Sherelle Jacobs
The Telegraph, Apr. 8, 2024
“… the historic evidence is that military muscle can play a vital role in breaking faith in the fatally seductive idea that lurks behind all terrorist movements.”
The view that Israel has embarked on a doomed Achillean killing rage in Palestine has become received wisdom in Western polite society. This take is flawed but not surprising, with critics pointing to the sheer scale of civilian casualties in Gaza.
The plight of the Palestinians rattles the conscience of the West, a civilisation that for all its might is grappling with its own imperial legacy and is deeply imbued with a Judeo-Christian sympathy for downtrodden Davids faced with the wrath of Goliaths. The killing of British aid workers may point to a chilling breakdown in command and control within the Israeli army.
But in a world of tremendous geopolitical stakes, it is vital to at least attempt ruthless clarity, putting aside all our emotional baggage and human revulsion towards the horror of war. The stone cold truth is that the West’s abrupt U-turn – at first vowing to lend “rock solid, unwavering support” to Israel and now threatening to withdraw support unless Jerusalem agrees to a ceasefire – has imperilled Israel’s mission to decapitate Hamas.
True, serious questions remain about the coherence of the Gaza campaign. Yet the Israeli Defence Force’s mission to obliterate Hamas as a fighting force is both perfectionally rational and realistically achievable. It has already destroyed half of the terrorist group’s warpower. The next task – to take out the thousands of fighters operating in small cells via an elaborate network of defensive tunnels – will be fiendishly tricky.
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