while any noncombatant can be an innocent civilian, not all innocent civilians are created equal. Their collective innocence or guilt may not be absolute, but it can be fairly determined by their support for the agendas of its combatants and government. That is—whether they are empowering something like the SS or trying to stop it.

If bands of Israeli soldiers surprise-invaded Gaza with orders to grab hostages and focus on murdering women and children and then desecrating their corpses in hopes of psychologically devastating Gazans, they would likely be brought up on charges by the IDF or shunned and ostracized by their own people.

In contrast, when hostages were paraded in Gaza, civilians there seemed to enjoy spitting on and striking them. The return from Israel of the Gazan hostage-takers and murderers was met by ecstatic crowds.

The German population, similarly ruled by a “one man, one vote, once” dictatorship, was ebullient over Hitler’s success from 1939 to 1941, but lost their enthusiasm from 1942 to 1945, and feigned innocence (out of alleged ignorance or powerlessness) after the war was over.

So too, Gazans on Saturday, October 7 were enthralled on news of a thousand murdered Jews—only two weeks later to pose as innocent civilians not deserving retaliation for the inhuman violence against the innocent that they had so recently and so eagerly supported and cheered on.

— Gaza and the Corruption of Language originally appeared as an X post by Victor Davis Hanson.