The Houthis have fired dozens of missiles since Israel’s war on Hamas began in October 2023.”
No! my wife Elaine exclaims as she points out this phrase and says, it is not: “Israel’s war on Hamas began in October 2023.” It is: Hamas’ war on Israel began in October, 2023. Not the other way around!
But, according to Wall Street Journal reporters Carrie Keller-Lynn and Dov Lieber, Israel began a war on Hamas in October, 2023. They authored the quote above (May 5).
It’s an egregious rewrite of facts.
Hamas declared its intent to wipe out the Jewish state with its Oct. 7 attacks and its statements of intent. Israel fought back. This hardly makes the current war Israel’s. Ask any Israeli soldier who has served in Gaza, or is serving there now, whether he wanted, or wants, to be there. Ask any Israeli leader, in the government or in the opposition, whether, on Oct. 6, 2023, he intended to begin a war on Hamas.
It was not only on Oct. 7 that Hamas began its current war on Israel. For a few years before Oct. 7, Israel financed Hamas, intending the funds to build a better life for Gazans. The Israeli idea was that a more prosperous Gaza would demotivate terrorists. Instead, Hamas diverted the funds to terror tunnels and the acquisition of weaponry. Hamas’ war on Israel began well before Oct. 7, 2023.
But no. “Israel began a war on Hamas in October, 2023.” That’s journalism these days.
Journalists like Carrie Keller-Lynn and Dov Lieber cannot retain even 19 months of history, let alone the longer history going back to Hamas’ charter in 1988, which has since been revised but not revoked, and which is nothing if not clear. Article 13, for example, includes this: “There is no negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question possible. Jihad is the only answer.” There it is: the obliteration of Israel via jihad. Hamas’ aim hasn’t changed.
It is said: When evil people say something, believe them the first time. This means nothing if one doesn’t know, or doesn’t acknowledge, the first time.
How short some journalists’ memories these days.
It might be argued: But it is Israel’s war because look how destructive Israel has been in Gaza. It should be argued: It is Hamas’ war because look how much destruction Hamas has brought on itself — and on the people Gaza — by kidnapping hostages and then torturing them, by not releasing them all, by murdering many of them, by fighting from within Gaza’s homes, schools and hospitals, thus endangering civilians, and by commandeering humanitarian aid to feed some to its fighters and to sell the rest to the people for whom it is intended to be a free gift.
It might be argued: Don’t drag in history. Stop giving me your narrative. Don’t tell me about Hamas’ atrocities 19 months ago! It’s irrelevant. Focus on today’s suffering in Gaza.
According to its logic, by tomorrow, what happens today will be history. If history is irrelevant, by tomorrow, what’s happened today is irrelevant. If history doesn’t count, then by tomorrow, today won’t count, either. Which is absurd. There is no escaping the background, the context, the motives of the wartime actors of today. There is no justification for referring to October, 2023 as when “Israel’s war on Hamas began.” It is bad history. It is bad journalism. No excuses.
Alas, standards have fallen so low that I must give this to the WSJ reporters Carrie Keller-Lynn and Dov Lieber: They acknowledge that Hamas exists. How could it be otherwise? you might ask. It can be. Hamas does not exist. Just consult a guest commentary by Nour Khalil AbuShammala in the Denver Post, May 2, titled, “We Gazans are dying every day.”
The piece is a litany of the suffering in Gaza today. Not enough food. Not enough to eat and be full. Not enough medicine. Tragedies. Genocide. Apartheid. No hope. Despair. Israel brought it on.
The piece is a cri de coeur, partly against Israel, partly against media that no longer focus on Gaza (he says), and partly against the US and other nations that do not put an end to all this.
I read the piece beginning to end, twice. I feel for the Gazans and wish all this had never happened. I wish it could end immediately. But did I miss something in this piece? I did. I missed two words. Two seminal words about the suffering in Gaza today are missing.
The first missing word is “Hamas.”
A piece on the suffering in Gaza today does not so much as mention Hamas, not once. In the mental universe of AbuShammala, there is no cause-and-effect that precedes anything Israel does. Israel does something; it is deemed bad; and absolutely nothing preceded Israel’s action. In the mental world of AbuShammala, there was no Oct. 7, 2023; no Hamas then, before then, or now. Hamas does not exist. Other Gazans courageously protest against the cruelty of Hamas, but not AbuShammala. He can write an entire piece on the suffering in Gaza in 2025 without reference to the elected leaders of Hamas who triggered this suffering — and actually want it. Hamas leader Sinwar called the deaths in Gaza triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack “necessary sacrifices.” Suffering in Gaza is Hamas’ intended propaganda tool to besmirch Israel. The worse it is for Gaza, the better it is for Hamas.
It’s a sick reality. The sooner AbuShammala recognizes it, as some courageous Gazans have, the sooner the scourge of Hamas can be eradicated.
The second missing word: “hostages.”
In the mental world of AbuShammala, Israel’s fight in Gaza is entirely uncaused by the Oct. 7 reality of Hamas’ mass kidnapping, without the criminal reality of Hamas’ murder of many of these kidnapped people, without the disgusting reality of Hamas coercing those hostages who were freed last January to thank their tormentors publicly, without the disgusting reality of Hamas turning over the wrong body of the murdered Shiri Bibas and making an obscene show of turning over the others, without a word about Hamas’ murder of the two kidnapped, innocent, beautiful, red-haired Bibas children.
AbuShammala is identified as a Palestinian trainee lawyer and human rights advocate in Gaza City. Well, Jews have human rights, too. Israelis have human rights, too. One of these is the right of self-defense. Would AbuShammala call Hamas’ murders, rapes, beheadings and kidnappings on Oct. 7, 2023 an exercise in self-defense? Was he, like the history professor at Cornell University, “exhilarated” by Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7?
I am infinitely saddened by the suffering in Israel and in Gaza.
But not to the exclusion of Israel’s right of self-defense, especially against an enemy sworn to Israel’s destruction.
© IJN 2025
