Israel should defend itself and not succumb to manipulation - opinion

On October 6, 2023, a ceasefire existed between Israel and Hamas – their sixth ceasefire, with Hamas having initiated six major conflicts since violently taking over Gaza in 2007 by indiscriminately targeting Israel with hundreds of rockets.

Three major conflicts initiated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket fire, the most recent in May 2023, also ended with ceasefires.

On October 7, the ceasefires were fundamentally broken when an estimated 2,000-3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, temporarily occupied parts of towns near the Gaza border and various kibbutzim, and descended on an outdoor musical event. It was initially believed that 1,400 people were barbarically slaughtered that day.

Over 2,500 were wounded, 240 were kidnapped, and an estimated 3,000 Hamas rockets targeted Israel. 

It took Israel almost five weeks to calculate the number of dead that day for two reasons – the depravity of the massacre and the abduction of hostages.

Ascertaining the numbers was complicated. Bodies were mutilated. Some of the dead were burned alive, and bodies were unrecognizable. In some instances, bodies fused together; terrified families were clinging to each other.

The extent to which people were incinerated, including babies, made obtaining DNA for identification purposes extremely difficult. Limbs and heads were found.

Bodies of those murdered when the terrorists struck were still being found last week. Some remains have yet to be identified. Adding to the horror, some young women slain at the concert were raped before they were shot in the head.

About two weeks ago, Israel reduced the number of murdered on October 7 to an estimated 1,200, including 22-year-old concert attendee Kim Dante, an Israeli/Irish citizen.

It took four weeks to ascertain the exact number of hostages, including elderly Holocaust survivors, women, children, and babies, because of the difficulty in identifying the slaughtered. For four weeks, Irish-born Thomas Hand, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, close to Gaza, believed his then-eight-year-old daughter Emily, an Israeli-Irish citizen, was murdered.

It is now believed that she is among the 237 hostages still held in Gaza who may be alive; the bodies of four hostages were recently found in the Strip.

Hamas commits war crimes

Taking hostages is a war crime, and international law requires that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has access to hostages taken in order to establish proof of life and their treatment by the abductors. To date, the ICRC was given no such access.

The ICRC has remained remarkably silent on this issue. In Ireland, across the political spectrum and amidst a tsunami of critical commentary, it barely publicly featured. A visit by Thomas Hand to Dublin a week ago and Emily’s ninth birthday on November 17 resulted in some Irish political and media focus on the child’s plight and that of the other hostages.

Both Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, in their initial reactions to October 7, rightly condemned Hamas’s actions unequivocally and acknowledged Israel’s right to self-defense.

It took Ireland’s main opposition leader, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, three days to condemn Hamas, when public concerns about Kim Dante’s fate surfaced.

McDonald and many other Irish commentators, both elected and non-elected, have not yet fully acknowledged Israel’s right to self defense or that Hamas has committed war crimes.

UNDER PRESSURE of anti Israel marches, escalating anti-Israel public sentiment, and television coverage of mounting civilian casualties in Gaza – which ignores both the daily rocket barrages targeting Israel (now over 9,500) and labyrinthine Hamas tunnels constructed underneath hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, and UN facilities – Varadkar pivoted to depicting some Israeli defensive action as a form of revenge, Martin criticized it as disproportionate, and Higher Education Minister Simon Harris accused Israel of waging a war on children.

The use by Hamas of civilians as human shields was omitted from Varadkar’s narrative, as it was by Martin and many others in Ireland when criticizing Israel. Whether the Irish government will present as better informed and moderate its criticism of Israel after Martin’s visit to Israel last week that included a visit to  Kibbutz Be’eri, where over 100 were slaughtered, remains to be seen.

To its credit, the government successfully opposed in the Dáil (the Irish Parliament ) last Wednesday an opposition motion to expel Israel’s ambassador in Dublin, Dana Erlich.

Under international law, the right to self-defense includes the right to target aggressors embedded in civilian areas.

Israel is entitled to defend itself

Israel is entitled to take action to end Hamas terrorist governance of Gaza and the continuing threat posed by terrorist rockets and to rescue its hostages.

It is also entitled to ensure that the public threat of more atrocities replicating the October 7 genocidal attack on Israel made on Lebanese television by Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas spokesperson, is neutralized.

The IDF, more than any other army in history, acts to minimize civilian casualties, but civilian casualties are impossible to prevent totally when confronting an enemy embedded in civilian areas.

Too many in Ireland and elsewhere ignore the fact that Hamas is a death cult that intentionally puts and keeps Palestinian civilians in harm’s way as human shields. The terrorist group benefits politically from these inevitable casualties in a war it initiated, inhibiting Israeli defensive action.

To date, Hamas and Iran, despite the dreadful carnage in Gaza, perceive themselves as the victors of this terrible conflict.

They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Many outside Israel do not acknowledge that Hamas and PIJ are Iranian proxies; both oppose any peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, like Iran, are publicly dedicated to Israel’s annihilation. Overlooked also are Hamas’s calls for the global murder of Jews.

Some present as enthusiastically embracing both objectives.

INSPIRED BY Hamas’s October 7 attack and its charter, thousands are marching against Israel in Ireland, across Europe, and in the US, chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

This is a political call for Israel’s destruction and the murder of its 7.2 million Jews, almost half of the world’s Jewish population.

In various countries, there is political division directly related to the conflict; antisemitism is surging, hate speech is popularized, and toxic antisemitic narratives on social media, including many originating from Ireland, are flourishing. Further normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors is being jeopardized.

“Ceasefire now” is a popularized demand not for a humanitarian pause in the fighting, but for yet another “permanent” ceasefire by pro-Palestinian protesters who ignore or do not care that, if implemented, Hamas’s brutal governance of Gaza will continue, Israel will remain at risk of further genocidal attacks, and there will inevitably be further conflict, death, and destruction – which is what happened with past ceasefires.

Too many in the West have succumbed to manipulation by fanatical Islamic extremists. They fail to acknowledge that Israel has no choice but to permanently end Hamas’s governance of Gaza and to turn Gaza into a demilitarized zone that no longer threatens Israeli citizens.

A new, temporary international governance of Gaza is required, together with a dedicated aid and recovery program.

Thereafter, there should be elections for a new Palestinian administration, dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, to govern a united, demilitarized West Bank and Gaza as a preliminary step to the initiation of a process intended to ultimately implement a two-state solution.

The writer is a former Irish politician who served as minister for justice and equality, minister of defense, and chairperson of the Ireland Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. He is a fellow of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and chairperson of Magen David Adom Ireland.