Beyond the Hamas Casualty Figures: The West’s Dangerous Game with Israel

Western nations are leveraging unverified casualty statistics from Hamas-controlled Gaza to justify policies that increasingly isolate Israel while quietly rewarding terrorism. This approach not only undermines the security of the Middle East’s sole democracy but ignores the complex historical context of the conflict, the diversity of Israeli society, and the geopolitical realities of the region.

The Politics of Palestinian Casualty Numbers

In the smoke and rubble of Gaza, the first casualty has been truth. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages, Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry has released casualty figures that have been uncritically repeated by Western media outlets and political leaders. As of mid-2025, they claim over 40,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s military response.

These figures, however, face serious credibility issues. The Hamas-run ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, counts all deaths as caused by Israeli forces (including those from Hamas rockets falling short), and has previously been caught inflating numbers during past conflicts. Independent assessments suggest 15,000-20,000 of those reported dead were Hamas fighters, according to analysis from the Meir Amit Intelligence Center, though exact verification remains impossible under Hamas’s authoritarian control.

Yet despite these red flags, Western politicians continue citing these statistics to justify increasingly hostile positions toward Israel. The Biden administration has delayed weapons shipments, European nations have imposed partial sanctions, and the UN has called for immediate ceasefires without demand for Hamas’s surrender. When I spoke with a former State Department official who requested anonymity, they admitted, “There’s an institutional acceptance of Hamas’s figures that drives policy, despite internal acknowledgment of their questionable validity.”

This acceptance is not merely academic—it has real-world consequences. In March 2024, Belgium became the first European nation to announce it would recognize a Palestinian state regardless of peace negotiations, followed by Ireland, Norway, and Spain in May. The stated justification? The “humanitarian catastrophe” based on Hamas’s casualty claims. None of these recognition statements mentioned Hamas’s October 7 attack or called for the terrorist group to surrender power.

The Western response stands in stark contrast to historical precedent. When Jordan expelled the PLO in 1970 during “Black September,” killing thousands of Palestinians in the process, there was no global outcry. Egypt’s blockade of Gaza from 2007-2011 elicited minimal concern. Yet Israel’s defensive operations trigger immediate condemnation based on figures provided by a terrorist organization with a documented history of manipulating such statistics.

Israel’s Diverse Reality vs. Simplistic Narratives

The simplistic portrayal of Israel as a “white European colonial project” collapses under scrutiny of the country’s actual demographics. Israel’s population of 9.3 million (as of 2023) reflects a mosaic of ethnicities and cultures that defies easy categorization.

Approximately 50% of Israel’s Jewish citizens are Mizrahi or Sephardi Jews who trace their ancestry to the Middle East and North Africa—not Europe. These communities were expelled from countries like Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, and Egypt following Israel’s independence in 1948, with approximately 850,000 Jews forced to flee homes their families had inhabited for centuries. In Iraq alone, the Jewish population plummeted from 150,000 to nearly zero between 1948 and 1951 following violent pogroms.

Furthermore, 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs (predominantly Muslim but also Christian and Druze), who hold equal legal rights, serve in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), and work as doctors, judges, and business owners. The Israeli Supreme Court appointed its first Muslim justice, Khaled Kabub, in 2022.

During a media visit to Tel Aviv Amir, a Mizrahi Jewish shopkeeper whose grandparents fled Baghdad in 1950 with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We aren’t Europeans playing colonizer,” he told the media. “This is the only place that would take us after Arabs kicked us out of countries where we’d lived for 2,000 years. Why doesn’t the world acknowledge our Nakba?”

The media’s failure to accurately represent Israel’s diversity reinforces harmful stereotypes that fuel hostility. A 2024 Pew Research survey found that 65% of Americans under 30 view Israel unfavourably, with many citing humanitarian concerns. Yet only 22% could accurately describe Hamas’s stated goals, indicating a significant knowledge gap that drives uninformed activism.

