Culpability for the War in Gaza

For discussion in the planning sessions for the next anti-Israel protests, these excerpts from a statement this week from the Global Imams Council:

We hold Hamas directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of all innocent lives lost since October 7, as their actions have not only brought death and destruction upon the region but have also led to immense suffering for the Palestinian people. Hamas’s reckless and inhumane tactics, using civilians as shields and exploiting their plight, have only escalated the cycle of violence and undermined the cause of justice and peace.

Moreover, we recognize that the regime in Iran shares equal responsibility for these tragedies, as its continued support and endorsement of Hamas’s actions perpetuate violence and instability in the region.

When the war Hamas launched on October 7 ends in its defeat, part of the reckoning that must occur should be a formal attribution of culpability for the war.

The Global Imams Council is clear where that culpability should rest, as should be the broader international community – Hamas and Iran.

Given the undemocratic nature of both Hamas and Iran, we should also be clear that this culpability rests specifically with at least two individuals – Sinwar and Khamenei. Of course, Sinwar may face his reckoning in a tunnel as the war draws to a close.

And should the Lebanese people and armed forces fail to prevent the escalation of, and ultimately fail to end, the Iranian war against Israel on its northern borders, and more fundamentally, end Iranian suzerainty over Lebanon, we will need to add Hezbollah and Nasrallah for the consequent destruction and loss of lives in a conflagration in Lebanon.

One would hope that such a reckoning would occur at the UN. But that is very likely a forlorn hope, unless UN members, with the concurrence of Arab states and acquiescence of states such as Malaysia and Indonesia, address and reverse the pervasive anti-Israel and anti-Semitic culture of its institutions, processes and resolutions.

A formal statement of Hamas culpability, however, should be part of a Palestinian Authority post-war agreement that not only recognises Israel but formally renounces the ‘from the river to the sea’ narrative and breaks with the past promotion and glorification of war against Israel, not least in the Palestinian education system.

This reckoning within the Palestinian leadership and society would be fundamental to the rebuilding of a Gaza freed not just from the political control of Hamas and Iran but from their poisonous, destructive ideology.

There should also be a reckoning for the moral confusion in the West about Hamas’s war, and specifically within the international relations, politics, and philosophy departments and student bodies of universities across the West.

There is a moral clarity in the judgment of the Global Imams Council about Hamas’s war that stands in contrast to the moral confusion evident amongst university protestors. They too need to reckon with their failure to name Hamas and Iran as the culprits in this tragedy, their failure to support Israel, their complicity in the ‘support and endorsement’ of Hamas in its continuation of its war at the expense of ordinary Palestinians,  and their responsibility for allowing antisemitism to return to their campuses and cities in the guise of anti-war rhetoric.