For the Gazan People, the Sooner the Ground Invasion Comes, the Better

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, October 26, 2023

 

Western media has devoted prohibitive attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip precipitated by the Hamas regime’s support for a complex military-style operation explicitly designed to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. That sequence of events might convey to the casual observer that the conditions the Gazan people are presently enduring are a function of their government’s recklessness, inhumanity, and general commitment to maladministration. Maybe that’s why so many Western media outlets seem committed to advancing the notion that Gaza’s plight is a function of Israel’s response to the unprecedented butchery of over 1,400 of its citizens.

 

“Gaza today is defined by death and displacement,” PBS Newshour reporter Nick Schifrin observed. The deficit of “food, water, or electricity” are contributing to the terrible conditions endured by Gaza’s civilians amid Israeli airstrikes on the positions Hamas fighters take up in and around civilian infrastructure. What little civilian aid has been allowed to transit into Gaza via the Egypt-administered Rafah crossing (which was opened as a result of negotiations between Cairo, Western powers, and the Israeli government) is nonetheless “wholly insufficient for the scope of the humanitarian crisis there,” NBC News’s Josh Lederman noted. “We drink salty water. Everyone is drinking salty water,” one desperate Gazan woman told New York Times reporters. “Every day, we live this struggle.”

 

The United Nations has called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” to provide civilian relief, even if that allows Hamas to rearm and regroup, but Israel and its American allies are opposed to providing Hamas with a reprieve. And yet, with the Biden administration both decrying the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urging Israel to continually delay a ground war in the Strip, the conditions Gazans are suffering through now will persist. As one Gazan civilian told the Times, the “important thing is for this war to end.” She’s right. The sooner Israel succeeds in ousting the Hamas regime from power, the sooner Gaza’s civilians will see relief from the oppression and misrule Hamas has imposed on them since it took power in a bloody 2007 coup.

 

The contours of Western media’s coverage of the situation in Gaza mirrors the approach reporters took to covering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan in the brief interlude between the September 11, 2001, attacks and NATO’s invasion of the country on October 7, 2001. From chronicling the acute deficits of food, water, and medicine to the elision of the Taliban mismanagement responsible for those conditions, the coverage has followed a similar trajectory and employed a familiar tone.

 

Even prior to 9/11, the Times observed, “Afghanistan was already home to what may be the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis” fueled by drought and famine, all of which were exacerbated by a regime that prioritized its ideological objective over the public welfare. Those dreadful conditions grew worse after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as the Taliban braced itself for America’s reprisal.

 

As the invasion neared, the situation in Afghanistan only grew worse. The drumbeat of war was responsible for “crippling assistance programs,” and Afghanistan’s neighbors were flooded with refugees. “America will be coming to attack, and it will make things worse for us,” one Afghan said upon his arrival in Pakistan. “We don’t fear the Taliban,” another explained. “We came here because war is coming.” The U.N. World Food Program bemoaned these conditions and the inevitable Western military response that led to the closure of borders and the disappearance of foreign workers to oversee those aid shipments. Thankfully enough, however, efforts to blame America for the Taliban experiencing the consequences of its own actions fell on deaf ears. It isn’t as though there weren’t voices clamoring for the United States to provide material assistance to its wartime enemy — fungible resources that can be and often were diverted to military purposes at the expense of the civilian population. It’s only that they were blessedly ignored.

 

And when the war came and the Taliban was swept from power, the aid pipelines were once again opened absent the implicit understanding that those resources would be diverted to terrorists. On the day the Taliban government collapsed in Jalalabad — one of the last of its urban strongholds — U.N. convoys began to stream across the Uzbek border. “We intend to continue to provide support to agencies, nongovernmental agencies, international organizations, other nations who are working humanitarian assistance,” General Tommy Franks assured the international community. The Bush administration prioritized the reopening of a Soviet-era conduit between Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors, which would supply Afghanistan with 20,000 tons of humanitarian assistance per month, and the airdropping of wheat, clothing, medicine, and temporary shelters into Afghanistan’s more inaccessible regions. Reconstruction and caring for Afghanistan’s neglected citizenry took precedence before the year’s end.

 

Today, the Gazan people live in extreme poverty, even though Hamas maintains a lucrative investment portfolio worth $500 million and spends $350 million per year on military expenditures. The regime maintains profitable revenue streams, which are wholly diverted toward warmaking. Hamas has been the recipient of billions of dollars in foreign aid over the years, most of which is dedicated to the construction and maintenance of terrorist infrastructure like the Strip’s elaborate, deep, and technically impressive tunnel network. If the 10/7 attack and the reaction it inspired among the Palestinian people is any indication, Hamas’s efforts to convince Gazans that they should expect nothing more from their government than the murder of Israelis has been a wild success. Whatever follows Hamas’s bloody and terrible period of misrule can only be a relative improvement.

 

Israel’s mission in the Gaza Strip is unambiguous. Like the United States after 9/11, its goal is the dissolution of the regime that sponsored the barbarous 10/7 attack. On the other side of regime change is the possibility that Gazans may be governed by an administration that prioritizes public welfare over and above the destruction of Israel and eradication of Jews from the earth. Every day that the West stays Israel’s hand, leaving it to pummel Hamas from the air and preserve its militarily necessary embargo of the Strip, postpones that future. The sooner the ground invasion comes, the sooner Gazans can be liberated from their tormentors.