This distorted understanding of Israel’s composition leads to flawed policy prescriptions. Calls for a “one-state solution” with equal rights for all between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea sound progressive but ignore the persecution Mizrahi Jews faced in Arab countries before fleeing to Israel. When pressed on this history, many Western advocates for Palestinian rights simply change the subject or claim it’s irrelevant—revealing a troubling blind spot in their analysis.

The Double Standard: Rewarding Hamas While Punishing Israel

Western powers have created a perverse incentive structure: Hamas launches a terrorist attack killing civilians, Israel responds militarily, Hamas ensures civilian casualties by embedding military infrastructure in residential areas, and the international community then pressures Israel to cease operations while offering Hamas political legitimacy.

This pattern has played out repeatedly, but the post-October 7 response represents its most extreme manifestation. Several Western countries now advocate for Palestinian statehood without demanding Hamas’s disarmament or renunciation of its genocidal charter, which explicitly calls for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews.

When Jordan’s King Hussein crushed Palestinian militants during Black September in 1970, killing an estimated 3,500 Palestinians, the international community largely supported Jordan’s right to secure its sovereignty. Egypt’s 2007-2011 blockade of Gaza, including the construction of an underground steel wall to prevent smuggling, received minimal criticism. Yet Israel faces unprecedented isolation for defensive actions against an organization that proudly publicized its atrocities on October 7.

The United Nations has similarly maintained double standards. While UNRWA schools have repeatedly been found to house Hamas weapons and tunnel entrances (documented by the UN itself in 2014, 2017, and 2021), the organization continues receiving Western funding with minimal oversight. Meanwhile, Israel faces potential International Criminal Court indictments based substantially on casualty statistics provided by Hamas.

“No one is asking Hamas to surrender and leave Gaza,” noted Israeli security analyst Michael Freeman during a recent policy forum. “Western governments speak of ‘ending the suffering’ without acknowledging that Hamas’s continued control guarantees future violence. It’s like treating symptoms while feeding the disease.”

The Geopolitical Reality: Arab States’ Ambivalence Toward Palestinians

While Western protestors wave Palestinian flags and demand immediate statehood, a critical reality goes unacknowledged: many Arab nations maintain deeply ambivalent relationships with Palestinians and have historically exploited their cause rather than helping resolve it.

Lebanon provides perhaps the starkest example. The country’s 250,000 Palestinian refugees face severe legal discrimination, barred from owning property and prohibited from working in 70 professions, including medicine and law. Confined to squalid camps for generations, these Palestinians receive minimal international attention compared to those in Gaza—likely because Israel cannot be blamed.

Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinians following the 1990-91 Gulf War for supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Jordan, the only Arab country to grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees, revoked citizenship from thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank in 2009-2010, citing concerns about being turned into an “alternative Palestinian homeland.”

Even Egypt, which controlled Gaza from 1948-1967, never attempted to create a Palestinian state there, instead keeping the population contained and under military administration. Today, Egypt maintains strict border controls with Gaza, rarely opening the Rafah crossing except under international pressure.

“The dirty secret of the Middle East is that most Arab regimes view Palestinians as potential destabilizers,” a former Jordanian diplomat told media on condition of anonymity. “They use the Palestinian cause for political legitimacy while ensuring Palestinians remain someone else’s problem.”

This context rarely figures in Western discourse about the conflict. The push to recognize a Palestinian state ignores both Hamas’s control of Gaza and the historical reluctance of Arab nations to integrate Palestinians or support practical state-building. The result is diplomatic theatre   that may temporarily appease activists but offers no realistic path toward peace.

The Forgotten Jewish Refugees and Historical Erasure

The narrative of Palestinian displacement during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence—known as the Nakba—occupies a central place in discussions of the conflict. Approximately 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled during fighting, creating a refugee crisis that remains unresolved. However, a parallel displacement of equal magnitude has been largely erased from Western discourse: the 850,000 Jewish refugees forced from Arab and Muslim countries following Israel’s creation.

Jewish communities that had existed for millennia across the Middle East and North Africa faced violent pogroms, property confiscation, and forced expulsions after 1948. Iraq’s once-thriving Jewish population of 150,000 was virtually eliminated by 1951. Egypt’s 80,000 Jews dwindled to fewer than 100 by the 1970s. Similar patterns played out in Syria, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, and Libya.

