The Non-Negotiable Minimum

 The present moment should be clear. There is a ceasefire signed by Israel and Hamas, that says not only that Israel will gradually withdraw from Gaza, but also Hamas will disarm, its terror capabilities will be dismantled and they will not rule Gaza anymore. Why isn’t the World, the leaders, the press, the people in the street, demanding that not only Israel, but mainly Hamas, uphold what they signed?

Wouldn’t it be the best for everybody? Since when being ruled by masked men who can kill whoever they want is a good thing? But the World seems to be too resented for that. Resented with Israel for the simple fact that they went to war, and there was pain and suffering. This is war, although in the present the Western World feels too safe from it, to need to really look at the complexity of conflicts.

There is a long-held common notion, through History, that a country has a right and a duty to defend itself, and war is sometimes unfortunately necessary. Now people don’t want to see any war – although they are focused on this one more than any other, God knows why – even if they don’t offer any other solution for Terrorism.

But till recently in the History of mankind, nobody would have any shadow of a doubt that something like oct 7^th was reason enough to go to war against the source of that attack, of that danger.  

Of course, mankind must always evolve in the direction of seeing more and more the value of the life of everybody, but unfortunately it doesn’t change the reason why some wars are considered justifiable in first place. A justified war is a war against something that destroys the peace of the innocent without cause.

Some people want to bring up a complex past between Israel and Palestine to deny that peace was broken there, but there was no open war In October 7^th, Israel was not striking Gaza before more than a thousand Israelis were indiscriminately and intentionally slaughtered by surprise.

Of course a war must always be the last resource. They should we waged only when there is no other way to ensure the minimal decent safety of your people. It is not reasonable to let a massacre go unresponded. It increases exponentially the chance of happening again, and in the near future.

When someone stabs someone to death in the street to steal her, we know that if these things pass unresponded, this criminal will do it again, and more people will do it too. We don’t say, “oh, you are speculating, nobody knows the future, maybe he won’t”.

Of course nothing excuses a country of defending itself with ethic. And Israelis do take risks for themselves, for instance, when they make war on the ground instead of just by air, or when they give up the element of surprise to warn Gazan civilians of where the strikes will be.

But taking risks is one thing. Doing nothing against the source of danger is another. You can’t expect a country to give up their own people’s defense against imminent danger.

And when this “doing nothing” ceases to be simply a risk and becomes forsaking? Precisely after the killing already started, as it did on October 7^th. From that moment on, every decision carries the weight, the weight of responsibility, of avoiding a future where you would look back and know you have forsaken your own people to death and horror.

This modern way of seeing things, of trying to care for everybody, is good, but can it make the act of abandoning your own people to their own fates a good thing? Should we conclude that?

I know it’s hard, painful, and I thought a lot about it. Think with me. Isn’t the notion of caring for your people, your own children, too basic, too essential, for such a trade-off to ever be righteous in this World? I think this can’t ever be what will bring us good.

And if you think straight about how the World works, it’s obvious that it won’t bring good. As I’ve said before, obviously that dilemma was proposed by Evil, evil groups, real groups and with real intentions and plans. So, with leaving horror unresponded, at the cost of your people’s minimal safety, what good is guaranteed for the World?

Evil exist, and it is not under control. There is no level of prediction at all about what murderous groups can do. You give freedom to violence, and it will take lives. There is an Ideology of death growing in the Middle East and in parts of Africa for a long time.

This same people you think you would be protecting by not fighting terror, can be turned against themselves. With this terror groups in positions of power, fighting for even more power, there is always the tendency for more blood.

Civil wars, like the Syrian civil war, that killed 300 thousand, the Yemeni Civl war, that killed 375 thousand, among other examples. You never know how far it can go. The Second Congo War killed 3 million.

This is not speculation. There is no gravitational center of peace in this World, where things left on their own “naturally fall back to”. Letting massacres of your own people go without strong answer would be for no good in mid and long term.

This is not abstract thinking. It is a sad truth rooted in reality, the same sad truth that made the strikes by the Allies in World War II justified.

It is the sad reality of a war that someone else provoked. You never aim at civilians, and try to mitigate civilian harm as much as possible. But you can’t totally avoid civilian tragedy, especially when your enemy doesn’t care at all for the safety of their own people and use them as shields.

Why the World doesn’t scream against using people as human shields? They think that Hamas represents the Palestinians, which are a “poor people”, so the Hamas is the “poor side”, so they don’t have to have the minimum of integrity? 

So, an enemy like that makes the work of mitigating collateral harm especially hard. Unless you are willing to give up on doing anything at all to avoid the worst for your own people. But if you do give up, you are not helping to bring a World of peace. On the contrary. You are just giving freedom to a monster that is trying to eat the whole World.

Let’s hope for peace. Real peace. But the ground is been shaking for a while, and peace doesn’t always come as naturally as we would like it to. I think this might be the best moment we had so far, for the World to defeat Terrorism. Terrorism, which is the worst thing not only for Jews, but for Muslins and for everybody.

No, nobody should ever be demanded to throw all their strength away in times of terrible danger, and then be hoping, against all odds, that it wasn’t totally in vain.