Episode 31: The Blood Price of Freedom (Palestinian edition)
As I write this, Israel and Hamas continue to trade accusations about who is responsible for the bombing of a hospital in Gaza. It’s just the latest in 12 days and counting of horrible news coming out of Israel and Palestine that was triggered by Hamas’s attack, an attack that is utterly appalling to everyone except a few small groups of overcoddled students and professors safe in their ivory towers.
I’m mostly going to write about Palestine today, but let me say this about Israel: if I had been prime minister the evening of October 7th, looking at what had unfolded before my eyes that day, I would definitely have said, “OK, well then, what we’re going to do is mobilize the army, march into Gaza, and put a bullet in the head of every member of Hamas that we can identify. We can have a discussion about the moral costs of that action after all the appropriate heads have bullets in them.” It is, in my view, a completely understandable reaction.
What that action has zero chance of accomplishing, though, is the one thing I would most wish for Israel, which is long-term security. A ground invasion of Gaza will get rid of one iteration of security problems, but the collateral damage from it is only going to breed a fresh iteration. Again, I am not saying I wouldn’t do a ground invasion; I’m quite sure I would. But it won’t bring Israel long-term security. Only an actual resolution of the Palestinian question will do that.
Which brings me to the Palestinians. In Episode 12 I wrote about the blood price of freedom, which is the price that every people sooner or later pays in their quest for freedom. It is a price that is always paid in your own blood, not someone else’s, and no one can pay your blood price for you, as we learned the hard way in Afghanistan. The Palestinians have yet to pay their blood price of freedom. (They are already paying a hefty price in blood for Hamas’s cruelty, but that’s a different thing altogether.)
As a conservative, I’m extremely sympathetic to huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and that includes the many Palestinian civilians who have nothing at all to do with Hamas, and are just trying to survive what is a really tough situation in Gaza in the quietest of times. But if they want to be free, they will need to pay their blood price, which is this: they themselves must get rid of Hamas and the other extremist groups among them. Israel cannot do it for them. Israel is about to kill a bunch of Hamas guys, yes, but new ones will just keep springing up until the Palestinian people broadly finally decide that they will no longer tolerate that kind of person in their midst. And I hope they someday decide that, because as long as Hamas is running the show, the Palestinian people will never be free.
The bottom line is this: the pathway to freedom for Palestinians is: get rid of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other extremist elements in your midst, then march loudly but peacefully, day after day, week after week, until the the world cannot ignore any longer that you are *peacefully* protesting for your freedom, and enough pressure will be brought to bear that Israel will come to the table and a deal of some kind can be worked out. The “getting rid of extremist elements in your midst” part is the blood price, because many of you will die accomplishing that- extremist elements will not go quietly or peacefully. The marching peacefully day after day part will require superhuman patience, because it’s going to take a _really_ long time before it works, and it will also take skillful marketing and promotion of the cause, because the rest of the world will be focused on other things. Now, Palestinians, listen up:
Is it “just” that this is the pathway to freedom for you? No.
Is it “fair” that you must pay such a steep price for your freedom? No.
Is this the only viable pathway to your freedom? Yes.
So, I hope, when the dust settles, and the dead are buried (and there will surely be many, many more dead), that enough of you realize that this is the path -the only path- to your freedom. And I pray that you will walk that path, because freedom for you and true security for Israel lies at the end of that path, and no other.