Israel deserves support, not scorn, as it confronts a savage Nazi-like terror group

Perhaps you missed it on the BBC News at Ten: over the past few days now, tens of thousands of Gazans have reportedly been taking to the streets to protest against Hamas. They are risking their lives in doing so, calling for the removal of the terrorist group from power. By contrast, and equally absent from our newsfeeds, is the fact that Hamas has been busy praising foreign-policy decisions being made in London, Paris and Ottawa.

Like many in Gaza, and around the world, Israelis desperately want a different future. One that is free from Hamas and one in which our 58 remaining hostages are home in Israel, reunited with their families or, as would tragically be the case for many, afforded a proper burial. We desperately want to live in peace with our neighbours, but the presence and ongoing attacks from genocidal terror groups on our border causes such a peace to remain elusive. I am sure that no Briton would accept an Islamist terror group operating on its border, sworn to destroy the UK.

In this war, there is no perfect scenario. We are tasked with solving a number of complex and interrelated issues: our moral obligation to return our 58 Israeli hostages, dismantling the terror threat of Hamas, ensuring the security of Israeli citizens and facilitating transfers of humanitarian aid to Gazans while making sure that aid does not go to Hamas. We are having to make these decisions based on the fact that Hamas chose to carry out the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust and take 251 of our people hostage, torturing them in inhumane conditions.

I remind you that there was a ceasefire in place on October 6 2023 – a ceasefire that was brutally breached by Hamas. We now live in a post October 7 reality, and that means we can not allow Hamas to continue its control of Gaza. For our security, we need to see Gaza de-militarised; no one can expect us to simply wait for another October 7. Unsurprisingly, volunteers to carry out this process of demilitarisation in Gaza have been lacking, so it falls on us. That being said, I’d suggest that the lack of opposition to this in our region should be interpreted as tacit support – no one wants armed, Jihadi extremists operating on, or near, their border. All Western leaders agree that Hamas must not remain in power but we find a gap between rhetoric and actions in Europe. When it comes to it, no viable plan that takes seriously our security concerns have been proposed.

It can not be overstated that our enemy is specifically Hamas. That is why it is all the more tragic that Hamas has created an industry from the aid that it diverts from those who need it. Its strategy is steal it, sell it and use it to recruit new terrorists, pay their salaries and continue launching attacks against our people. The evidence of Hamas looting aid from international organisations, some of which has been paid for by donor countries including the UK, is overwhelming: whether it’s the plethora of videos on social media of armed Hamas terrorists directing aid lorries and shooting at ordinary Palestinians, or the testimony given at the UN Security Council by former hostage Eli Sharabi, who said he saw terrorists steal UN aid and “eat like kings”. Indeed, there’s more: a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal noted that Hamas has “pilfered aid” and even the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has criticised “the looting and theft carried out by criminal gangs targeting warehouses and storage facilities of humanitarian aid [in Gaza]”.

It is for this reason that we have collaborated with American companies to improve the mechanism for aid delivery in Gaza. A new framework where the real loser becomes Hamas and not the Palestinian people. As we continue the facilitation of hundreds of trucks of aid, in a few days, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) will be operational and will be able to deliver aid to the Gazans who actually need it, bypassing Hamas and organisations that have been compromised, like UNRWA. The GHF will provide aid directly to Palestinian families. Alongside the US, we have been trying to find solutions to this fundamental issue so that Palestinians who need aid, get it. We fully support this plan and hope the UK, and others, will do too.

In the UK, we see an ally that successfully defeated Nazism in its ultimate fight against evil during the Second World War. The war took time and the British had to make many difficult decisions. Indeed, the civilian death toll in Nazi Germany was significant, notably in Dresden and Berlin. Israel today faces that very same evil and yet we are going to great lengths in order to minimise civilian casualties, warning them before attacks, making phone calls, dropping leaflets and sending text messages, notifying Gazans of specific areas to avoid. But we are fighting against a terror entity that uses civilians as human shields and hides behind them.

No one seems to ask: what was Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar doing in a tunnel underneath a hospital? Or what was the architect of the October 7 massacre, Mohammed Deif, doing in the designated humanitarian zone? I’d suggest that these are pertinent questions that the whole international community, journalists and politicians alike must be asking. Every innocent loss of life is a tragedy, but this tragedy was created and orchestrated by Hamas. Rightly, the Allied victory over Nazism is viewed as an historic example of good overcoming evil. We too have no choice but to defeat that evil once again.

Tzipi Hotovely is Israel’s Ambassador to the UK