by a British Jew
Dear Sebastian,
Thank you for sharing your article, “Gaza and the Final Retreat of Conscience.” It is a serious and timely piece—lucid, principled, and rightly unsparing of the moral evasions that have become the norm in British public life. Many of your points are, in my view, plainly correct. I write not to contradict them, but to test where they lead—and to ask whether the conclusion that Israel is waging an unjust war must be the only one available to someone who accepts your moral seriousness.
It is true that Gaza has been devastated. Tens of thousands of civilians are dead, many more are wounded or displaced, and entire districts lie in ruins. Water, food, and medical care are scarce. This is not propaganda. It is human disaster on a massive scale. And you are right that the British government and media have responded to it with a kind of moral paralysis—neither capable of naming the suffering, nor willing to reconsider the policies that have helped sustain it. When similar horrors occur in Ukraine, the reaction is swift and moralistic. When they occur in Gaza, it is slow and procedural. That discrepancy is not accidental.
You are also right to point to the language of strategic cruelty. Israel’s campaign has not simply been military; it has often appeared punitive. The strikes on hospitals, refugee camps, and civilian convoys have been too many, too predictable, and too deadly to explain away as mere error. In some cases, they clearly constitute violations of the laws of war. And Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and basic infrastructure gives it a level of power that demands moral responsibility, even if it no longer meets every legal definition of occupation.
But with all that said—and much of it must be said—I am not yet sure that your conclusion follows. You argue that this is not a just war. But if that is so, then one must ask: what would a just response have looked like?
October 7 was not a provocation or a protest. It was a massacre. Civilians were slaughtered in their homes. Hostages were taken. The cruelty was deliberate. In legal terms, Israel’s right to respond is clearly covered by Article 51 of the UN Charter. In moral terms, few nations would do otherwise. The argument, then, is not whether Israel should respond, but how.
Hamas does not follow the laws of war. It fires rockets at civilian areas, hides among non-combatants, stores weapons in schools, and uses its own population as cover. None of this absolves Israel, but it does complicate the question of proportionality. If a Hamas command centre is located beneath a residential building, is it a war crime to strike it if other options fail? International law says such a strike must be proportionate. But in asymmetric war, proportionality is a bitter calculation. The line between tragedy and crime is not always clear.
Israel has, in many cases, tried to limit harm—sending warnings, aborting strikes, and conducting air-drops of aid. But these efforts have been uneven, and sometimes symbolic. The bombing of whole neighbourhoods, the cutting off of electricity and water, and the destruction of hospitals have gone beyond what the laws of armed conflict permit. The campaign has often punished the people of Gaza more than the forces of Hamas.
So is this a just war fought unjustly, or an unjust war from the start? That seems to be the real question. Your article takes the latter view. But I wonder whether that judgement risks overlooking what Israel is trying, however badly, to prevent. Hamas is not a local militia. It is a radical movement that openly seeks the destruction of Israel and has said as much in its charter. It has not hidden its intentions. If this war does not weaken Hamas decisively, then the risk of repetition remains—not in theory, but in fact.
That does not excuse every act. It does not justify every strike. But it does provide a reason why some kind of military response is not only legal, but arguably necessary. The challenge is to do so without becoming what one fights. And here, Israel is failing—not in its right to defend itself, but in the way that defence is being carried out.
The worst truth may be this: that there is no good way to fight this war. Hamas has made civilian death part of its own strategy. Israel has too often acted as though it can accept that premise. In doing so, it hands Hamas a moral victory even in military defeat. But there is still a difference between fighting badly and fighting without cause. Israel has a cause. That does not make its campaign just in all its parts. But it makes the war something more than simply unjust.
You are right that conscience demands we speak for the dead of Gaza. But I would add: conscience must also account for the living fear of Israelis, who believe, not unreasonably, that restraint leads to more blood, not less. If this war is a retreat of conscience, it may not be only Israel’s. It may be the world’s, unable to find a framework that condemns cruelty without endorsing inaction.
With respect,
A British Jew
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Unfortunately, there is a misunderstanding of October 7th here. Civilians were not intended to be slaughtered in their homes by Hamas, although the taking of hostages was a human rights abuse and was the intention. Israel’s response – the activation of the Hannibal doctrine (to ignore Israeli civilian losses in any attack on the enemy) as stated in the Israeli press – was what killed the civilians in their homes. Civilians were killed in the crossfire during the Israeli counterattack. The large holes in building walls were created by tankfire, not by the small arms that Hamas was carrying. See https://www.unz.com/jcook/why-is-the-media-ignoring-evidence-of-israels-own-actions-on-7-october/, where we read: “The security coordinator at Be’eri, Tuval Escapa, effectively confirmed Porat’s account to the Haaretz newspaper. He said: “Commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.””. Haaretz is also the source for this: “In at least one case, an Israeli military official, Col Nof Erez, has stated that “the Hannibal directive was apparently applied”. He called the Israeli air strikes on 7 October “a mass Hannibal”.” Haaretz is also the source for this: “Haaretz has reported that police investigators concluded that “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived at the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants”.” That link also says: “In a video released by the Israeli military, Apache helicopters are shown randomly firing missiles at cars leaving the area, presumably on the assumption that they contained Hamas fighters trying to smuggle hostages back into Gaza.” Another Israeli website is the source for this: “In another Mako report, the commander of an Apache unit is quoted stating: “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.” Another pilot recalled of the attack: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at.”” The Hamas intention was, not to kill any civilians, but to kidnap them and exchange them for the Palestinians held for decades in Israeli jails, including those held in prison for decades since childhood. I don’t think kidnapping hostages is justifiable, but what really happened was not what the media said happened.
