Left-leaning UK public broadcaster Channel 4 gave airtime to the co-director of a Palestinian think tank—an interview that inadvertently exposed a deeper truth about Israel’s war on Hamas.
Yara Hawari, who helps lead the “policy network” Al Shabaka, was invited to comment on recent international criticism, as well as a nationwide protest and general strike against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to seize Gaza City.
Hawari, interviewed from Cyprus, made the now-standard allegation of genocide thrown around by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists. She told Channel 4:
I think it’s very clear that those protests are about how Netanyahu is conducting the war, not if the war should be happening in the first place …. Even by the slogans and by the speeches that are happening at these protests, it’s more about how Netanyahu is conducting the war,
For activists in the NGO and think-tank world, distinctions between different Israeli opinions are irrelevant. This reflects the reality of October 7, when many of those murdered by Hamas and its allies at home or at a music festival were themselves critics of Israeli policy, and in some cases had devoted their lives—however naively—to “peace.”
By faulting protesters for opposing the conduct of the war but not the war itself—the supposed genocide—Hawari accidentally underscored an observation previously made by EuropeanConservative.com: Israel’s war against Hamas and its allies is democracy in action. Three months into this conflict, we observed
Israel’s determined response to the genocidal assaults of October 7th demonstrates what it means when citizens with a stake in a democracy stand together in the face of an existential threat to their society. Israeli politics, as in many modern democracies, was bitterly divided before the Hamas massacres; the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu was widely unpopular. Those divisions have not disappeared. But they have been put aside as Israelis stand together to demand the defeat of Hamas and the return of their hostages.
In their eagerness to denounce Israel—and ignore the emerging rifts within Gaza—even the country’s opponents end up reinforcing the image of its resolve.
