Survey Raises Important Questions About 'Valid Reasons' for Israel's War

The esteemed Pew Research Organization recently released the results of an important survey that probed American attitudes toward the ongoing war in Gaza. The headline for the report declared: MAJORITY IN U.S. SAY ISRAEL HAS VALID REASONS FOR FIGHTING. In other words, most Americans still managed to apply common sense to the long-running conflict between the Jewish state and Hamas.

Yet a sizable minority – some 41% - felt unwilling or unable to acknowledge the validity of Israel’s existential struggle. Among respondents, 15% said that the reasons for America’s closest Middle Eastern ally to participate in this fight seemed “not at all valid” or “not too valid” while another 26% pronounced themselves “not sure” regarding the justification for the war.

This split in American public opinion raises deeper questions about the nature of war itself and Israel’s right to exist at all in the midst of the persistent hostility from most of its Arab neighbors.

If a murderous surprise attack that claimed 1,200 lives and seized 250 brutalized hostages doesn’t constitute a valid reason for fighting back, what would?

Are surrender and passivity the only ethical and enlightened responses to genocidal and sadistic violence?

Consider one of the darkest moments in our own history. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese killed nearly 3,000 Americans, striking exclusively at military targets. Did Franklin Roosevelt and other leaders of the time make the wrong choice with an immediate declaration of war, rather than launching a new, good-faith effort to understand and address the enemy’s long-simmering grievances?

One of the most fundamental principles of international law and state craft affirms that any nation under assault – especially suffering a surprise attack with no immediate or obvious provocation – has the right to defend itself.

The purpose of the Israeli reaction to October 7, 2023 (and, for that matter, the U.S. response to December 7, 1941) involved defense and deterrence, not vengeance or score-settling. After their massacre of civilians and the destruction of entire villages, the Hamas terrorists expressed no intention of ceasing or even reducing their levels of barbaric slaughter, in hope of negotiating some sort of settlement. In fact, their leaders (safely ensconced far from the fighting in luxurious refuges in Qatar and elsewhere) unequivocally pledged additional and expanded attacks to further their announced goal of Israel’s total destruction.

Whatever one thinks of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, the Israelis have reacted with admirable clarity concerning their own limited war aims. First, they insist on liberating any surviving hostages before they will agree to a long-term ceasefire. Second, they will continue making war—with all its attendant costs, sacrifices and risks—until they have totally dismantled the military capacity of Hamas to launch future assaults on the people of Israel.

The intention isn’t vengeful punishment, but the communication of an essential and indelible message to Hamas and to all other would-be attackers: every assault on Israel will produce devastating consequences to the assailant.

The purpose isn’t pride, or the relentless enlargement of some Israeli empire. In fact, the government led by the fiercely nationalistic and right-leaning war hero Ariel Sharon renounced any claim to any part of Gaza, some nineteen years ago. At the same time, all soldiers, law enforcement personnel, bureaucrats and 8,000 Jewish settlers were forcibly and thoroughly removed from the Gaza Strip, allowing misrule by the Palestinian Authority and, after two years and a brief, localized Palestinian civil war, by the terrorists of Hamas.

Aside from the destruction of 400 miles of terror tunnels and rocket stockpiles, nothing in Israel’s war plans involves the permanent re-establishment of Jewish rule or other fundamental changes regarding the overcrowded, misbegotten territory of Gaza and its long-suffering population.

On the other hand, the repeatedly expressed Hamas intentions for crashing across the border and murdering Israelis in their homes or at a desert music festival, involved the most basic change imaginable: the bloody, final elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. That’s why the popular, propagandist chant, “From the River to the Sea/ All of Palestine will be free” isn’t about a border dispute, but rather about preventing Israel and its 8 million Jews from organized nationhood anywhere in the Middle East.

Which brings us back to the Pew Research Organization and their study of American sentiment concerning the continuing conflict. The citizens of the United States may be largely ignorant about the historical background and current circumstances of the dispute (which is one of the principal conclusions of the Pew scholars), but they instinctively sense the profound distinction between the justification for the war on each side.

That’s why the same poll respondents who showed 58% saying Israel’s reasons for fighting registered as valid, included only 22% who felt the same way about the Hamas basis for suffering and bloodshed. Even from a distance of some 6,000 miles, Americans can somehow sense the undeniable difference between fighting for life for your family and your country, and those who embrace death in order to utterly destroy the flourishing nation next door.