This is frankly a lying load of tripe.
Go-Pro video from the “Palestinian fighters” CELEBRATED the slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children.
There are dozens of these horrific videos online, if you have the stomach to watch them. Here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxCXOTCXfEo
Not only should this sack of lies be removed from the site, but this sack of mendacity called “dj1969” — too cowardly to leave his name — should be removed as well.
Our policy is to reject material that seems likely to get us into trouble with the British police state. It is not to reject comments that you find objectionable.
Hi, I watched your video. There is nothing shown in the video. You see the children with blood on their legs and feet – but there is no footage of what happened. Do you understand what video proof has to be? Their father was killed by Hamas – i expect he confronted the Hamas intruders and was killed. There is no evidence the children were harmed at all – certainly not from that video. The Israeli press has covered in detail the fact that Hamas was seeking hostages, not to murder civilians, but clearly they did arrive equipped to kill people who resisted. I **do** condemn attempts to kidnap civilians, but nothing in that video even fractionally approaches what has happened in Gaza, with hospitals, schools, bakeries, churches targeted, and international relief workers and journalists deliberately targeted, and even widespread Tiktok footage of Israeli soldiers laughing about killing children. The claim that numerous babies were killed – and that Antony Blinken had seen the images – was later shown to be false. The claim babies were roasted in ovens during the attack – made by an extremist Israeli settler organisation – was also refuted. The Jewish run Grayzone channel (see the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESifNe6UnI&ab_channel=TheGrayzone where the Jews Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal cover this issue) has shown the rape claims were false – and the female hostage Naama Levy (note: not a civilian, but a serving soldier taken from a military base, a fact that most of the media don’t report) has not confirmed claims she was raped (weakly based on blood on her clothing) and instead told a rally in Israel after being released that she feared, not the hostage-takers, but the Israeli bombs (https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-hostage-naama-levy-tells-rally-her-greatest-fear-in-captivity-was-idf-airstrikes/).
I don’t object to my comment being deleted if it thought best not to allowed detailed discussion on this. Whatever is best for the website.
We don’t allow things that might get us into trouble. I fail to see how this can. However, your comment does remind us all that we no longer live in a country where speech is free, and that we need to think twice before pressing the submit button.
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War is a horrible thing. Israel has been in a more or less constant state of war since its founding, when the Jewish side accepted the UN’s plan for an Arab and a Jewish state, but the Arab side responded only with violence, and has gone on doing so ever since. Hamas are fanatical, murderous Islamists with an openly declared aim of destroying Israel and carrying out a second Holocaust. They have no regard for human life – including the lives of their ‘own’ people, who they use as human shields and cannon fodder to promote their cause. Their motto is actually ‘you love life – we love death’. Israel did not start this war – Hamas started it, quite deliberately, with the most vile and atrocious massacre of over a thousand Jewish civilian men, women and children. This was hailed with joy by their supporters – some of the torture, rape and butchery was streamed live to cheering crowds in Gaza, and Hamas terrorists boasted about how many Jews they had killed with their own hands. Israel’s response to this was absolutely justified, and consisted basically of trying to get their hostages back and remove Hamas from Gaza. There can never be security for southern Israel as long as Hamas controls Gaza and continues to indiscrimately bombard Israel and kill Israelis – something they have been doing continuously for years on end. The Israelis as fighting a very difficult war of self-defence in supremely disadvantageous circumstances in heavily built-up urban areas; they have lost hundreds of soldiers. There have indeed been heavy civilian casualties, but we should be aware that the majority of Gazans are said to support Hamas’s actions, and they certainly voted them into power. Those who protest against Hamas are routinely tortured and murdered. In any case, all the information and statistics quoted daily come from Hamas-controlled sources and are completely unreliable, almost certainly hugely exaggerated and include thousands of terrorists killed fighting the IDF. When Britain was similarly indiscriminately bombed and constantly attacked with V1 and V2 missiles, the British retaliated against Nazi Germany – many thousands of German and other European civilians were killed and injured in these attacks. But they were supported by the British public and even by many civilians in the occupied countries as necessary to defeat a profound moral evil and to free them from violent, ideological enslavement. The parallel with the Islamists is surely obvious. The Israelis are doing what they MUST do to preserve the only state in the world where Jews can decide their own destiny and defend themselves, and to prevent a second Holocaust, and we should support them. War itself is a crime, but when it has started, it is a crime not to pursue it effectively against people who want to destroy you.
Laurence Hughes.
Once again, this is factually false. The terrorist organisations that later were cobbled today as the Israeli Army began attacks on Arab areas in 1947, a year before the 1948 state of Israel was created. As Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli leader, wrote, the objective was to create an area around Nazareth where there would be no Arabs. This has been genocide and ethnic cleansing from the start.
We should support Jews to feel safe in their home countries around the world, not support the persecution of Palestinians and theft of their land.