Unlike Palestinian refugees, who were kept in camps and denied integration by Arab host countries, these Jewish refugees were absorbed into Israel, where they and their descendants now comprise roughly half the Jewish population. Their trauma and displacement—a Jewish Nakba—receives minimal attention in Western academia or media, creating a distorted understanding of the conflict’s historical context.

David Mizrahi, whose family fled Baghdad in 1950, explained the significance of this erasure during a community event in London: “When people speak of Israel as a European colonial project, they negate our existence. My family spoke Arabic for generations. We were as indigenous to Iraq as any Arab, until the day they took everything and forced us out.”

This historical amnesia extends to discussions of occupation and indigeneity. Jewish historical connections to Jerusalem, Hebron, and other West Bank locations—continuously maintained through religious practice and cultural memory despite periods of exile—are frequently dismissed as irrelevant by advocates who frame Zionism exclusively as European colonization.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem exemplifies this erasure. Judaism’s holiest site, where the First and Second Temples stood (established historical facts), is often described solely in terms of its Islamic significance. The 1967 status quo arrangement prevents Jews from praying at the site, despite it being central to Jewish religious identity for three millennia. This restriction, which would be condemned as religious discrimination in any other context, is instead defended by many Western progressives as necessary for “peace.”

The Way Forward: Demanding Hamas’s Surrender, Not Israel’s Capitulation

The current Western approach—pressuring Israel while offering Hamas political legitimacy—virtually guarantees continued conflict. A more constructive path would require several fundamental shifts in policy and perspective:

First, Western nations should explicitly condition Palestinian statehood on Hamas’s surrender and disarmament. Rewarding terrorism with diplomatic recognition ensures more terrorism. Jordan’s King Hussein understood this in 1970 when he definitively crushed the PLO’s attempt to create a state-within-a-state. The international community should demand Palestinians reject Hamas’s leadership and ideology before statehood becomes viable.

Second, casualty statistics from Gaza should be treated with appropriate skepticism. Media organizations should consistently note Hamas’s control over these figures and the lack of independent verification, rather than presenting them as established fact. Policy decisions based on unverified claims from terrorist organizations guarantee flawed outcomes.

Third, Israel’s diversity must be acknowledged in discussions of the conflict. Framing Zionism as exclusively European colonization erases the experiences of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews who comprise half of Israel’s Jewish population. Their expulsion from Arab countries after 1948 represents a parallel refugee crisis that deserves recognition alongside Palestinian displacement.

Fourth, Arab nations that genuinely support Palestinian wellbeing should demonstrate this through integration and economic opportunity rather than perpetuating refugee status across generations. Lebanon’s discriminatory laws against Palestinian residents, for instance, receive minimal international criticism compared to Israel’s policies, revealing selective concern for Palestinian rights.

Finally, both Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives deserve recognition. The Jewish connection to Jerusalem, Hebron, and other disputed territories spans three millennia and cannot simply be dismissed as irrelevant. Similarly, Palestinian attachment to homes and lands lost in 1948 reflects genuine trauma that must be addressed in any lasting peace agreement.

The Hidden Driver: Western Self-Image and Moral Licensing

A curious dynamic underlies Western engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: harsh criticism of Israel often serves as moral licensing, allowing Western nations to present themselves as champions of human rights while avoiding harder conversations about their own historical and ongoing injustices.

For European nations with colonial histories, condemning Israel as a “colonial project” provides psychological distance from their actual colonial enterprises, which extracted resources, enslaved populations, and redrew borders across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The United Kingdom, which controlled a quarter of the earth’s land surface at the height of its empire, now lectures Israel about occupation while maintaining territorial disputes from Cyprus to the Falkland Islands.

Similarly, the United States, built on land taken from indigenous populations through broken treaties and forced relocations, finds in anti-Israel activism a convenient displacement of guilt about its own founding contradictions. Campus protesters who demand universities divest from Israel rarely acknowledge that their institutions sit on appropriated Native American land.

