End game for Israel and America should be destroying Hamas and ending terrorism in Gaza

I remember watching the second plane fly into the World Trade Center. When the towers fell, so did my sense that America was invulnerable. Along with millions of my countrymen, I wondered what was coming next.

I recognize Israel’s reaction to Hamas’ violent attacks during the season of Jewish holidays. Terrorism has no righteous purpose, and we must never give it justification.

Noble causes don’t require slaughtering babies. Burning the elderly alive in their homes doesn’t open hearts and minds to a different point of view. Tossing a grenade into a bomb shelter packed with terrified civilians never wins an argument. Terrorism has but one objective: Fear.

Another view: I'm a Palestinian. I condemn Hamas and advocate for Israeli and Palestinian human rights.

The sheer brutality of Hamas shocks the conscience

Make no mistake, Hamas is a terrorist organization. The Islamist militant group took over the Gaza strip after defeating rival political party, Fatah, in 2006 elections. Fatah has renounced violence and governs the West Bank. Hamas has embraced terror as a tool and failed at anything that even approximates governing.

The sheer brutality of the Hamas attack shocks the conscience. Ideological zealots raped women and took hostages with glee. Their subsequent actions are no better. Grown men parade around with Israeli children as sub-human shields. Hamas attacked Israel solely to provoke Israel into a violent, inhumane response.

In a true coward's gambit, Hamas hopes the sacrifice of Palestinian lives will lure other anti-semitic groups into attacking the Jewish state from all sides. As the governing authority in Gaza, Hamas commits such unspeakable slaughter in hopes of igniting more of the same. No Palestinian or Israeli benefits.

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America should not ask Israel to stand down

Suggesting that Israel, in any way, bears responsibility for the attacks legitimizes terror itself. Israel’s defensive response will result in civilian casualties, but their blood too is at the hands of terrorists. Hamas has chosen to hide behind the innocent. Hamas has chosen to cower in shadow and tunnels. Hamas has chosen to take hundreds of hostages.

Israel must proceed methodically. Americans cannot and should not ask them to stand down because of Hamas’ tactics. We can no more ask them to stay justice than they could have asked us to make peace with Osama bin Laden.

At the same time, Israel must reject Hamas’ sinister bait. Rooting out and destroying Hamas cannot and should not involve a reckless disregard for Palestinian life. The 1 million children in Gaza, for example, didn’t mete out terror on the Israelis. Nevertheless, protecting those innocents must not fall on Israel alone.

Hamas doesn’t want one Palestinian to leave Gaza. Their death is critical to Hamas’ bid to rally anti-Israeli sentiment in the surrounding nations. At the same time, Israel is understandably blocking retreat from Gaza into Israel’s interior leaving the Rafah crossing into Egypt as the only option not under Israel’s direct control. Egypt tightly controls the gateway in an agreement with Israel and the European Union, and it too is presently closed.

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Palestinian civilians in Gaza are pawns to terrorists

Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan recognize the threat posed by Hamas. Egypt has fought jihadist Muslims in the Sinai Peninsula and has no interest in Hamas entering the country embedded in a chaotic mass migration out of Gaza. While Egypt may briefly open the Rafah crossing for certain foreign nationals and documented individuals, an open border will not happen. Most civilians in Gaza are indeed trapped.

None of these realities are lost on Hamas.

As Gaza residents squeeze south in response to Israel’s warnings, Hamas has created a tragic tinderbox they hope Israel will ignite. After more than a decade and a half of rule in Gaza, Hamas has managed to leave its people more isolated, impoverished, and far less likely to achieve the goal of statehood or true integration into Israel.

Recognizing the humanitarian nightmare of Gaza doesn’t require support for Hamas. If anything, it demands the terrorist organization’s destruction. Support for a Palestinian state does not need and is only harmed by acts of unmitigated terror. We must not allow Hamas and its apologists to use coherent policy positions about the future of Gaza and the West Bank to justify any acts of terrorism.

Cloaking Hamas’ butchering of the innocent with intellectual window dressings is complicity in the acts themselves. Criticize the Israeli government. Oppose the settlements in the West Bank. Support the Palestinian right to self-determination. As righteous as such perspectives may be, none of them justify and necessitate intentionally slaughtering civilians.

Just as Americans remember the ghastly images of 9/11, we should take in the horror of Hamas’ attacks. The blood, charred corpses, and wailing screams of families should haunt us. We must never concede such savagery as a legitimate policy tool. As al-Qaeda before it, Hamas’ terrorism promises victory and brings only death.

USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney who worked for conservative Republicans. He and his wife Justine are raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on X, formerly know as Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Israel-Hamas war: End game should be destroying Hamas terrorists