Hamas left the gate open. And the world blames Israel?

The Talmud (Baba Metzia) discusses the case of a watchman who leaves a gate open, allowing an animal to wander out or thieves to enter and cause damage to the property he was supposed to guard. The watchman can be liable – chayav — for damages.

In a similar case in the same tractate, the Talmud cites a shepherd who leaves his flock in the field to go into town, and the animals under his care are attacked. The shepherd is liable.

Another case: A wolf, in a location where the carnivorous animals are known to gather, attacks a flock. The shepherd can be held liable.

All of this misfeasance would merit punishment or a penalty, according to Talmudic principles. All of the cases, two millennia old, make a statement about Hamas, the contemporary threat facing Israel.

Hamas – the Islamic Resistance Movement – has many faces. All of them spell a ruinous future for the people whom its “militants” claim to be sworn to protect.

Hamas, above all, is the Talmud’s famed “goring ox,” whose pattern of violence earns it a death sentence, and its owner economic consequences.

Hamas is the errant watchman who left the gate open.

Hamas is the negligent shepherd (of the Arabs living in Gaza) who endangered his flock.

And above all, Hamas is the bloodthirsty wolf that takes the lives of innocent victims.

Whatever its symbolic identity, in Talmudic terms or in the realpolitik of current geopolitics, Hamas is the party that is responsible for the lives – and since October 7 – the deaths of the Arab Palestinians whose homes were, until the murderous flood of terrorism in the nearby parts of Israel, under its control in Gaza.

Hamas is chayav.

Stated the headline on a recent op-ed essay by author Louis Rene Beres, “The Legal Responsibility for the War in Gaza Belongs to Hamas.”

Hamas left the gate open. Not accidentally or carelessly or inadvertently, but intentionally.

Whatever the body count of casualties in Gaza since October 2023 (and the Hamas Health Ministry certainly cannot be counted on to provide an accurate number of deaths or of starving Gazans), the blood is entirely on the hands of Hamas.

Whatever the world – or at least the rabidly antagonistic, or left-leaning sycophants that constitute the headline-seeking part of it – says, Hamas was clearly the instigator of the fighting in Gaza that has followed the Muslim group’s murderous invasion of southern Israel nearly two years ago.

Whatever has happened in Gaza since October 7, Hamas has brought it upon itself. And upon the people who voted it into totalitarian office after Israel unilaterally withdrew two decades ago.

By any reasonable definition, halachic or secular, Hamas is liable for damages. Morally, if not legally. For the damages it costs, the lives it took, on or after October 7. In this case, the damages are the destruction of Hamas … and the collateral damage that is now taking place in Gaza.

But reasonableness does not reign in politics or in the court of public opinions, where appearances are more powerful than reality – some examples: only eight percent of Democrats back Israel’s military action in Gaza, according to a recent Gallup poll; and the majority of Democrats in the Senate caucus recently voted, for the first time, to block weapons sales to Israel.

In the view of these fair-weather friends, Israel is guilty as charged – by Hamas.

But …

In a court of law, Hamas would face a quick guilty verdict. In a beit din, Hamas would be judged equally culpable. It had plenty of forewarning of the consequences it would face if it escalated its armed hostility against Israel. There were plenty of witnesses. Hamas openly declared its defiance.

The terrorist group in Gaza that operates under the pretense of political acceptability and bills itself as a social services agency is liable for the damages, the deaths and starvation, which followed in the wake of its bloody invasion on October 7 of the area around Gaza. By its murders and tortures and rapes, it inevitably and predictably forced Israel to protect its own citizens and prevent a repetition of the outrages.

True, casualties (considering the extent of Hamas prevarications and exaggerations, it is impossible to determine who is a civilian and who is a Hamas fighter in civilian garb) have mounted since the IDF mounted a counter-attack on October 8.

And equally true, all the blood is on Hamas’, not Israel’s, hands.

Israel had not planned to send its troops into the hornet’s nest that lies on its southwest border.

The Israeli army would not have been in Gaza since October 8 had Hamas not committed its atrocities, its coordinated attacks the day before.

If Hamas left the gate open, the people of Gaza (whether or not they cheered or opposed the violence) are suffering the consequences of Israel’s military response.

Israel entered Gaza, leading to a probable re-“occupation” of the territory it had unilaterally left in 2005 since it had no other choice then; Jews don’t traditionally mark Simchat Torah by initiating years-long military campaigns. The Israeli government, as Hamas well – but not prudently enough – knew, would take up arms against the murderers who had taken up rifles and gliders and motorcycles against it.

Hamas gambled; maybe its like-minded Iranian proxies would join in a multi-front attack on Israel; maybe Israel would fall.

Hamas lost.