This moral licensing extends to attitudes toward refugees. European nations that erected barriers against Syrian refugees in 2015-16 express outrage about Palestinian refugees, whose numbers are smaller and whose integration would be less culturally disruptive for neighboring Arab states. Canada, which carefully limits immigration through points-based systems, calls for Palestinian “right of return” policies it would never implement domestically.

The weaponization of human rights language against Israel thus serves multiple psychological and political functions beyond its stated humanitarian concerns. It allows Western nations to position themselves as morally superior while avoiding uncomfortable parallels to their own historical and contemporary actions.

A Democratic Island in an Authoritarian Sea

Lost in the casualty statistics and heated rhetoric is a fundamental truth about Israel: despite its imperfections, it remains the Middle East’s only functioning liberal democracy, with rights and protections for minorities that are unimaginable elsewhere in the region.

Israel’s Arab citizens can vote, serve in parliament, and access the courts to challenge discrimination. The country’s Supreme Court frequently rules against the government on rights issues. LGBTQ+ individuals enjoy legal protections and social acceptance unprecedented in the region, with Tel Aviv hosting the Middle East’s only Pride parade. Women serve in combat roles in the military and lead major corporations.

By contrast, Hamas-controlled Gaza executes LGBTQ+ individuals, suppresses political dissent, and enforces strict religious codes on women. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority has not held elections since 2006, operates an authoritarian system with minimal press freedom, and criminalizes homosexuality.

When Western nations threaten to abandon Israel to “face its enemies” alone, they are effectively advocating for the region’s only liberal democracy to be replaced by authoritarian regimes with abysmal human rights records. The humanitarian concerns that ostensibly drive such positions ring hollow when the likely alternative would mean far worse conditions for the region’s minorities, women, and dissenters.

Israel’s democratic resilience in a hostile neighborhood represents a value alignment with Western nations that transcends policy disagreements. Preserving this democratic outpost serves both strategic and moral interests that should not be sacrificed to temporary political pressures or flawed casualty statistics from terrorist organizations.

Israel Under Pressure: The True Price of Western Abandonment

The talk in Western capitals grows louder by the day. Political leaders, responding to public pressure fuelled by unverified Gaza casualty figures, openly discuss leaving Israel to “face its enemies alone” unless it immediately ceases military operations against Hamas. This approach not only rewards terrorism but threatens to unleash region-wide instability that would inevitably draw Western nations back – under far worse conditions.

The Dangerous Precedent of Accepting Hamas’s Narrative

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages, Western policy discussions have increasingly centered around casualty statistics provided by Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry. These figures – now exceeding 40,000 claimed deaths – have become the foundation for mounting diplomatic pressure against Israel, despite serious questions about their accuracy.

The Hamas-run ministry provides no breakdown between civilians and combatants, attributes all deaths to Israeli forces (including those caused by misfired Palestinian rockets), and has previously been caught exaggerating casualties during earlier conflicts. Independent intelligence assessments suggest between 30-40% of those reported dead were Hamas fighters, according to analysis from multiple security services.

Yet Western leaders and media outlets routinely cite these figures without qualification, treating Hamas’s claims as factual rather than propaganda from a designated terrorist organization. This uncritical acceptance has real-world policy implications.

“We’ve created a perverse incentive structure,” explained Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Hamas embeds military infrastructure in civilian areas, knowing civilian casualties will generate international pressure on Israel to stop fighting. The West then rewards this tactic by pushing for ceasefire and recognition, rather than demanding Hamas’s surrender.”

The willingness to accept Hamas’s narrative extends beyond casualty figures to broader framing of the conflict. When reporting on Israeli strikes that hit civilian infrastructure, Western media rarely mentions the documented Hamas practice of using schools, hospitals, and mosques as command centers and weapons depots – a violation of international law that deliberately endangers Palestinian civilians.

A UN report from 2014 confirmed that Hamas stored rockets in at least three UNRWA schools during that summer’s conflict. Similar findings emerged in 2021 and again in 2023-24, yet the narrative of Israeli “targeting” of civilian infrastructure persists without this crucial context.

