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“We just want the war to end…”

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Well, if you’re saying that, or reading someone who says that, good. Know that I’m right there with you – or them. I want the war in Gaza to end, today. Same for the war in Ukraine. Same for any war, anywhere.

All it would take for the war in Gaza to end is for Hamas to concede, and wage war no more. If they reached out, through whatever emissary is available – and there are lots of them – and said. “no more war, we are stopping, no more rockets, no more dead Israelis,” then they’d have:

  • A nation-state, as they’ve had since 2005 (given that Israel withdrew willingly and has shown no real desire to go back)
  • No more dead children in refugee camps, as Hamas keeps storing weapons and military leaders in those places, which is:
    • A war crime
    • Converting those places into military targets with military value, and targeting them is not a war crime
  • Everything they want except lots more dead Jews

Blaming Israel for continuing a war in which the aggressors have not stopped waging war themselves is ridiculous and, really, rather evil. Stop it, people.

It’s worth observing, although it’s not original with me: if Gaza laid down its weapons, you’d have peace between Israel and Gaza. If Israel laid down its weapons, you’d have a lot of dead Israelis. Do the math, when you screech that you just want peace in the region. And this isn’t random supposition – this is based on Hamas’ own expressions on Al Jazeera and other such mediums.

The purpose of war is to get the opposing government (Hamas, in Israel’s case) to concede. There is no other end point unless you want Israel to suffer more. So if you’re going “b-b-b-b-but Israel shouldn’t keep shooting,” you’re trying to encourage the deaths of more Jews, in the short term – as that’s the goal Hamas isn’t giving up on – and more Gazans, in the long term, since the way Hamas gets more dead Jews is through having more dead Gazans. (And you know it, too, since Hamas keeps reiterating that last point, explicitly, over and over and over again… and you just don’t care, and don’t listen, because you’d rather have more dead Jews?)

All of those dead children…

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Caitlin Johnstone posted on Twitter (or X, or whatever you want to call it), this fine post:

No matter how much you talk about October 7, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

No matter how much you talk about how evil and bad Hamas are, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

No matter how much you say the words “human shields”, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

No matter how much you accuse Israel’s critics of loving terrorists, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

No matter how much you accuse Israel’s critics of hating Jews, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

No matter how many words you use or how much narrative spin you try to put on it or how many ad hominems you throw at the people criticizing what Israel is doing, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon an enclosed area full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.

In essence, I agree… but Ms. Johnstone seems to blame Israel.

I get it.

The idea of dead children is horrifying. That’s exactly why Hamas creates them.

Ms. Johnstone blames Israel for falling into a trap of Hamas’ explicit making. Hamas herds children into military targets, Israel hits those targets, Hamas gets to say “but they killed the human shields we put there!” and fine, fine people like Ms. Johnstone blame Israel instead of, you know, the actual war criminals (as using human shields, especially deliberately, is a war crime, and Hamas isn’t even shy about it, having bragged about this strategy publicly.)

I don’t want any dead children, whether in Gaza or Israel. Ms. Johnstone seems to have forgotten the Israeli children butchered by Gaza by explicit targeting, in her fury at blaming Israel for conducting a war against legitimate military targets with civilian casualties.

But if Hamas had any agreement with her, in trying to avoid dead children, they could have.. you know… not targeted children on October 7 themselves (they did) or even not herd children into military encampments (they do) or, here’s an idea, not use places where children are, like refugee camps, for military purposes (again, a war crime, but one they commit so often that it’s difficult to observe without sounding like a broken record.)