Dear Mayim: Compassion Without Clarity Helps Hamas

Mayim, the compassion evident in your recent post about the Oct. 7 War against Hamas was deeply felt, and your desire for peace is shared by every Israeli parent who wants their child home safely, by every hostage family still living in a nightmare, and by millions of Jews who would give anything for this war to end with all of the hostages home.

But good intentions should not blur moral clarity.

What you call the “almost two-year war in Gaza” did not erupt from policy disagreements or political dysfunction. It began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas — a fascist terror regime that openly declares its goal to annihilate Jews — invaded Israel, murdering over 1,200 people, raping women as a tool of war, burning families alive, and kidnapping more than 250 hostages. To describe this conflict as if it were a border dispute between two morally equal sides erases the central truth: this is a war imposed on Israel by an openly genocidal enemy.

As Douglas Murray has observed, to wish merely for “an end” without naming who must be defeated is to indulge in virtue-signaling that may comfort audiences abroad but abandons Israelis — and all Jews — to the next [repeatedly promised by Hamas] massacre.

It is also misleading, and profoundly unfair, to imply that “the policies of the Israeli government” are what prolong this war. Hamas could end this war tomorrow by surrendering, releasing the hostages and ceding its dictatorial control of Gaza. Instead, Hamas deliberately hides behind civilians, steals and hoards aid, and rejects every offer that doesn’t keep it in power. That is why the war continues.

And here clarity matters most: Israel is fighting not only Hamas, but a seven-front war against Iran and its Islamist Supremacist proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Syria and Iraq and terror cells in Judea and Samaria. To suggest that the obstacle to peace here is the Israeli government ignores the reality that Israel is facing an existential assault by a regional and openly imperialist alliance bent on its destruction.

As John Spencer, the world’s leading expert on urban warfare, has shown, Israel has fought with more humanitarian corridors, more warnings to civilians, and more risk to its own soldiers than any modern army in history. Yet the world condemns Israel more harshly than any regime, including those which purposely target and seek to kill civilians.

Yes, antisemitic attacks worldwide must be condemned. And I appreciate you doing so as a public figure with a significant platform. But here too, honesty is needed: these attacks are not “because of Gaza.” These antisemitic attacks are opportunistic; taking advantage of the Oct. 7 war (in fact, they started right on Oct. 8 (including the claims of “genocide”) and they are part of the same antisemitism that long predated the State of Israel, the hatred that blames Jews for their own victimhood and tells us we are allowed to live only on condition of powerlessness. As Haviv Rettig Gur has noted, Jews are uniquely expected to accept vulnerability — and punished when we refuse.

You are right: these are dark days. But they are dark because Hamas dragged Israel and Gaza into hell. If peace is truly your prayer, then clarity about cause and responsibility must be part of that prayer. Otherwise, calls to “end the war” become calls to leave Hamas in power — guaranteeing more tragedy, more suffering, and no safety for anyone. That would condemn both Israelis and Gazans to endless bloodshed.

All people with public voices, but particularly Jews, have a moral responsibility to speak with clarity at such a moment: this is a just war. The path to ending it is not blaming Israel, but condemning Hamas’s human-sacrifice tactics and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself until Hamas can never again use Gaza as a launching pad for terror.

May our shared prayer be not only for an “end to the war,” but for the return of all the hostages, the end of Hamas’s rule, and the chance for both Israelis and Palestinians to build a future not shackled by lies but built on truth. The truth of the justice of Zionism and of the blessing it is for the Jewish people to live at a time when we are sovereign and free in our indigenous homeland and can therefore defend ourselves from virulent Jew-haters who “in every generation” seek to mass-murder us and/or enslave us in a form of dhimmitude.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.