October 7 Offered a Stark Choice Between Good and Evil
One year ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists swarmed across the border from Gaza in a stunning and bloody attack on southern Israel. Roughly 1,200 people were killed, the vast majority civilians. The attack set off a still-escalating conflict that raises questions about how far people can go to defend themselves and what constitutes legitimate targets for military strikes. But it also posed a stark choice between good and evil, innocents and terrorists—and some people around the world are picking the wrong side.
That murderous attacks on unsuspecting civilians and the kidnapping of hundreds of them—some still in captivity—constitute unjustifiable acts of terrorism is beyond question. Surprisingly, though, there’s no generally accepted definition of terrorism, because governments like to keep the term vague so it doesn’t encompass their own actions and perhaps so it can be applied to domestic political opponents.
Terrorism Means Targeting Civilians
Decades ago, in a class taught by a retired U.S diplomat who worked for years in the Middle East, I was told the best way to distinguish terrorism from military action is that terrorism deliberately targets civilians rather than government officials or military personnel. That squares with a 2004 report by the office of the U.N. Secretary General that framed terrorism as “any action ‘intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.'”
This doesn’t mean that purely military action is necessarily justified—whether it’s right or wrong depends on the rationale. But when civilians are the main target, there’s no need to consider the cause; that’s terrorism, it’s evil, and it’s time to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
October 7, When Mostly Civilians Suffered
On October 7, the attack began with a barrage of thousands of rockets launched from Gaza into Israel. Then approximately 1,500 terrorists in the employ of Hamas, an Iran proxy which runs Gaza, and its allies breached the border wall or bypassed it by paraglider and motorboat. About 1,200 people died at the hands of the terrorists by guns, bombs, rape and sexual torture, blades, and fire, especially among residents of nearby kibbutzes and attendees at the Supernova music festival.
“Authorities have identified a total of 274 soldiers and 859 non-soldiers killed during the brutal assault,” the Times of Israel reported last December. Removing police and security guards from the total still “leaves a figure of 764 civilians,” the Times added.
“The assault dwarfs all other mass murders of Israeli civilians,” The Economist noted. “The last time before October 7th that this many Jews were murdered on a single day was during the Holocaust.”
Not immediately killed were hundreds of hostages seized by Hamas and its partners. Some have since been released in exchange for concessions, and some have been rescued. Others have been murdered in captivity. A few have been held for a year and are hopefully still alive, including four America
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