As Russia continues to bombard Ukraine, with an emboldened madman at the helm; as Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at the northern border of Israel, making it uninhabitable to its tens of thousands of residents, and threatens regional war, and as Iran continues its nefarious plotting to strengthen the West’s mortal enemies, here in Britain the focus this week has been on one tragic accident: the killing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of seven aid workers, three of whom were British, employed by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza.
This was a terrible, deeply upsetting blunder and it should not have happened. The aid workers’ loved ones are doubtless distraught and angry.
Israel agrees that its army should be held to account, and the IDF lost no time in launching an inquiry, with two soldiers already sacked. “I want to be very clear – the strike was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK and workers,” said the IDF’s Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi. “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification – at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened.”
While the grief and anger surrounding this tragedy will understandably remain strong, the IDF inquiry, sackings and statement is where the matter’s geopolitical ramifications ought to end. It seems rare to find an armed forces responding as honestly and fully in the heat of war, and shows that the IDF has already factored in the far more exacting expectations applied to it than perhaps any other army on earth.
It is also rare for armed forces to fight in such a hellishly complex battlefield. We seem to forget that its nature is unprecedented, given the sheer extent of Hamas’s booby traps and tunnels (a network larger than the London Underground), not to mention the constant threats on ground level. The sheer range of weaponry required to break Hamas’s infrastructure is staggering. Then there’s the fact that these terrorists are bestial, sadistically mocking every rule of engagement – while Israel scrupulously tries to keep to them.
Given this, the response to the accident has been more intense than I could have imagined. The false accusations of Israeli malice and international-law flouting, and the prominent so-called statesmen maligning Israel’s war effort, have been hysterical. This, sadly, is par for the course.
What even I have found startling is the madness of calls for Britain and America to reconsider their policy of supplying arms to Israel.
Whether the UK does or does not embargo the sale of arms to Israel makes little material difference to the Jewish state (the US is a different story), but it would be a malicious and craven direction for our government to go in. The Tories should not even allow whisperings of this to continue – let alone roars. They must recognise that it is bizarre and foolish to allow a tragic casualty of war to shape our strategic outlook.
The urge to show keenness for punishing Israel – to essentially align ourselves with those who don’t want the Jewish state to win – increasingly appears stronger than the urge to do right, and make Britain and the West safer with it.
For, as we’ve seen in the past, failure to defeat Islamist terrorists may have ramifications for our own cities: fail to destroy Hamas and people in London, Paris, Berlin and New York could be at risk.
A Hamas plot to kill Jews in Europe has already been foiled by German and Danish police. Cutting off their ideological source would seem a no-brainer. We ought to be thanking Israel for doing such a nightmarishly difficult job. It is one of our absolutely key allies – strategically, emotionally, historically and in every other way – and this is how we treat it in its hour of need?
Many of those demanding an arms embargo appear to be using the World Central Kitchen tragedy as an excuse to further their long-standing anti-Israel agenda.
In other warzones, it seems to be acknowledged that tragedies happen. Among many examples, there was an occasion when the US bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan (Biden was vice president: no ceasefire demanded).
In Kabul some years later, a US drone strike killed civilians – including children. Yet the headline in the New York Times ran: “No US Troops Will Be Punished for Deadly Kabul Strike, Pentagon Chief Decides”.
In betraying Israel we are betraying ourselves.
“Not only will Israel win this war,” posted Hillel Fuld, an expert on Israel’s tech industry, “but Israel is establishing itself as we speak as the global authority on urban warfare.
“All countries will be turning to Israel in the future to learn how to find a war in the 21st century”.
If Britain continues like this, Israel may very well choose not to teach us. And our lives will be nastier, more brutish and shorter because of it.
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