He writes:
Thursday night’s order by the Israel Defense Forces to Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate their homes within 24 hours was dangerous and deeply troubling. Any demand for a mass evacuation on extremely short notice could have devastating humanitarian consequences.
As secretary general of the United Nations, I appeal to Israeli authorities to reconsider.We have approached a moment of calamitous escalation, and find ourselves at a critical crossroads. It is imperative that all parties — and those with influence over them — do everything possible to avoid fresh violence or spillover of the conflict to the West Bank and the wider region.We urgently need a way out of this disastrous dead end before more lives are lost.
The article makes an implicit but dangerous assumption: that Hamas is a rational actor that can be influenced by diplomacy.
He makes the right noises: the massacre in Israel was abhorrent, he understands how Israelis feel fear.
But in the end he is arguing that Hamas be allowed to exist and continue to grow. And that is immoral.
From Israel's perspective, Hamas and the other terror groups must not be allowed to exist and operate. That is a moral imperative. And it is one that Guterres should share.
Senior Hamas official Ali Baraka went on Russia Today TV shortly after the attacks. He admits that for the two years the attacks were being planned, Hamas fooled Israel and the world by acting as if it cared about Gaza residents:
Baraka: "In the past couple of years, Hamas has adopted a 'rational' approach. It did not go into any war, and did not join the Islamic Jihad in its recent battle."Interviewer: "But all this was part of Hamas's strategy in preparing for this attack."Baraka: "Of course. We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza], and has abandoned the resistance altogether."
For these two years, life had been improving for Gazans. Imports increased by about 25%, exports by about 30%, and the number of people traveling into and out of Gaza increased from 7,500 to over 50,000 per month. Gazans had work permits. The economy was improving markedly.
But Hamas didn't do all this to help Gazans. They did it to give Israelis a false sense of security that Hamas actually cared about the lives of over 2 million Gazans! As Baraka brags, it was all a lie. Hamas made lives of Gazans better in order to murder Jews, knowing full well that Israel will retaliate, imports and exports and work permits would stop, and many Gazans would die.
Guterres is arguing that the leaders of Gaza who support policies to hurt and kill their own people in order to be able to kill Jews should be allowed to remain in power.
He is saying that we should explore diplomacy with the group that has bragged that it cannot be trusted and that murder is its highest aspiration.
How, exactly, does that promote peace worldwide?
Hamas and its terror partners must be destroyed. The only way to eliminate them is through war. The war cannot be a limited operation that leaves them with a bloody nose - they must be uprooted. Anyone arguing that this war must be limited is an obstacle to peace.
A lot of people will die - both Gazans and Israelis. The only reason the death toll will be so high is because people like Guterres pressured Israel to end previous wars, in the name of morality. Israel could have much more easily eliminated the threat in 2009 or 2014. Meanwhile, Hamas acquired far more weapons and built far more tunnels - all at the expense of its own people.
How immoral must one be to want that situation to continue?
If Guterres really cared about Gazans and the world, he would be not only wanting Israel to win the war decisively, but also work to isolate Iran for its obvious role not only in the planning and training for the attack, but also for its role in instructing Hezbollah and Syria and West Bank groups to join in.
His not even mentioning the Lebanese and Syrian attacks in recent days says volumes about how clueless he is.
