A lot of people are outraged that the Israeli military operation in Gaza has reportedly killed thousands of civilians. Many on the left are using these civilian casualties as grounds for their demands for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, but there's an irony in this that I'll get to in a moment.
First, it should be agreed that Hamas, by virtue of their mass slaughter of over 1200 Israeli civilians and the kidnapping of hundreds more, has made themselves a legitimate target. Moreover, anyone who supports Hamas is morally complicit in their crimes and most of the Palestinian people and many leftists in the U.S. are supportive of Hamas.
That support makes them an enemy of Israel, just as any supporters of the German Holocaust or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would've been seen as morally complicit in these crimes had those supporters marched in our streets in 1943.
Many Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas and joined the terrorists on Oct. 7th. in committing atrocities. They cheered the slaughter, spit on kidnap victims, held Israeli victims captive in their homes, returned an escapee to Hamas, and they jeered and deliberately frightened kidnapped children who were being released.
Even the leftist protestors in the U.S. who claim to distinguish between the average Palestinian and Hamas unintentionally blur the distinction in practice.
When they chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" they're calling for the eradication of Israel. When they wear the keffiyeh they're identifying with the terrorists who raped, tortured and murdered children and their parents on Oct. 7th.
And the irony I mentioned above is this: When they go on social media and declare their sympathy for Osama bin Laden and his view of the collective guilt of the American people, they're tacitly endorsing the concept that a people bear collective responsibility for the actions of their government.
If that's so, however, if many on the left really do endorse the concept of collective guilt, then how do they avoid the conclusion that the Palestinian people must bear the brunt of the consequences of the actions of those who govern them, i.e. Hamas?
Israel has traditionally done everything that could be reasonably expected of a nation fighting to survive to minimize civilian casualties, but when the enemy insists on using their own people as human shields, when many of those people support Hamas's the stated goal of annihilating Israel and Israelis, then their suffering, as tragic as it may be, is on their own heads and those of their leadership.