Israel Takes Responsibility. Who Else Does? All war is hell. Not all who wage it admit their mistakes. By Matthew Hennessey
The breaking-news alerts on your smartphone seldom tell the whole story. Journalists are masters of compression, and the alert is a direct line to readers’ eyeballs. No room for elegance. No space for slant. So instead of complexity you get the short version—the convenient take or the capsule commentary.
Usually that’s enough to get the gist in a busy world. But every once in a while you get more than you bargained for in a bubble notice. You get facts that go beyond the news and reveal a deeper truth.
“Breaking News,” bleated my iPhone Tuesday morning with an alert from the Journal. “Israel has taken responsibility for a strike that has killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu said it was unintentional.”
War is hell. Everyone knows that. Bullets don’t discriminate. No bomb is smarter than the person who dispatches it. When the skies are full of lead, accidents are bound to happen, and when they do, political spinmeisters step forward to deny, deflect, delay and distract.
Not here. Israel has taken responsibility. What a concept.
And what a contrast with its adversary. The only thing Hamas takes responsibility for is doing what it loves: spreading terror and delivering death. When a bomb goes off in a marketplace, it claims responsibility. When a crazed maniac knifes random people on a bus, it claims responsibility. But when the subject is its failure to give Gazans a better life, Hamas throws up its arms. It didn’t take responsibility for the lies it told about the misfired terrorist rocket that hit Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital in October, or for that matter for using the hospital as a command center. It doesn’t take responsibility for the human calamity it has unleashed on its people with the unspeakable atrocities of Oct. 7.
No. Hamas, in its rhetoric and propaganda, pushes all responsibility for the suffering of Gazans onto Israel—and not just Israel, onto Jews and Americans. Hamas is always innocent, always at the mercy of perfidious forces.
This performative helplessness allows Hamas to play the perpetual victim when, in fact, it is a murderous gang of dead-end losers. It intentionally killed 1,200 people in a single day. Hamas lusts for blood.
Not so Israel, a nation that stands for life, for hope, for freedom. Israel desires peace and has offered it to the Palestinians repeatedly, who always refuse. The offer stands.
Israel is engaged now, as always, in a fight for survival. Often lied about, Israel nevertheless respects the rules of war. It fights with precision and restrains its soldiers to protect the innocent. It provides food and aid to its enemy. It owns up to its mistakes.
The author of the news alert might not have intended to convey all that. Writing, like war making, is a business rife with unintended consequences. The ripples often outpace the pebble.
Yet here we are: “Israel takes responsibility.” You’ll never hear the same said of Hamas.
Mr. Hennessey is the Journal’s deputy editorial features editor.
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