The Abandoned Peace Process and Unilateral Recognition

The most consequential policy shift emerging from the uncritical acceptance of Hamas’s narrative is the movement toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state without requiring peace negotiations, security guarantees, or Hamas’s disarmament.

In May 2024, Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, following Belgium’s March announcement. These decisions explicitly cited the humanitarian situation in Gaza based on Hamas-provided casualty figures. None required Hamas to surrender power, release hostages, or accept Israel’s right to exist before extending recognition.

This approach represents a complete abandonment of the decades-long peace process framework, which envisioned Palestinian statehood as the outcome of negotiations addressing security concerns, borders, Jerusalem’s status, and refugee issues. Instead, Western nations now propose rewarding Hamas’s October 7 attack with immediate diplomatic recognition – teaching terrorists worldwide that mass violence brings political dividends.

The historical contrast is stark. When terrorist organizations targeted European nations – from the IRA in Britain to ETA in Spain – Western governments demanded complete disarmament before political accommodation. No European nation would have considered granting political concessions to such groups while they actively held hostages or maintained military capabilities. Yet Israel is now expected to accept exactly this arrangement with Hamas.

“What’s particularly disturbing is how Western nations have abandoned any pretense of evenhandedness,” said Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. “Previous frameworks like the Quartet Principles required Palestinian factions to recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence, and respect previous agreements before gaining international support. Now these basic requirements have been discarded to punish Israel for defending itself.”

The Myth of Israeli Isolation Among Arab States

Proponents of pressuring Israel often claim diplomatic isolation as justification – suggesting Israel must comply with Western demands or face regional abandonment. This narrative ignores the profound geopolitical realignment occurring across the Middle East, where Arab states increasingly view Israel as a strategic partner against shared threats.

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, established diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia was reportedly nearing normalization before October 7, with discussions continuing despite the Gaza conflict. These breakthrough agreements reflect Arab recognition of shared interests with Israel, particularly regarding the threat posed by Iran and its proxies.

“What’s remarkable is that despite intense public pressure, none of the Abraham Accords countries has broken relations with Israel during the Gaza operation,” noted a senior Middle Eastern diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity. “Behind closed doors, many Arab leaders understand Israel is fighting an Iranian proxy that threatens regional stability. They may criticize publicly, but privately they want Hamas defeated.”

This alignment of interests explains why Egypt and Jordan, despite public statements supporting Palestinians, have actively worked to prevent Hamas from achieving its objectives. Egypt has maintained tight control over the Rafah crossing and resisted taking responsibility for Gaza. Jordan has prevented mass protests that might destabilize the kingdom, despite its large Palestinian population.

Even as Western nations threaten to abandon Israel diplomatically, regional powers recognize that Israel’s battle against Hamas serves their own security interests by weakening the Iranian “axis of resistance” that threatens multiple Arab regimes.

The Palestinian Leadership Crisis Western Nations Ignore

Perhaps the most significant blind spot in Western policy is the ongoing leadership crisis among Palestinians – a fundamental obstacle to statehood that no amount of unilateral recognition can resolve.

The Palestinian Authority, led by 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas (now in the 19th year of his 4-year term), lacks legitimacy among Palestinians and exercises limited control even in the West Bank. Hamas, despite its terrorist designation, won the last Palestinian elections in 2006 and forcibly seized Gaza in 2007. The resulting divided governance makes Palestinian statehood functionally impossible regardless of international recognition.

“Western nations pushing for immediate statehood never address the basic question: who would govern this state?” said Ghaith al-Omari, senior fellow at The Washington Institute and former advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team. “The Palestinian Authority lacks capacity and legitimacy. Hamas is a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction. No functional state can emerge without resolving this leadership crisis first.”

This leadership vacuum explains why surrounding Arab nations remain deeply skeptical about Palestinian governance. Jordan, which revoked citizenship from thousands of Palestinians in 2009-10, fears being forced to absorb West Bank Palestinians in a “Jordan is Palestine” scenario. Egypt has consistently refused responsibility for Gaza, recognizing the security threat Hamas poses to Egyptian stability in the Sinai Peninsula.

