Bilahari Kausikan
17 h ·
The Situation in Gaza
This is going to be a long post. But this is a crucial issue so bear with me.
Last night my attention was drawn to the argument made by a Malaysian ex-diplomat that the ‘root cause’ of the current violence must be addressed.
This is not a new argument — it inevitably surfaces when conflict over Gaza or Palestine generally — erupts, and unfortunately, is shared by too many Singaporeans. At a superfical level, it has a certain plausibility, but is nevertheless bullshit. Let me explain why.
First some Southeast Asian context. Hamas has a long-standing relationship with Malaysia and recieves training there which cannot happen unless the political authorities at least instruct the security agencies to look the other way. Former PM Najib visited Gaza in 2013 and met Hamas leaders. Hamas maintains an office in Malaysia under the innocuous sounding title of Palestinian Cultural Office Malaysia.
The logic of the ‘root cause’ argument about Palestine or terrorism in general is fundamentally flawed. Just because one party commits injustices does not excuse injustice by another party and this is really just an excuse for terrorism masquerading as an ‘explaination’.
The Palestinian issue is such a tangled mess of competing nationalisms wrapped up in too much imperfectly understood and deliberately distorted history in which ‘justice’ for one necessarily entails ‘injustice’ for the other. It is a fool’s errand to try and draw up a balance sheet of ‘injustices’ or assign responsibility. We may have an opinion about this issue, as we have views about other international issues. But don’t forget ultimately these competing nationalisms have nothing to do with us.
Under these circumstances to call for ‘root causes’ to be addressed is just another way of saying Israel should not exist, particularly since Hamas’ declared purpose is to destroy Israel. It delegitimises the right to self-defence.
Imagine if someone fired thousands of rockets at us, gunned down 200+ of our young people attending a music festival, as well as murdering scores of other civilians and kidnapped others including young children and old people. Would we pontificate about ‘root causes’?
The atrocities Hamas has committed go well beyond any reasonable conception of legitimate Palestinian self-defence no matter what Israel may have done.
Israel is now going to fight a war of annihilation against Hamas and we should not blame them. As an IDF spokesman has made clear, the paradigm has changed.
I don’t think, as some have speculated, Israel will be deterred by the hostages. To expect so misunderstands the psychology of Israel’s existential condition: the Israelis will spare no effort to retrieve one hostage or even the corpses of a few hostages, but hundreds of hostages are casualties of war and tragic though it may be, most Israelis instinctively understand this and accept that this is a price that must be paid.
This is the signifiance of declaring war against Hamas, a war that given the scale of the atrocities Hamas committed, most Israelis accept, however reluctantly, and regardless of their other political disagreements, know and agree must be fought because containment of Hamas has clearly failed and there is no other choice.
Israel made serious mistakes and there was a fundamental intelligence failure. There will be plenty of recriminations to come and Netanyahu’s government will probably not survive very long. But first it will fight a war that will be continued by any successor government.
Having re-secured the border with Gaza, Israel will take its time to prepare for a ground assault and lay siege to Gaza to degrade Hamas’ capabilities and update intelligence. But a ground assault is inevitable.
It will be very difficult and costly but I think most israelis understand that a war of annihilation against Hamas must be fought regardless of the cost in blood and treasure to restore deterrence. There will never be a clear ‘win’ or ‘lose’ in such a situation: the objective is to restore deterrence but they know that after some time it will erode again and will need to be restored.
I have never forgotten what a senior IDF friend of mine told me years ago when we were discussing deterrence. He said Singapore was fortunate that we could maintain deterrence by signalling. But Israel, he continued, had to periodically spill blood to remind its enemies not to go too far. Tragically, that is almost the existential condition of being Israeli.
The political situation in israel — not just the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations over the last several months, but going back at least 3-5 years, led Israel to be distracted from this harsh reality and that is why the current situation arose.
It is always a mistake to think there are definitive solutions to international problems and more so in the Middle East than anywhere else.
If it can be proven that Iran had a hand in these latest attacks, then the major war which I have long thought inevitable will happen sooner than I expected.
Under these circumstances Singaporeans should remain focused on our own national interests and whatever our human sympathies may be, not confuse them with our national interests.
I think many of us have seen videos of Malaysians waving Palestinian flags on KL streets and celebrating Israeli deaths. I don’t think this represents the majority view of decent Malaysians. But I hope no Singaporean will ever celebrate atrocities.
And it is not in our essential national interest to let terrorists anywhere believe that they can act with impunity. It is in our national interest that israel responds decisively to this terror attack.
It was not so long ago that a plot by a Jihadist group — no doubt inspired by Hamas’ earlier attacks on Israel — to shoot rockets at Singapore from Batam was foiled.
https://mothership.sg/2023/10/bilahari-israel-hamas-war/
