A Rebuttal to Fintan O’Toole (June 3)

The text below is a response to an opinion piece written by Fintan O’Toole published in the Irish Times, June 3rd 2025: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/06/03/in-netanyahus-grotesque-world-view-even-gazas-four-year-olds-are-barbarians/

I see no problem with acknowledging the ‘barbarism’ of Hamas – that is exactly the word for a group that puts babies in ovens, murders parents in front of their children, or kidnaps pensioners, while gleefully filming it all.

O’Toole utterly fails to acknowledge the extreme jihadist mindset that Israel has to fight against. For those unaware, polling data shows much of the Gazan population still supports 7/10. After all, remember its streets in a euphoric state as pick-up trucks with dead young women on the back drove in, the crowds baying to spit and stamp on bodies.

I recount the tellings of hostage Louis Har, who was told by Hamas members not to reveal himself or speak Hebrew aloud, because they could not save him from being lynched by civilians.

On that note: unfortunately, not one civilian has helped any hostages while in Gaza. Not one. Even in Nazi Germany, countless families displayed kindness and human decency in sheltering Jewish individuals.

Last week, I was in Israel. It was jarring to see the battle in the strip, and it is devastating to hear of deaths of children. But what can Israel do?

Hamas, as the governing power of the territory, are responsible for every death inside of the area, because they started the war. They also continue to perpetuate it, and refuse to surrender. It’s a simple question, why don’t they lay down their arms and release the hostages?

For all his high-minded criticism of Israel, I ask, what would he do? In fact, what would any country do, when facing a jihadist neighbour who massacred over 1200 of your citizens, continues to hold 58 more, and vows to repeat it again and again?

Unfortunately, Fintan embodies the exact thinking that Hamas know permeates through much of the West: lacking the stomach to triumph over evil. They know that they can commit horrendous atrocities, then play the victim and receive sympathy because they are seen as weaker.

Fintan lacks the objective morality to recognise good v evil. He instead judges on the classic Marxist idea of strong = bad, weak = good; all other morality is pushed aside. His complete moral relativism renders him unable to see the clear difference between a country that builds bomb shelters for its civilians and has produced the Iron Dome system, versus a culture that celebrates suicide bombers, pays the salaries of terrorists, and teaches their children the greatest purpose to attain in life is murdering Jews (search tomorrow’s pioneers). Their culture of martyrdom is enshrined through naming streets after suicide bombers.

I am not a warmonger. I would love to see this war end tomorrow, but of course a condition of that is the removal of Hamas from power. And in the absence of them laying down arms and surrendering, military pressure is the only tool available.

In case O’Toole has forgotten, there is still a war going on. 4 IDF soldiers have died in the last 24 hours.

As a reminder, Hamas are Sunni extremists, just as ISIS were. Their practices are very similar. During the battle of Mosul in 2017 to defeat the unrivalled depravity of ISIS, thousands of civilians died. Does this mean that ISIS were suddenly on the same moral ground as the US and Kurdish forces that were fighting them?

There is a particularly perverse culture that has been cultivated in Gaza. 3000 people do not simply wake up one morning and decide to commit the most obscene acts I have watched on camera. It is years in the making. On 7/10, we witnessed these people whooping and cheering as they burned homes and cut fetuses out of women, before killing both mother and baby.

Israel invests billions in healthcare and education. Iran, the paymasters of Hamas, solely fund guns and rockets. Multiple presidents, from Rafsanjani to Raisi and now Pezeshkian, vow to wipe the Jewish State from the map.

To be clear, Israel embodies western values that we are supposed to cherish in this part of the world. They include but are not limited to: democracy, one law for all, freedom of expression, equality for women, minority rights etc.

On the ‘Barbarian v civilisation’ front that O Toole clearly has disdain for, he should remember that one side has a society that compares to any Western European country; the other is literally a jihadist entity, and as Salman Rushdie says, is “a Taliban-like state”.

O Toole says the IDF is “unchecked by any norms of … restraint”. He sounds foolish, when you consider that the IDF has set an entirely new precedent in modern warfare for precision and casualty limitation. Against an enemy that has built 500km of an underground tunnel network, that uses civilian infrastructure as military bases and in one of the most densely populated places in the world, it has achieved a militant-civilian casualty ratio of roughly 1:1.5.

War is indeed a brutal business, and the loss of human life is always tragic, but this is a ratio that is frankly a miracle in modern urban warfare. The usage of ‘Knock Bombs’, moving civilian populations away from fighting, the dropping of leaflets, sending millions of text messages to warn civilians, allowing both the transfers of aid and children out of Gaza for surgery; none of these are the actions of a genocidal, indiscriminate army.

O’Toole’s blood libels continue. There is no “famine, collective punishment, obliteration”. He says that Netanyahu’s statement: “a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life” is “absurd”. Ismail Haniyeh, the 20 year-leader of Hamas is famous for literally saying “our enemies love life as we love death”. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesperson said only 2 months ago: “The martyrs [killed in the war] – the wombs of Gaza’s women will give birth to twice as many. This is the price that must be paid”. As Laura Perrins wisely wrote, “the women of Gaza are walking wombs and their babies are disposable. The Palestinians that have been killed are ‘material.’ That’s the kind of thinking you are dealing with”.

Furthermore: In Gaza, IDF soldiers die in tunnels trying to locate Israeli hostages, while Hamas fire rockets from civilian areas to save themselves. In the January-March ceasefire, Israel released over 1900 criminals with blood on their hands in exchange for only 33 of the hostages – because they value the lives of their own people. Israel also allowed over 8 months’ worth of food supply in during this period. The fact that it is stolen by Hamas and not distributed is not the fault of Israel.

I am confused by the tone at the end of O Toole’s article. Yes, western empires committed atrocities during the age of colonialism. But whether he likes it or not, third world societies also had awful practices, many of which continue today. He also seems to be implying that in today’s world, there are no objective differences in the quality of nations. This is of course, inherently false. If it was true, we would see the culture of Ireland and (for example) Yemen, as equals. But we don’t, because one nation practices child marriage, slavery, female genital mutilation and hangs homosexuals from cranes; the other…doesn’t.

We are the most coddled country in Europe. We have had a consistent democracy for over 100 years, and have never had to fight a war in the history of our state. We freeload on our former ruler for defence, while our economy is blessed with a flooding of FDI. We have never had to deal with religious fanaticism that seeks to murder each and every one of our population. O Toole’s mindset is born out of this.