The Hypocrisy of Condemnation

Why Israel's Response to October 7 Is Mild by Historical Standards

Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which resulted in the brutal murder of over 1,200 civilians, the rape and torture of others, and the abduction of more than 250 hostages, international condemnations has continued to grow and intensify against Israel. Countries across the world, including authoritarian regimes, have accused Israel of disproportionate force, war crimes, and even genocide. In the United States, while the federal government has remained largely supportive of Israel, prominent voices within media, academia, and political factions have echoed these accusations. This self-righteous posturing ignores the fact that faced with an existential threat on the scale of October 7, proportionally equivalent to multiple 9/11s for a small nation like Israel, virtually every country in modern history has responded with overwhelming severity, often deliberately targeting or accepting massive civilian casualties as collateral in pursuit of security.

The attack was not a conventional military incursion but a premeditated terrorist assault by Hamas and allied groups, involving crimes against humanity such as summary executions and sexual violence. Israel's subsequent operations in Gaza, aimed at dismantling Hamas's military infrastructure, have undeniably caused civilian suffering, but they occur in a context where the enemy embeds itself among non-combatants, making distinction nearly impossible. Yet, anti-Israel groups overlook how other nations, when similarly provoked, unleashed responses that dwarf Israel's in scale and brutality, often against clearly identifiable civilian populations without the complicating factors of blended combatants.

Allied Responses in World War II

World War II provides stark illustrations of how democratic nations, fearing infiltration or seeking retribution, targeted entire ethnic groups and civilian centers. The United States' reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which killed about 2,400 Americans, mirrors the shock Israel felt after October 7. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, authorizing the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. These individuals, including women and children, were uprooted from their homes on the West Coast, stripped of property, and confined in remote camps under harsh conditions, all based on unsubstantiated fears of espionage and sabotage. No evidence of widespread disloyalty emerged, yet the policy persisted until 1944, with lasting economic and psychological devastation.

Canada followed suit, invoking the War Measures Act to intern approximately 22,000 Japanese Canadians, over 90% of the community's population, primarily from British Columbia. Families were separated, properties confiscated and sold, and internees subjected to forced labor and restrictions that extended until 1949, long after the war ended. This was not a targeted operation against combatants but a blanket assault on an ethnic minority deemed a potential fifth column.

Across the Atlantic, Britain and France adopted similar measures against "enemy aliens." In Britain, following the fall of France in 1940 and amid invasion fears, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the mass internment of around 28,000 individuals from Axis nations, including Germans, Austrians, Italians, and even Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Camps on the Isle of Man and elsewhere held detainees indefinitely without trial, with some deported to Canada or Australia under brutal conditions, such as aboard the HMT Dunera. After Japan's entry into the war, about 1,800 Japanese nationals in the UK faced similar treatment.

France, upon declaring war on Germany in 1939, interned nationals from enemy countries, including around 4,000 German Jews and anti-Nazi refugees, in camps like Gurs and Les Milles. Overcrowding, forced labor, and xenophobia defined these facilities, which later under Vichy France became transit points for deportations to Nazi death camps, resulting in thousands more deaths.

These internments pale, however, beside the Allies' aerial campaigns, which deliberately targeted civilian morale through area bombing. The U.S. firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, unleashed over 1,600 tons of incendiaries, creating a firestorm that killed an estimated 100,000 civilians and destroyed 16 square miles of the city. This single raid exceeded the immediate death toll of Hiroshima, yet it was part of a broader strategy that included dozens of similar attacks on Japanese cities, justified as necessary to break enemy resistance.

Similarly, the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 involved over 1,200 British and American bombers dropping high-explosive and incendiary bombs, obliterating 1,600 acres of the city center and killing up to 25,000 people, mostly civilians. The raid, intended to disrupt German communications and aid the Soviet advance, created a firestorm that asphyxiated and incinerated residents in shelters. Critics at the time, including some Allied leaders, questioned its necessity, but it proceeded as part of a policy that accepted massive civilian losses.

The Soviet Union, advancing into Germany in 1944-1945, committed widespread atrocities against civilians as retribution for Nazi crimes. Red Army soldiers engaged in mass rapes, looting, and killings, with estimates of up to 2 million German women raped and tens of thousands of civilians murdered or driven to suicide. In East Prussia and Berlin, entire villages were razed, and forced labor deported hundreds of thousands of Germans to the USSR, where many perished. These actions were not incidental but systematic, fueled by propaganda and a desire for vengeance.

In each case, these nations, now among Israel's critics, responded to attacks or threats by sweeping up civilians en masse or bombing them indiscriminately, without the fog of war created by an enemy that hides among its own people.

