Against a Gale of Angry Certainty

Peter Hitchens writes:

After the Hamas pogrom against Israel in October 2023, I was told by a battalion of media musclemen and musclewomen that Israel should now destroy Hamas.

They urged on the relentless bombardment of the densely populated streets (as they then were) of Gaza. Many innocents, quite predictably, died.

As a long-term serious defender of Israel, who knows a tiny bit of history and has visited Gaza, I said that this would be a disastrous course. It would endanger Israel's future by turning Western public opinion against it.

And it would fail to destroy Hamas. Movements such as Hamas, all experience shows, cannot be destroyed in this way.

The musclemen and musclewomen pretty much dismissed me as an anti-Semite and wet pacifist and I was shouting, as usual, against a gale of angry certainty. Now I am, as usual, shown to be right.

Hamas lives on, Israel is being forced to disgorge hundreds of its fiercest enemies from prison in return for Israeli hostages. And support for Israel in the Western nations, especially and crucially in the US, is gravely weakened. In such times, my advice is to listen most carefully to the person who gets the least applause.