If you are a person who understands the trauma that October 7th caused to Israelis and Jews around the world, you should see the reality here. The ongoing carnage in Gaza cannot be defended and Israel is very close to losing the support of the rest of the world that currently supports it:
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Israel risked “strategic defeat” in its war with Hamas if it fails to heed warnings about the mounting civilian death toll.
“I have personally pushed Israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties, and to shun irresponsible rhetoric, and to prevent violence by settlers in the West Bank,” Austin said in a speech to the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, on Saturday.
Austin’s comments come as top US officials have grown increasingly vocal in their warnings to Israel about the death toll in the Gaza Strip. Those warnings, previously confined to closed-door meetings, have been thrust into the open by mounting pressure from Israel’s Arab neighbors, human-rights activists and opinion at home — including the left of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party.
While Austin and other US leaders have vowed to continue supporting Israel, they worry that American support could become untenable if civilian casualties continue to mount.
“I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq,” he said. “Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors.”
“The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” he said. “In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”
Natanyahu is a bloodthirsty, self-interested monster who will continue the killing as long as he thinks it will keep him in power. The Israeli people must get rid of him. If they don’t find a way to do that they are consigning themselves to the pantheon of collective punishers and will be shunned by the rest of the world.