OPINION
In mid-1944, with WWII still raging, George Orwell took aim at socialist and pacifist Vera Brittain, who had published a hand-wringing pamphlet attacking Allied bombing raids in Europe. Like the comfortable leftists today attacking Israel’s self-defensive response to Hamas’ unspeakable barbarities, Brittain whined about the “thousands of helpless and innocent people” in Germany. Orwell, who had personally experienced war, was having none of it.
While Orwell acknowledged that “no one in his senses regards bombing, or any other operation of war, with anything but disgust”, the fact remained that the war had to be fought, and won, against an enemy which was the enemy of humanity. So, Orwell said, there is something very distasteful in accepting war as an instrument and at the same time wanting to dodge responsibility for its more obviously barbarous features… all talk of ‘limiting’ or ‘humanizing’ war is sheer humbug, based on the fact that the average human being never bothers to examine catchwords.”
Today, as international law expert Natasha Hausdorff says, when it comes to Israel, a great many people are “desperately ignorant, yet highly opinionated”. Nowhere more so than when it comes to Israel’s right to self-defense.
Taking issue with a typically “desperately ignorant, yet highly opinionated” BBC journalist, Hausdorff:
immediately set the record straight, explaining how Israel “has the right to a robust response” to the kidnappings, murder, torture, and rape of many women and children, from an international law perspective, particularly those laws related to genocide.
Not only a right, but, when it comes to genocide and the kidnap of its own citizens, a duty to respond.
Hausdorff also rubbished the related ideas that siege is “illegal” and that Israel must supply the butchers of Gaza with aid.
“There is another myth here, that Israel has an obligation to supply Hamas terrorists with electricity and goods, and that is without basis with international law. Israel is not required to fund or assist Hamas war efforts as it attempts to butcher Jews,” she continued.
She noted Israel has provided Palestinian civilians with goods like water, electricity, and healthcare because Hamas ignores these needs of its citizens.
Even worse, when international bodies like the EU supplied Gaza with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of water pipes, Hamas cut them up to make rockets, to try and kill Jews. They even made and posted videos, bragging about their ingenuity.
Hausdorff took particular umbrage at the same thing Orwell did: the “sheer humbug” of those who would hold Israel and Britain as somehow morally equivalent to Hamas and Nazi Germany.
“It is utterly morally repugnant. It also attaches [of course] to the suggestion of proportionality in international law. That is about comparing causality figures. And that is also not correct,” she hit back. “Every strike that Israel takes, every military action is weighted up, it is analyzed [by international law to ensure only terrorist infrastructure is targeted] … So these suggestions of collective punishment are morally reprehensible libel.”
The Daily Caller
Even more than Orwell, former Australian MP Mike Kelly knows a thing or two about war. Kelly was a 20-year veteran of the ADF, including in Somalia and Iraq. He has a fair idea of what the IDF is going to be up against, as it seeks to cleanse the world of Hamas’ evil.
Mike Kelly has seen close-up the absolute worst atrocities humans are capable of committing. Like the underground torture chambers uncovered after coalition forces in Iraq drove al-Qaeda from the city of Fallujah in 2004. The corpses of their victims were still shackled inside. “It was unmitigated evil,” he says.
He didn’t think he’d ever see worse. “But even they didn’t behead babies,” Kelly says, incredulity in his voice as the 20-year veteran of the Australian Army speaks of the reported conduct of Hamas on October 7.
Anyone blithering about “Palestinian civilians” ought to consider, as Kelly points out, that “there’s been a generation raised in Gaza now taught to dehumanise Israelis”. Schoolbooks funded and distributed by “aid” agencies like the UNRWA have taught Palestinians to hunt down and kill Jews. No wonder Gazans cheered and celebrated as Jewish bodies were dragged through the streets.
Anyone who thinks such deeply-inculcated hate can simply be negotiated away is kidding themselves. Hamas must be destroyed — so, how is the battle likely to play out?
Of history’s various urban wars, the closest precedent is the Battle of Mosul in 2016-17, says Kelly. An eight-nation force including Australia drove Daesh, the so-called Islamic State or IS, out of that Iraqi city.
“It’s a very similar scale and dynamic, almost a cut-and-paste situation” to today’s Gaza confrontation, Kelly tells me. Some 1.5 million civilians lived in Mosul at the outset of the battle. The US-led coalition forces warned civilians to leave the city before they began their offensive. But Daesh held tens of thousands of civilians as hostages to use as human shields, and was well dug in with tunnels and bunkers and booby-traps. “Hamas is doing exactly the same now.”
And when Hamas’ human shields are inevitably wounded or killed, who will the reckless twits “standing with Palestine” blame? We all know the answer to that.
The coalition prevailed [in Mosul]. It took nine months to defeat an estimated 6000 to 12,000 Daesh fighters […]
And the number of civilians killed? It’s estimated to have been about 10,000. Kelly says that Israel’s operation against Hamas should be swifter because of improvements in urban warfare techniques.
But should we expect about as many civilians to be killed in Gaza as were in Mosul? “If it’s conducted as we did it, that’s a very real risk. We all took great care with targeting regimes but some things are unavoidable, and there will be IDF (Israel Defense Forces) casualties as well.
“It will be tragic, but it’s been tragic for 17 years. You have to bite the bullet for the sake of the Gazans. The situation of the people of Gaza will never improve unless Hamas presence in Gaza is eliminated, and there is an opportunity to restart a peace process.”
Perhaps the people of Gaza shouldn’t have voted Hamas into power. Perhaps they shouldn’t have continued to support them with increasing fervour ever since.
And neither should the Western media. Yet, which side they’re on is clear for all to see.
[Kelly] says he’s frustrated whenever he sees a media outlet accepting Hamas’ numbers of dead and injured as fact. The numbers are unverifiable, Hamas as a source is unreliable, and anyone blindly accepting its version is merely helping it to fight its information war […]
Many media outlets, for example, instantly reported the Hamas version of responsibility for the explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital – it was an Israeli air strike, said Hamas. After assessing evidence, the governments of Canada, France, Australia and the US said that the Israeli account was much more likely – it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.
The Age
But that’s not what the media and Hamas’ mostly left-wing supporters wanted to believe. Many are still refusing to admit it.
Anything, rather than admit that Israel, the Jews, have a right to exist.