To New York Times #neverTrump columnist David French, the U.S. owes Gaza a living.

He put out a seemingly reasonable column, assuring us he's a friend of Israel, titled "Israel Must Open Its Eyes," sanctimoniously blaming Israel and the U.S. for the miserable plight of the Gazans.

So, yes, I consider myself a friend of Israel. But now its friends need to stage an intervention. The Israeli government has gone too far. It has engineered a staggering humanitarian crisis, and that crisis is both a moral atrocity and a long-term threat to Israel itself.

Civilian casualties were inevitable when Israel responded to Hamas, but the suffering of Palestinian civilians is far beyond the bounds of military necessity. The people of Gaza, already grieving the loss of thousands of children, now face a famine — and children once again will bear the brunt of the pain.

He insists the famine is real, not mentioning that Hamas and its buddies have cried wolf more than once on this. A year ago, they were supposedly starving. Now, they're starving again. How many times do we have to hear this? Fat Hamas types emerged, clearly getting themselves fed. Why would that be different now? He said aid wasn't getting in now, using numbers, but that doesn't tell us whether food is already in storage or has been distributed. What's the point of delivering aid if Hamas eats all the food? The civilians starve either way.

Another problem, he says is here:

Compounding the problem, the method of distributing what little aid is available requires thousands of Palestinians to travel long distances, which imposes an extreme hardship on the most vulnerable people — the very old, the very sick and the very young. Palestinians also have to cross military lines, which creates its own risk of violence as thousands upon thousands of hungry civilians encounter heavily armed soldiers who are on high alert.

In Iraq, I participated in humanitarian missions that involved far fewer people, and I can tell you that these missions can be remarkably tense. It takes extreme discipline to keep the peace. Consequently, even as the amount of aid has diminished, the number of violent incidents during aid distribution has skyrocketed. Hundreds of Palestinians in search of food have been killed, many of them by Israeli soldiers.

So there is less aid, and it’s harder and more dangerous to obtain.

Seems the solution is obvious here: If they can't wait in line like civilized people, then no aid for them. Line cutters will be thrown out. Those who wait in line will get food. What's more, a 'thank you, Israel' or 'thank you, America' should be required before any aid is released, to prevent the usual ingratitude and get these Jew-haters in the mindset that Israel is saving their lives. Sure, some will fake it, but if they hate Jews a lot, they won't like it, which is very much the idea. Why should Israel feed people who want to kill them?

 Then he starts in with the nonsense:

Israel’s aid blockade came after a year and a half of war, when Hamas is decimated, Gaza’s government is largely dismantled and chaos reigns.

The dominant power in Gaza is Israel, not Hamas, and Israel, not Hamas, is the only entity with both the power to control aid distribution and the ability to obtain and distribute aid in the Gaza Strip. There is no way for Gazans to feed themselves. They are utterly dependent on Israel, and Israel removed the United Nations from the aid distribution network without replacing it with an effective alternative.

Hamas is gone, Hamas is defeated? If that were true, Israel would be free to walk away. They have to put a steel grip on Gaza in order to keep the terrorists inside. Unfortunately, not all terrorists dance around with gun-guns shooting them off for the cameras. Many quietly support the terrorists if not vote for them. 

Meanwhile, there are lots of ways for Gazans to feed themselves -- every famine is less a food shortage than a money shortage. The most insane famines, e.g., Ethiopia, etc. according to NGO workers, were made worse by shipping in vast quantities of aid, putting local farmers out of business. How does a farmer compete with 'free'?

Creating a big, vast, welfare state is a great way to create a vast underclass, living a shambling life of leisure and doing nothing to support themselves, and then turning to crime and mayhem for excitement.

Gazans need to be told that they can work and pay for the food they want, and not live off others. French cites his Iraq experience as an example, saying the Bush administration's failure to protect the civilian population made the war non-stop.

But property-rights economist Hernando de Soto told me the big failure of the Bush administration in Iraq was that it ignored the example of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in conquered Japan, in first establishing property rights with title deed. With ironclad property rights, gang activity and mayhem vanish instantly. I recall asking the public relations crew in Baghdad if they paid any attention to property rights with Fallujah raging and despite what their website said, they said 'no.'

French doesn't see it that way:

There has always been a better way to defeat Hamas, and no one knows this better than veterans of the Iraq war. We’ve watched Israel make the same mistakes we made early in the war, when we repeatedly attacked and destroyed terrorist cells but the terrorists always came back.

We played a deadly and destructive version of Whac-a-Mole, reducing neighborhoods and streets to ruin, only to bomb the rubble weeks and months later when Al Qaeda returned. The only way to stop the cycle was to seize ground, hold it and protect and secure the civilian population until we could hand control over to local authorities.

That approach has a double virtue. It’s not just kinder to civilians; it’s far more effective militarily. I’m not just saying this. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq during the surge — when we turned the tide of the Iraq war in part by protecting the Iraqi population — has made this argument over and over and over again since Oct. 7.

 People in Iraq hated Saddam Hussein. Gazans? Some do, but some do not and it doesn't help that the 'some do not' is a lot of people. Supporting them, without some tough reeducation, and the total defeat of Hamas, is a suicide mission. 

The bottom line is that Hamas is not dead and Hamas has to be annihilated first. If that means casualties among people who refuse to get out of the way, well, don't dismiss that they were part of the Hamas octopus.

Israel is doing the best it can with an implacable enemy. It makes mistakes, some of them are nasty (why was the Catholic church there attacked twice?) but it tries to correct course.

Hamas, not so much. Its leaders are out gloating that Europe's recognition of a Palestinian state was the whole objective of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Then he goes off on a sanctimonious tangent:

No nation — not even the United States — can thrive without allies, and Israel (despite its nuclear weapons) is far more vulnerable and dependent on international friendship than the United States or Britain or France. If Israel creates a lasting rift with its European allies and shatters the longstanding bipartisan American consensus on aiding Israel, then the long-term consequences could be grave.

 Europe has been a ally, how? They've thwarted them every step of the way and tried to put Prime Minister Netanyahu in the dock, subject to sanctimonious unelected European judges. No thanks. With friends like that, who needs enemies? That horse left the barn long ago.

Then he gets awful:

Israel’s friends must speak with one voice: End the famine in Gaza. Drop any talk of annexation. Protect the civilian population.

Defeating Hamas does not require starving a single child.

 Preposterous. They didn't do jack for Israel except try to stop them, and they are the world's biggest coddlers of Islamofascist radical migrants. They love to let these migrants prey on their own populations, especially their women and children, and worse still, have driven their Jewish populations out on a wave of Muslim antisemitism. Why would they have Israel's well being in mind with a record like that? These aren't friends. These are the people who need to 'open their eyes.' 

Israel is defending all civilization as it seeks to stomp out these murderous terrorists. A respectful silence is the minimum they owe Israel. They ought to be helping Israel out.

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