Is the war against Hamas worth it? - opinion

The imagery, wherever one looks, is jarring: widespread carnage, destruction, and dislocation wrought by the Israel-Hamas War.

These images, combined with the increasing condemnations and reactions that they have drawn, particularly from governments and populations once thought to be sympathetic and allied with Israel, have led many to question whether it is all worth it.

Here we are, two years into the effort, and what began with Hamas’s dastardly attack now remains squarely with the focus on Hamas. After the neutering of Hezbollah, the pulling back of the curtain that exposed Iran, the dismantling of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and the continued attacks against the Houthis, the focus has returned to Gaza and Hamas.

We wince as millions scream “free Palestine” or “from the river to the sea” and unleash their inner Jew-hatred through the guise of Palestinian affinity.

We shake our heads as sanctimonious world leaders show a complete disregard for causality, i.e., why Israel is attacking Gaza in the first place, and then virtue-signal by embracing and declaring their recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state.

We wonder how so much of the world faults us for famine, ethnic cleansing, and the mother of all condemnations, genocide, while ignoring the steps taken by Israel to protect Gazans, often at the expense of endangering its own soldiers.

As historian Richard Landes (who gave the world the moniker “Pallywood”) rhetorically wondered, “Can the whole world be wrong?”

Or, have we perceived a reality that demands the response that we have provided? Have we seen in the viciousness of the October 7 attacks – and even more frightening, the astounding lengths that Hamas leadership went to prepare for the demise of Israel: tunnels, weapons, and turning the entire population into a massive human shield – a reality that can only be addressed with countervailing ferocious intensity?

This is our second war of independence, a test of our resolve to project and protect our sovereignty. By doing so, we have shown ourselves to be the heirs of our father Abraham, those who live on the other side, and are not to be counted among the others.

Nationhood is an endangered concept these days, particularly in Western Europe. The idea that a nation conceives and defends its borders, its national integrity, its accountability for its own policies and values, is being looked at with increasing contempt.

The world fails to understand that Israel has already done the supranational bit: it is called statelessness. More than any other nation on the planet, we understand the ramifications of what happens when you don’t have the ability to control your own national destiny.

We know what it is like to have ceded to Ishmael and Esau for centuries the control of our own national destiny. We have seen the movie; we do not want to see the sequel.

So we are determined to protect our long-sought and hard-fought-for sovereignty. We also understand that our neighbors are not Scandinavian countries, content to live and let live alongside us. The reality of the steps taken by Hamas has to be understood as a wake-up call of historic proportions.

Israel understands that the battle with Hamas is not just ideological. It is also a religious war that is not susceptible to a negotiated accommodation. Those who say otherwise are, sadly, kidding themselves.

As the Allies did in ending World War II with Germany and Japan, Israel recognizes that it must dismember and replace the extant Gazan leadership – Hamas – with a political and religious leadership, which, while not loving us, nevertheless harbors no genocidal fantasies toward us.

This war is akin to a war of independence because it begs the question of what we are going to do in the name of being a sovereign, independent state.

Those who condemn us stand guilty of not putting themselves into our shoes. We cannot afford to do the same. We cannot afford to ignore the reality of what we are facing. In that sense, we are showing the world, whether they like it or not, what a sovereign state is willing to do to project and protect itself.

We did not ask for this war. We did not ask for genocidal neighbors, masters of brutality on an unprecedented scale. Still, nations usually do not get to pick their neighbors. They are required to play the geopolitical hand that they are dealt.

Our war with Hamas is a nightmare, but not to take on that challenge would lead to a far greater nightmare.