Richard Kemp
Ynet News, May 20, 2025
Operation Gideon’s Chariots aims to deliver the final blow to Hamas and recent strikes have finished off several senior terrorists. Ordinary Gazans are increasingly out on the streets demanding that Hamas end the conflict that has brought such disaster on them. Hamas, perhaps sensing its impending demise, is back at the negotiating table.
At this critical moment, with a masterstroke of ill judgment, Britain, France and Canada reach into murky waters that they do not understand and hold out a hand to pull Hamas back to the surface. Like tight-lipped and disapproving school mistresses, they “strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations.”
Their joint statement demanding Israel halt its operations in Gaza is nothing less than a call for Israel to surrender: cease operations, withdraw forces, leave Hamas to rebuild and get ready for another October 7. That is the meaning of their reproachful statement.
They call the IDF’s renewed offensive “disproportionate.” It is nothing of the kind. Israel is fighting a defensive war to protect its population from further attacks. That requires the destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities and the removal of it and its kind from controlling terrain that would again threaten Israel if given half a chance. The Allies in the Second World War used overwhelming force to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Do Starmer, Macron and Carney believe that was a “disproportionate” way to defend our freedom? Or is it only the Jewish state that can never be allowed to win?
They snidely refer to “the Netanyahu government’s” egregious actions. We see exactly what they are doing here. It has become fashionable among some supporters of Israel to disavow Netanyahu himself in order to burnish their oh-so-virtuous credentials (“while still standing up for Israel”). The kind of language used in this statement is usually reserved for dictatorships, like “the Putin regime.” Yet Netanyahu is the democratically elected leader of his country and his war policies have the support of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.