Lebanon provides the clearest example of regional wariness toward Palestinians. Despite humanitarian rhetoric, Lebanon maintains apartheid-like policies against its 250,000 Palestinian residents, barring them from owning property and restricting them from 70 professions. These Palestinians live in impoverished camps with minimal international attention – largely because Israel cannot be blamed for their condition.

“The cruel irony is that Palestinians face far worse discrimination in Arab countries than in Israel, yet this receives minimal Western criticism,” noted Einat Wilf, former member of Israel’s parliament. “This selective outrage reveals that much ‘pro-Palestinian’ advocacy is actually motivated by hostility toward Israel rather than genuine concern for Palestinian wellbeing.”

The Price of Western Abandonment: Regional War and Refugee Crisis

The most dangerous aspect of Western threats to abandon Israel is the likely cascade of consequences: a region-wide conflict that would inevitably draw Western nations back under far worse conditions.

If Israel faces existential threats without Western support, it will be forced to take more extreme measures for self-preservation. This could include preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, expanded operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, or permanent security corridors in Gaza – actions that could trigger regional escalation.

An Iran-Israel war would threaten global energy supplies, potentially blocking the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s oil passes. A collapse of Lebanon, already fragile after years of economic crisis and sectarian tension, would send millions of refugees toward Europe. Saudi Arabia, feeling abandoned by Western security guarantees, might accelerate its own nuclear program to counter Iran.

“Western leaders threatening to abandon Israel aren’t thinking three steps ahead,” warned Dr. Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “If Israel faces existential threats alone, it will take whatever measures necessary for survival, potentially triggering exactly the regional conflagration everyone wants to avoid.”

The refugee implications alone should give European policymakers pause. The 2015 Syrian refugee crisis, which brought approximately one million refugees to Europe, destabilized European politics and fuelled the rise of right-wing nationalist parties. A broader Middle East conflict could generate refugee flows many times larger, especially if Lebanon’s fragile state collapses entirely.

Recognizing Reality: Hamas Must Surrender, Not Israel

A more constructive Western approach would acknowledge uncomfortable realities: Hamas initiated this conflict with a deliberate massacre of civilians; it exploits Palestinian suffering for propaganda advantage; and no stable peace is possible while terrorist organizations maintain control in Gaza.

Instead of pressuring Israel to accept a premature ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power, Western nations should explicitly condition Palestinian statehood on Hamas’s surrender and disarmament. This approach would align with standard Western policy toward terrorist organizations elsewhere in the world.

Jordan’s King Hussein demonstrated this principle during Black September in 1970, when he decisively crushed the PLO’s attempt to create a state-within-a-state. The international community supported Jordan’s right to secure its sovereignty despite thousands of Palestinian casualties. Israel deserves the same support against an organization that explicitly seeks its destruction.

Western policy should also acknowledge Israel’s diversity rather than perpetuating simplistic narratives about “European colonizers.” Approximately half of Israel’s Jewish citizens are Mizrahi or Sephardi Jews who fled persecution in Arab and Muslim countries after 1948. Their displacement represents a parallel refugee crisis of equal magnitude to the Palestinian Nakba, yet receives minimal attention in Western discourse.

Most importantly, Western nations must recognize that Hamas’s control over Gaza represents an insurmountable obstacle to peace. No nation would accept a terrorist organization on its border that openly calls for genocide against its citizens and has demonstrated both the will and capability to carry out mass atrocities. Hamas’s October 7 attack ended any possibility of Israeli territorial concessions without ironclad security guarantees that only Hamas’s removal can provide.

The current Western approach – threatening to abandon Israel while accepting Hamas’s casualty claims and narrative framing – represents a dangerous capitulation to terrorism that threatens to engulf the entire region in conflict. A more principled policy would support Israel’s right to defeat Hamas decisively while holding both sides accountable to factual reporting and international law. Only then can a genuine peace process begin.

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.