Choose Your Own Adventure: The World’s Missed Opportunities Cost Lives

As a child, I loved reading those “choose your own adventure” books where you could pick different paths for the characters and end up with different endings. One year after Hamas’ brutal and unprovoked invasion of Israel, I was trying to imagine different paths that could have been taken before and after October 7 that could have saved thousands of lives.

Imagine if Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar had spent Qatar’s, the EU’s, and the United Nations’ billions of dollars in aid on housing, hospitals, schools, and small businesses instead of missiles, guns, and tunnels.

Imagine if Hamas had not built tunnels, missile launchers, command and control centers, and hostage dungeons under, around, and next to innocent civilians in Gaza.

Imagine if Hamas didn’t steal humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians living in Gaza.

Imagine if organizations like the United Nations, the Red Crescent Society, Doctors Without Borders, and Amnesty International cared about how Hamas abused and deprived its own people.

Imagine if after Hamas’s attack, Israel’s Middle Eastern neighbors and peace partners had condemned Hamas’ brutality and pledged to Israel that they would take the lead in freeing the hostages and isolating Hamas.  This isn’t so far-fetched, just look at how most of the Arab world isolated and opposed ISIS.

Imagine if United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres had convened an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council on 10/7 to condemn Hamas, pledge full UN support in freeing the hostages and isolating Hamas, and then flown to Israel in a sign of solidarity with Israelis in the face of Hamas’ inhumanity.

Imagine if immediately after Hamas’ October 7 rape, murder, torture, and kidnapping, groups like American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and other Palestinian advocacy groups and their allies, instead of taking to the streets to praise Hamas and attack Israel, had condemned Hamas and called for the hostages to be immediately returned and Hamas isolated.

Imagine if antisemitic and hypocritical extremists on Capitol Hill directed their anger at Hamas and its genocidal ambitions rather than wasting time trying to divide Americans by lying about Israel and Hamas.

Imagine if the United Nations lived up to the 2006 agreement it signed with Israel and Hezbollah and immediately pushed Hezbollah away from Israel’s border with Lebanon, as called for in the agreement, thereby making direct conflict between Israel and Hezbollah much less likely.

Imagine if the world intervened to stop Hezbollah’s incessant targeting of Israeli civilians, like the 12 Israeli schoolchildren Hezbollah killed on a soccer field in Majdal Shams.  What is Israel supposed to do when Hezbollah has fired nearly 10,000 missiles, rockets, and drones at Israel?

Imagine if the Houthis of Yemen spent Iran’s money feeding, clothing, housing, and educating the Yemenite people, instead of watching them starve, so that the Houthis could attack Israel and international shipping in the Red Sea.

Maybe, just maybe if some of these things had happened, Kfir and Ariel Bibas wouldn’t have turned 1 and 5 in Hamas’ custody.  Maybe, just maybe, Hersh Goldberg-Polin would right now be sitting with his family planning his global travels.  Maybe, just maybe, Naama Levy (of the bloody sweatpants) would be home with her parents.  Maybe, just maybe, if these things had happened, Israel would have felt so supported and so embraced by the world that they wouldn’t have felt it necessary to invade Gaza to defeat Hamas and free the hostages.  Maybe, just maybe, Gaza would have become the Singapore of the Middle East, instead of a mini-Tehran.

In the real world, we get to choose our own adventure, if not our own ending.  In this world that we live in, Israel chose to build a state, take in the millions of Jews pushed or scared from their homes in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere, and it chose to take risks for peace when it believed it had a partner who would share in those risks.  Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran on the other hand have chosen war, terrorism, brutality, and lies to further their genocidal aims, without regard to who is hurt, killed, or displaced.