Is this how you end a war?
On Saturday, The Times of Israel reported U.S. forces made the first airdrop of supplies over the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip — roughly 38,000 meals for the people in the place that elected the terrorist organization that launched the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
U.S. Central Command said it and the Jordanian Air Force “conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Gaza … to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict.”
United States Central Command and Royal Jordanian Air Force Conduct Combined Airdrops of Humanitarian Aid Into Gaza
U.S. Central Command and the Royal Jordanian Air Force conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Gaza on March 2, 2024, between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m.… pic.twitter.com/yiJoQTWeZW
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 2, 2024
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Nor was this going to be the last airdrop, with CENTCOM saying it was “part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes.”
U.S. officials, speaking to the Times of Israel on condition of anonymity, stressed that they wanted Israel to open up land borders to Gaza in order to start a more sustained flow of aid.
“None of these — maritime corridors, airdrops — are an alternative to the fundamental need to move assistance through as many land crossings as possible. That’s the most efficient way to get aid in at scale,” the official said.
This came after an announcement by President Joe Biden on Friday that the United States would begin the airdrops after at least 115 Palestinians were killed in fighting, The Associated Press reported.
Does providing relief rations just make it harder to stamp out Hamas?
“I think I would just say that the fact that today’s airdrop was successful is an important test case to show that we can do this again in the coming days and weeks successfully,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters, according to a White House transcript.
“And we — our colleagues at DOD are planning additional drops. But nothing further to share there in terms of timing.
“I think, really, just to go back to what I said at the beginning, the fact that we are exploring every avenue, every channel, to get assistance into Gaza really just, I think, goes to speak to how dire and desperate the situation is there.”
This sounds fantastic — until you realize that this sort of humanitarian “justice” is the kind of thing that will only prolong the conflict by essentially aiding those complicit in the attack.
And yes, they were complicit. No matter what people might say about the 2006 Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections that ended up bringing Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip and keeping power there for 17 years, it’s worth noting that people still voted for a terrorist organization because they were dissatisfied with the more moderate (but also more corrupt, and no friend of peace, to boot) Fatah faction of the authority.
Forty-four percent of the vote went for Hamas in that election, according to The Washington Post. And while they might not want the terror organization in power now, it’s not as if there were spontaneous demonstrations against the Oct. 7 terror attacks which shocked the world. If Hamas were to be eliminated or somehow electorally dislodged, that doesn’t mean that the extremism that birthed the barbarian movement and which has kept it alive will extinguish itself. If anything, given its foreign support, it’s entirely likely that a Hamas 2.0 would be set up the moment something like that happened.
Furthermore, a willy-nilly airdrop of aid is a remarkably poor idea, considering Hamas’ tendency to, ahem, requisition aid for itself and distribute it to the people, painting itself as the good guys while taking a cut.
Thus, as tragic as it might seem for so-called innocent civilians to be caught in the crossfire, this is a choice they made electorally and that Hamas has made for them. There’s nothing to indicate they wouldn’t make a choice to support extremism again.
Parachuting tens of thousands of meals in the middle of a war under the misapprehension that it helps wholly innocent people in service of some chimerical two-state solution that the administration keeps pushing — even though Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are mortal enemies and neither has proven to be able to run a functional state in any way, shape or form — is ridiculous.
It’s a slap in the face to the Israeli forces who have already been straitjacketed by the same Biden people who want to resume aid shipments via land. It also completely misapprehends what’s at stake here and what will save lives.
The sooner this conflict is over, the better. However, the conflict ending doesn’t involve a premature cease-fire or humanitarian aid for a people who share the complicity in what their government has wrought.
Hamas, its allies and its apologists must be eradicated, first through force and then through de-radicalization as part of a hard reset in the region. Period. If this means making the people who live in Gaza realize the pain and misery they’re in for if they persist in this complicity, that’s what it takes — not airdrops, not aimless aid, not any of that.
Unfortunately, the administration seems to believe this is something that can be patched up easily, starting with meals on parachutes. If that doesn’t tell you how we got here in the first place, I don’t know what will.