Post-WWII and Contemporary Examples

The pattern continued after 1945, as empires and superpowers confronted insurgencies or terrorist threats with overwhelming force against civilian populations. Britain's conduct during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) set an early precedent for concentration camps as a tool of counterinsurgency. Facing guerrilla warfare from Boer fighters, British forces implemented a scorched-earth policy, destroying 30,000 farms and herding over 200,000 Boer women, children, and black Africans into camps. Conditions were abysmal: disease, starvation, and overcrowding led to the deaths of about 28,000 Boers, mostly women and children, and an estimated 20,000 black Africans. This was not collateral damage but a deliberate strategy to deny support to combatants.

France's war in Algeria (1954-1962) escalated this brutality. Responding to the National Liberation Front's (FLN) independence struggle, which included terrorist attacks on French settlers, France deployed over 400,000 troops and employed torture, forced relocations, and aerial bombings. Civilian casualties numbered between 300,000 and 1.5 million Algerians, including massacres like the one at Sétif in 1945, where up to 45,000 were killed in reprisals. French forces razed villages, used napalm, and interned hundreds of thousands in "regroupment centers," blending counterinsurgency with colonial repression.

Russia's wars in Chechnya (1994-1996 and 1999-2009) offer a modern parallel to Israel's Gaza challenges, but with far greater indiscrimination. After Chechen separatists launched attacks, including the 2004 Beslan school siege that killed over 330 hostages (half children), Russian forces leveled Grozny with artillery and airstrikes, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Estimates place total civilian deaths at 50,000-100,000, with widespread reports of filtration camps, torture, and disappearances. Unlike Israel, Russia faced no international sanctions comparable to today's scrutiny.

The United States' post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, triggered by an attack killing nearly 3,000 civilians, resulted in direct and indirect civilian deaths estimated at 900,000 across multiple countries, with some reports suggesting up to 4.5 million when including war-related famine and disease. Operations involved drone strikes, night raids, and invasions that displaced millions, often with minimal accountability for civilian casualties.

China's ongoing response to Uyghur separatism in Xinjiang involves mass internment of over 1 million Muslims in "re-education" camps since 2017, justified as counterterrorism measures against perceived threats. Detainees face forced labor, sterilization, and cultural erasure, with reports of torture and deaths in custody. This systematic campaign targets an entire ethnic group, far beyond any specific attack.

Turkey's actions during World War I against Armenians, amid fears of collaboration with Russia, led to the deportation and massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in what is widely recognized as genocide. Death marches, starvation, and killings were orchestrated by the Ottoman government, decimating the population.

These cases show nations responding to threats, real or perceived, with policies that deliberately harmed civilians on a massive scale, often without the embedded enemy complicating factors Israel confronts.

The Unique Challenges of Israel's Fight

Israel's situation is distinct because Hamas, motivated by a religious ideology calling for jihad against Jews, deliberately erases the line between civilians and combatants. Hamas's charter and leaders invoke Islamic texts to justify the destruction of Israel, framing the conflict as a holy war rather than a territorial dispute. This religious hatred manifests in tactics like using human shields: Hamas embeds rocket launchers in schools, hospitals, and mosques, forcing Israel into impossible choices, which aims to maximize Palestinian casualties for propaganda.

In this environment, distinguishing civilians is Herculean. Hamas fighters wear civilian clothes, operate from tunnels under homes, and use ambulances for transport. Israel's warnings via leaflets, calls, and roof-knocking contrast with historical precedents where no such efforts were made. Yet, the religious dimension, Hamas's calls for eternal jihad against "infidels", ensures no negotiation ends the threat, unlike conventional wars.

The war against Israel did not begin on October 7, 2023. It began in 1948, when five Arab armies launched a coordinated invasion to destroy the new Jewish state before it could take root. That goal has never fully disappeared; it has simply shifted tactics, from conventional warfare to asymmetric insurgency, from state-led offensives to proxy militias, and now to ideological networks driven by religious absolutism. Each round of violence is treated in isolation, but Israel’s experience is one of prolonged, existential siege. This context matters. Israel is not engaged in a campaign of conquest or expansion. It is defending its population, its cities, its children, its future, against a threat that is not only military but civilizational. And it does so as a state born in the shadow of genocide. A nation rebuilt by survivors of the Holocaust cannot afford to treat “never again” as merely a historical slogan. For Israel, it is a practical and moral imperative, etched not just in memory, but in policy.

In that light, the growing international condemnations appear less like moral clarity and more like selective amnesia. The reality is that Israel faces more pressures than that have historically driven other nations to far more indiscriminate and devastating actions. Yet Israel is expected to uphold a standard of restraint few others have met, and to do so alone.