By Bassem Eid, JNS
Why has Israel resumed a military operation in Gaza, despite tremendous pressure to find a modus vivendi with the brutal terrorist group Hamas?
Many not favorably disposed to the Jewish state have been quick to forget the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel and slaughtered more Jews in a single day than at any time since the Holocaust.
Nor did they just kill. Countless women and girls were raped and genitally mutilated by the evildoers. More than 250 were taken hostage to Gaza, where many remain, undergoing conditions of torture. But why has Israel returned to the battlefield at this precise moment, when many naively believed that the region might be on the verge of peace?
The most essential thing to understand is that Israel’s enemies are not interested in peace. Despite the significant efforts made by U.S. President Donald Trump during his recent visit to the Persian Gulf, Hamas has refused to enter into an agreement freeing the hostages based on the American plan.
Newly released documents reveal that one of Hamas’s objectives in attacking Israel on Oct. 7 was to derail broader talks on regional peace, notably between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
If anything, Israel’s return to military operations in the past weeks may have already removed one of the significant obstacles to resolving the conflict, with the probable elimination of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, whose brother organized and executed the Oct. 7 horrors. Mohammed Sinwar was known to be one of the hardliners opposing an agreement to release the hostages.
Yet even as fighting continues, Israel has continued essential aid to Palestinian civilians, with Israeli trucks full of supplies continuing to pour into World Food Programme warehouses in central Gaza. Not only is this consistent with Israel’s long tradition of ethics in warfare, but it is also strategically wise.
The Palestinian civilian population has increasingly turned against the iron rule of Hamas with vocal protests. Many ordinary Gazans are fed up with Hamas’s quasi-medieval brand of Sharia law, which has turned the territory into the Afghanistan of the Mediterranean.
In many ways, Hamas’s most dangerous weapons are not AK-47s or suicide vests, but the “useful idiots” in the West who have amplified its smear campaign against Israel. For example, United Nations emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher falsely but sensationally claimed on May 20 that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die of starvation unless food aid reached them within the next 48 hours.
Ultimately, the UN retracted the claim, admitting that it could only support the very different claim that 14,000 children were at risk of malnutrition (not death) within the next twelve months. Despite the retraction, large media outlets and online networks massively amplified the false claim, potentially reaching billions of people in just 24 hours.
Nor was this the first time that a false claim about food security has been used to demonize Israel in the ongoing conflict. In April 2024, Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), made the remarkable proclamation that famine had begun in Gaza, citing a report by a UN–affiliated monitoring system called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative, which had never actually declared a famine in Gaza.
Power’s report was ultimately rebuked by the international experts of the Famine Review Committee, who determined that it failed to count as much as 82 percent of the “daily kilocalorie requirement” in northern Gaza – including 940 metric tons (2 million pounds) of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast, as well as all trucks contracted to commercial warehouses. And yet the myth of famine in Gaza had already done remarkable damage, being embraced by Israel’s enemies as proof of its perfidy – allegedly using starvation as a weapon of war.
These false claims help explain why Israel has been targeted for international condemnation and isolation. For example, citing alleged food insecurity, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada made a statement threatening “concrete action” against Israel if it doesn’t “deescalate” against Hamas—ironically issued just hours after Israeli trucks carrying baby food and other aid entered the Gaza Strip.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightly responded, in so doing, these countries are “offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on Oct. 7 while inviting more such atrocities.”
The resumption of Israeli operations in Gaza is not a failure of diplomacy; it is a necessary precondition for successful diplomacy. Israel is fighting a just war against an enemy that targets civilians, glorifies rape and murder, and hides behind its own people.
The world may choose to look away, but Israel will not. And neither should we. In the face of terror, misinformation, and global pressure, Israel continues to act with moral clarity and strategic restraint. It is doing what any sovereign democracy must: protecting its people while striving to uphold human dignity, even in war.
Israel’s success on the battlefield and the elimination of the Hamas terrorist organization will ultimately create the conditions necessary for a lasting peace. If the world is serious about peace, it must stand with Israel rather than undermine it.
Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human-rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.