Almost Two Years Later: Taking Stock of The Israel/Hamas War

Israel Remains Its Own Worst Enemy; Only by Growing a Moral Spine Will It Win

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Over the past 22 months, I’ve published six articles related to Israel’s war with Hamas. Beginning the week after October 7, 2023, the first, titled “Israel vs. Hamas: Beware The Barbarians Within The Gates, listed some of the enemies of Western Civilization here in the West—organizations supporting Hamas’ ambition to eradicate Israel. I followed up a couple of weeks later asking the question Who are The Truly Innocent Civilians in Gaza?, answering that they are preciously few. In Feb 2024, I argued in U.S. vs. Iran: Escalation Is Long Overdue that Iran is an enemy of the United States, and it’s therefore in the rational self-interest of individual Americans that the threat be removed. October the same year saw One Year In, Is Israel Finally Giving Up On Its Whack-A-Mole Strategy? where I offered some optimism that, after the Hezbollah pager event, Israel would finally develop the moral resolve to once and for all eliminate Hamas. And in November I proposed a “moonshot,” with The United States of Levant: The Future of A Peaceful and Prosperous Middle East? advocating that Israel should occupy Gaza, The West Bank, Lebanon and Southern Syria for the foreseeable future, injecting a dose of Western Civilization, and, as the populations gradually migrated from destructive Israel-hating to productive pursuits, integrate them into Israeli society. Finally, this past May, I lambasted the Trump administration, American universities and others for their immoral involvement with Qatar in A Qatar Cleansing is Long Overdue.

In terms of world events, I’ve covered this conflict more than any other. Why? Because, fundamentally, it represents a clash of civilizations where denying Israel’s right to exist denies our right to exist. Israel for all its faults—and there are many—is a beacon of Western Civilization, of an Enlightenment philosophy that at its core embraces reason, rationality, rational self-interest, individualism, the respect for and protection of individual rights, and limited government with separation of state and religion. It’s a beachhead of Western Civilization in a part of the world that has yet to experience the Enlightenment. A part of the world that marginally has adopted its capitalist-inspired economics as seen in some of the oil-rich and materially wealthy Gulf states but that philosophically stands for its opposite: mysticism instead of reason, sacrifice instead of rational self-interest, collectivism instead of individualism, disrespect for and violation of individual rights, and unlimited government without separation of state and faith.

This is why Israel is hated, not only by its enemies in the Middle East, but by the enemies of Western Civilization all over the world—the barbarians within the gates. Its sheer existence is an affront to Islamism, the explicitly anti-Enlightenment, theocratic strain of Islam advocating for a society governed by Sharia law. And Israel’s relative success compared to its neighbors is a source of envy and resentment for those in the West who subscribe to an all-cultures-are-equal, root-for-the-underdog, victimhood glorification worldview, no matter who's at fault. Hence, their evasion of the fact that Hamas—and it’s financial and military backers Iran and Qatar—are the culprits in the Israel/Hamas war, and that existentially, Hamas depends on the continued suffering of the Gaza population to keep world opinion on its side.

Against this backdrop, I’m an unequivocal champion of Israel’s right to eliminate the threats to its existence, whatever it takes, with or without bringing home the remaining hostages, and in the process make the world a safer place for all of us. But my enthusiasm is curbed by the fact that Israel is its own worst enemy. Yes, it is a representative for Western civilization in a philosophical backwater that long-term pose a threat to the United States and the rest of the West as well. But it doesn’t seem to know it. It’s also mired in internal conflicts and moral uncertainty. As I wrote in One Year In, Is Israel Finally Giving Up on Its Whack-A-Mole Strategy?:

What explains the seeming lack of Israeli resolve, not only since Oct 7 last year, but going back decades? The country is rife with internal divisions. Israel has many political and religious factions with different views of how to prosecute this and earlier wars. At one end of the spectrum, hardliners who advocate for total victory without concern for Hamas’s hostages, who reject a two-state Israeli/Palestinian solution and who support ruling Gaza, the West Bank—and perhaps the south of Lebanon—in perpetuity. At the other end, those who favor no end to negotiations to bring home the remaining Hamas hostages alive, who reluctantly are prepared to leave Hamas in power in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and who still hold out hope to someday live peacefully side-by-side with a democratic Palestinian state. And in between, the spectrum is occupied by the multitude with mixed views.

But more than internal strife, I suggest the lack of resolve is moral. Israelis overall don’t have confidence in their moral superiority as representatives of Western civilization over their Middle East neighbors. Many display the same ambivalence to Western, Enlightenment-based values—reason, individualism, respect for and protection of individual rights, limited government and capitalism—as do Americans and Europeans. Israel, like its North American and European counterparts, is a Western-style welfare state with the same moral relativist flaws. Many of its citizens implicitly or explicitly accept that the enemy’s religiously based moral code may be different from theirs, but no less valid.

As a result, with few exceptions (taking out key leaders, setting off explosives in said pagers and other devices, and occasional strikes against enemy positions), Israel’s strategy has been to largely wage a “whack-a-mole war.” Instead of decisively defeating the enemy, it has shown great restraint, ensuring minimal civilian casualties in Gaza, mostly abstaining from preemptive strikes against other Iranian proxies in the neighborhood, and, most consequentially, against Iran itself. It has with few exceptions reacted only in response to direct attacks: rockets from Gaza and Lebanon, attacks from Syria and on the West Bank, and missile barrages from Iran. And when it has gone on the offensive as during the second Intifada in the early 2000’s, in Gaza since Oct 7, and in Lebanon the past two weeks, it has never finished the job.

Since writing this Israel did indeed attack Iran. But it resulted in a cease-fire to appease President Trump instead of dealing a decisive blow to the Iranian regime—file it under more whack-a-mole warfare.

As we approach the two-year anniversary of October 7, nothing is pointing to Israel developing the moral backbone to assert itself and end the conflict once and for all. The latest example is the supposed starvation in Gaza. The country appears morally defenseless in the face of an altruist world opinion. This alleged humanitarian crisis—and the preposterous, self-serving, immoral response from the “leaders” of the UK, France, and Canada to reward Hamas by supposedly recognizing a Palestinian state where no moral or practical foundation for such a state exists (see the aforementioned The United States of Levant: The Future of A Peaceful and Prosperous Middle East? article)—would not have occurred in the first place had Israel prosecuted the war solely with its own self-interest in mind, routing Hamas from Gaza in the first six months.

I wish I would end on a hopeful note—and I sincerely hope I will be proved wrong—but my cautious optimism of a year ago is gone; I see no end in sight to Israel’s muddling along, no growing a moral spine based on the rational self-interest of Israeli citizens. More of them will suffer for it in the years and decades to come, and theirs and ours will remain an unsafe world where Islamism continues to be a real threat.