Cover image credit Hillel Fuld.
The entire world keeps a close count of ‚civilian casualties‘ in Gaza – numbers exclusively provided by Hamas.
Without further questions, everybody points their finger at Israel and screams: “Shame!!!” and “See what you did?” and “How dare you?“
Let’s turn back time to October 8th, 2023 and imagine an alternative scenario:
The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to condemn Hamas for war crimes.
They and the majority of the world leaders demand the immediate release of all hostages.
They further order Qatar to extradite the Hamas leadership – that lives there in luxury – to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they would be tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The media uncovers and reports on all of Hamas‘ crimes in detail.
Humanitarian organizations refuse to send funding and aid to Hamas and demand that an independent organization distribute it directly to civilians.
Universities ban all forms of hate speech against Jews (same as other minorities), calling for genocide and the elimination of the State of Israel as well as any expression of support for Hamas’ atrocities committed on October 7th or their denial.
The UN calls on Egypt and other Arab countries to accept refugees from Gaza.
What would have happened? Would we have all these casualties?
Probably not.
Hamas started a war in Gaza, they have no chance of winning. But they also ensure that Israel can never win either. All they need is the sympathy of the West (sympathy for the devil?).
In a perfect world, we would have learned from the past and seen through the war strategy of the Palestinians long ago. We would have understood that Palestinian lives are the carefully calculated price their leaders are willing to pay.
Tragic, but true.
The price is required for them to win over the UN, the media, academia, social networks, and public opinion in democratic countries, where the leadership depends on it.
These are the battlefields where Hamas is winning. It’s a much bigger and maybe more important front.
As horrific as it is, civilian casualties are part of Hamas’ strategy that “allows them to conduct offensive operations against a much stronger opponent and then avoid getting destroyed by the IDF’s vastly superior military capabilities”. Nick Freitas, an expert on military strategies and unconventional warfare, such as asymmetric warfare further explains in his video how that works.
The lesson of the Vietnam War, according to Freitas is, “When fighting the West, you don’t defeat their military, you win their electorate and the way to do that is through the institutions which shape culture in the West.”
Palestinians have lobbied in the UN for decades. Hamas has hooked up with allies who finance their war and propaganda machines. They carefully and patiently manipulated Western public opinion by spreading lies through social and regular media and created a safety net for Palestinian terror.
And credit be given, where credit is due: Palestinians understand the strategies of asymmetric warfare. In fact, they keep optimizing it as they go.
While calling on Israel to stop fighting may seem like the humane thing to do, it plays right into the terrorists’ strategy.
Sure, in the short term, civilian lives may be spared. But Hamas gets to continue terrorizing and exploiting the Gazan population, stealing the aid provided by humanitarian organizations, and rebuilding their terror infrastructure to become more powerful. It means setting up the next, even more vicious, genocidal massacre and helping them pave the way to try and create a Jew-free world.
Linie 101 