The Middle East has a long, complex and bitter history of conflict, and those who make excuses for this weekend’s slaughter should be ashamed.
The Middle East has a long, complex and bitter history of conflict, but there is absolutely no justification for slaughtering hundreds of civilians in a street or at a music festival. Those who make excuses for the indiscriminate murder of innocent people in Israel on the weekend should be ashamed.
They not only anoint terror as an acceptable weapon, but play into the hands of extremists on both sides of the conflict. They also help erase attempts at resolution through moderation. Israeli police officers evacuate a family from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel.
But there are other forces at play. As tragic as the events of the weekend are for the Middle East, they also carry massive international repercussions. If the Ukraine conflict became a proxy war between the West and Russia, the Hamas-Israel war can be construed as a proxy war to decide if Saudi Arabia or Iran will control the new Middle East.
For Israel itself, there are plenty of mistakes to address. The Hamas attack has exposed a massive intelligence failure. Coming on top of Russia’s surprise invasion of Ukraine which caught multiple European intelligence services off guard, the Hamas attack can only have shattered the hubris of a nation that has long revelled in the glory of military intelligence and Mossad.
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