But it has gained the rabid and vocal support of the usual suspects in the woke-deluded and intersectionality-influenced cadre of intellectuals, who back boycotts of Israel and anti-Israel resolutions at the UN.

“Whatever happens in Gaza this week or next month or next year, Hamas’ victory in the war for public opinion is complete,” Tablet editor-at-large Liel Leibovitz wrote in a recent essay on the website. Wrote Leibovitz, Hamas’ supporters abroad have swallowed the terrorist group’s narrative: “Some Palestinian ogres did something bad, in response to which the Israeli ogres did something even worse.”

Israel’s short-term goal is victory on the battlefield. There, Israel is winning, but at a cost of losing much public opinion.

Don’t blame Israel.

Self-preservation comes first.

As Israel’s detractors should concede.

Instead of pressuring Israel, instead of sympathizing with murderers, instead of demanding an immediate, unilateral ceasefire, the pro-Palestinian crowd, if sincere, could make some demands of Hamas:

• Release the hostages (or their bodies, if at this point victims of Hamas).
• Give up the dream of dismantling Israel, and revoke the charter that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
• Stop shooting missiles at Israel.
• Stop shooting at Israeli soldiers who are patrolling Gaza.
• Stop describing Gaza as an “open-air prison” – Hamas, not Israel, reigned in Gaza beginning in 2005.
• Stop hiding in crowded, ostensibly off-limits venues like schools, hospitals or mosques.
• Stop diverting, for building a warren of underground tunnels, the billions of financial aid the international community has given you for food and medicine and other necessities for the people who live in Gaza.
• Stop blaming Israel for the starvation in Gaza that Hamas is causing.
• Stop blocking humanitarian aid shipments to the residents of Gaza and selling the life-sustaining food at exorbitant prices.
• Stop hiding in tunnels while Gazans remain above ground to face the ongoing war.
• Stop claiming “genocide” when what is taking place in Gaza is clearly the least-successful genocide in history.
• Spend more time on helping your people than on anti-Israel public relations efforts.
• Stop blackening the name of your Muslim faith.
• Stop poisoning the minds of young Gazans.
• Treat your prisoners humanely until you release them.
• Put your people’s survival before the elimination of the people of Israel.
• Face the reality that your time ruling Gaza is limited.
• Leave Gaza – as Yasir Arafat and his fellow PLO fighters left their base in Lebanon in 1982.

All of this, of course, is unrealistic. Hamas is committed to a to-the-death battle against the Jewish state – the death of the residents of Gaza. Which makes the vision of a two-state solution, if it was ever viable, increasingly a mirage.

So Israel must do what it needs to do, its image be damned, its political isolation a fait accompli.

The Israeli Army, of course, is not faultless. Have there been instances of over-zealous, trigger-happy soldiers and misfired armaments that caused civilian casualties? Undoubtedly. But they are not part of IDF strategy.

As the defilers of Israel would claim.

While the popular Palestinian cause has attracted the support of many trendy members of the entertainment and academia fields, some have maintained their integrity.

In an incident that has resonance for supporters of Israel, a social media activist (identified as Instagram provocateur “Subway DJ”), in the guise of a supporter of “Palestine,” ambushed Jerry Seinfeld, posing as someone making an innocent request for a selfie picture, when the Jewish stand-up comedian/actor was at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the 50^th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live earlier this year. Holding up a “Free Palestine!” sign and flashing a peace sign, the stranger secretly filmed a video, and urged a pro-Palestinian statement.

Seinfeld, an unapologetic supporter of Israel, played along. Apparently. “Sure,” he said. Then he declared, “I don’t care about Palestine.”

Not what the activist expected.

But what honesty demanded.

Seinfeld’s words spoke for many Zionist Jews who are disgusted by reflexive, confrontational attacks on Israel disguised as human rights concern for the Arabs of Gaza whose lives are endangered by the reckless acts of Hamas.

We don’t care about Gaza.

It’s not that we’re indifferent to the images (likely largely manufactured and manipulated by Hamas to garner public sympathy) of starving children and a bombed-out landscape, but it’s not Israel’s fault. None of it would have happened if Hamas had not invaded Israel on October 7. Israel didn’t ask for this.

We care primarily about Israel. We care about the hostages that Hamas continues to hold and mistreat as ransom for Israeli concessions (i.e., capitulation). We care about the IDF soldiers who are sacrificing their livelihoods and losing their lives in Gaza. We care about Israel preventing a recurrence of October 7.

If the keffiyah-brandishing supporters of the “Palestinians” are concerned about the fate of those who live in Gaza, Israel is not the address to which their concerns should be sent. And supporters of Israel are not the people who should be confronted about this.

Hamas’ useful idiots should express their concerns to Hamas; They should confront the governments and agencies who support Hamas.

The lives of the men and women and children of Gaza are the responsibility of Hamas.

Hamas left the gate open.