Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza on Monday. He explained: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
https://www.thewrap.com/jake-tapper-israel-gaza-blockade-comparison-russia-ukraine-video/
In chess, a stalemate is a situation where one player, on their turn, has no legal moves and their king is not in check. This usually happens when the player’s pieces are blocked or trapped by their own pieces or the opponent’s pieces. When a stalemate occurs, the game immediately ends in a draw, regardless of the material or positional advantage one side may have. It’s considered a key defensive strategy, especially when a player is at a significant disadvantage.
The current situation in the Hamas-Israel chessboard is a classical stalemate. In their asymmetrical warfare, the material advantage of the Israeli position has been blocked by Hamas’s use of civilian shields and hostage taking. The only “win” option now for the IDF is to kick the board and destroy everything: a successful operation, but the patient dies. It’s like killing the patient to cure a metastatic cancer. For that is what Hamas represents: a malignant, metastatic cancer.
How did we get here? On October 7, Hamas committed barbaric war crimes, attacking unarmed civilian population and taking hostages. However, this wouldn’t have occurred if the IDF had defended its civilian population properly and had killed the terrorists on the spot. But this didn’t happen, resulting in an embarrassing military defeat for the IDF with disastrous consequences.
Chess decisions are not driven by emotions but by rational strategic thinking. The desire for vengeance plays no role in objectively assessing a position on the chessboard and determining a rational — and lawful — course of action. As a liberal democracy bound by the international rules of war, the right strategic decision now is for Israel to call it a draw on humanitarian grounds: negotiate a bilateral ceasefire and exchange of hostages.
As so well stated by the UN Secretary General, the current war didn’t begin on October 7, 2023. The Hamas cancer is a reaction to a toxin, the toxin of Zionism. We don’t justify cancer cells destroying healthy tissue in the human body. Likewise, we can’t justify Hamas terrorism. But we should endeavor to understand its cause and prevent its spread.
Two wrongs don’t make a right; they make a stalemate. War crimes are serious violations of the laws and customs of war which include crimes against humanity, genocide, and mistreatment of civilians or combatants during war. Responding to war crimes with more war crimes only escalates the cycle of violence and does not address the root causes of the conflict. What’s needed instead is a strong international legal system that can bring perpetrators on both sides to justice, support for peacebuilding efforts, and measures to prevent such crimes from happening in the first place.
Mokhiber’s proposal would be a step in this direction. A transitional two-state solution would align with this goal.
Even if the IDF crushes Hamas by ethnically cleansing Gaza of Palestinians and by destroying its civilian infrastructure, another anti-Zionist terrorist group will spring up elsewhere. As long as the toxin of Zionism is present in Palestine, as it is present in the West Bank today, the cancer of terrorism will thrive and spread. Israel can’t blame Hamas for the illegal expansions of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The Jewish people will live in peace only when they engage in right human relations with all their neighbors, in Palestine and worldwide. They are not God’s “chosen people,” but rather, equal brothers and sisters belonging to one family, the One Humanity.
In sum, Israelis must call it a draw (stalemate, ceasefire), negotiate the exchange of hostages and prisoners of war, and return to the negotiating table — as equals with Palestinians — in a territorial dispute to be adjudicated by the international community. That’s a rational solution for a lasting peace in the Middle East. Regressing to the Code of Hammurabi to appease Jehovah’s wrath — the antithesis of God’s love — is not the way to a future peace. -JB
A Call for Peace
I call upon anyone — leaders, politicians, business owners, journalists, students — who want to have a future in peace, to not give into the voices of extremism. In difficult times, like the ones we live in today, it is easy to fall into the trap of hatred, but true leadership is when we still hold on to the idea of peace. We must all understand that those who consider themselves bridge-builders will not give into the voices of extremists, who are trying to divide or cancel us.
True leaders — no matter if old or young — stand strong in such difficult times and do not fall into the trap of hatred or labeling others. It is the time where bridge-builders on all sides come together and urgently discuss the long-term solutions and what we all have in common, not what divides us.
Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress
An Ethical, Legal and Strategic Conundrum
The conundrum of waging a war against terrorists who use civilian human shields is indeed complex and fraught with ethical, legal, and strategic challenges.
Ethical Challenges: From an ethical perspective, every effort must be made to protect innocent lives. The use of human shields by terrorists presents a moral dilemma as any attack aimed at neutralizing the terrorists also risks harming civilians. This can lead to a serious question about the proportionality of response and the value of human life.
Legal Challenges: International humanitarian law (IHL) prohibits the use of civilians as human shields. However, it also places obligations on all parties to conflict to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects1.
Strategic Challenges: From a strategic standpoint, terrorists use human shields to deter attacks and exploit the resulting civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. Responding to such tactics without causing civilian harm often requires precise, intelligence-driven operations which can be resource-intensive and may not always be successful.
To navigate this conundrum, it is essential that military forces adhere strictly to IHL, invest in precision weaponry, enhance intelligence capabilities, and adopt tactics that prioritize the protection of civilians. There also needs to be a concerted international effort to hold perpetrators accountable for the war crime of using human shields, as well as the crimes of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.
Ultimately, it’s also crucial to address the root causes of terrorism in order to reduce the incidence of such conflicts in the first place.
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