Sean Rego ’26
Opinions Editor
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
Free from what? From whom? And by what means? These are the questions which I continually plead Hamas-sympathizers and Palestine-supporters to ask themselves. On Saturday, I think those questions become more relevant than ever. The Islamic Republic of Iran, in an unprecedented move, sent hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles with the intention to bomb the Israeli homeland, in what they call an appropriate response to Israel’s April 1 attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus. The Israelis, with help from America, Great Britain, and Jordan, were able to intercept 99% of Iran’s concerning attack. In a sense, this was an expected victory for this little democracy, but it speaks to that larger, more sobering image of the many threats faced by Israel. Whether it be from Hezbollah in the North, Hamas in the Southwest, the Palestinian Authority and Iran in the East, Israel is surrounded by enemies.
So are these groups going to be the means by which Palestine is freed? Will it be by the threatening force of a semi-fascist dictatorship, one that lusts for the downfall of the West? Will it be by the Hamas terrorists, who still refuse to return innocent hostages and continue to glorify the death of Jews and Westerners? Or maybe, for more fantastical supporters, will it be by the reckless help of the Russians, Chinese, and rest of the authoritarian East? These are the people upon whom one would have to rely if one supports current “river to the sea” politics. None of these, however, stand for freedom.
It is concerning that many would rather see a halt to the neutralization of Hamas, even if it meant the further jeopardization of Israel, instead of a terrorist-free Levant. I cannot agree with such reasoning. The Gaza Strip must be cleared of terrorism, and to do that, every city must be wiped of Hamas– including Rafah. Yet many are resisting this necessary operation, calling a part of the genocide against Palestinians, which is absurd. Of course, I understand the concern of civilians, as does the IDF largely, but Israel is already doing her utmost as it is to protect neutral non-combattants. To ask Israel to stop is to put her own citizens at risk once more (and to prolong Palestinian suffering under Hamas rule).
Furthermore, I would argue that even if Israel were not attempting to completely protect Palestinian civilians, historically speaking, that would not warrant calling it a genocide. I’ll once again ask a question from another article that I’ve written: was the Allied bombings and invasion of the Third Reich a genocide against Germans? How about the Union’s march through Confederate Georgia– was that a genocide too? Certainly not; these military operations were necessities in defeating an enemy, just as the future invasion of Rafah will be. Israeli wartime cabinet member Benny Gantz put it aptly when he said that “ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80 percent of the fire.” Indeed, to stop now would spell certain calamity for an already troubled Israel.
Iran wants this war to drag out. If Israel can be bogged down in Gaza, blocked by international concern, then it becomes evermore likely that something will go awry in her security or military operations. If that happens, it is very possible to have another frenzy of diplomatic shifts or realignment, most worryingly in favor of carving up the little democracy. If Iran can distract the world, then all the more power to them at home and abroad. Do we really want this? If you don’t care about Israel, at least care about the fact that Iran is an authoritarian regime that supports Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine and Assad’s control over Syria. We certainly do not want that cadre to gain a monopoly over the Middle East.
There is no such simplicity as freeing the “river to the sea,” not in the sense that Palestine-supporters want anyway. The Middle East is growing more tense. It is filled with horrific autocracies, theocracies and fundamentalist terror-states. Injustices are committed on all sides. Really, we haven’t many choices when it comes to friends or people whom we can support, but we must be practical and realize that only one country truly rises above the rest in terms of our values. Israel is tiny and flawed, but she is the best hope we have in the region, and she currently is on the brink of a war for her very survival. Hamas proved that on October 7 and Iran reaffirmed it on April 13. America, Great Britain and the rest of the West don’t need to get involved militarily, but it is our duty (at least in my opinion) to rally on Israel in her campaigns, to champion her to fight the best and most carefully as possible, and ultimately to remind the despots of the Middle East that the West must win. By God, we shall.
Featured Image Courtesy of Dreamstime
Copy edited by Lilly Baumfeld
The Spire 
Thank you for writing this. It’s refreshing to see someone our age stand up for Jews and Israel at a time when spreading antisemitic tropes is popular among our generation. Jews being attacked by “protesters,” standards for Jews that they would hold no one else to. Even though Israel goes far beyond international law, it’ll never be enough. It’ll never be enough until they see millions of Jewish Israelis dead. Simple co-existence is not enough for them. It never was.
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Jewish person here. speak for yourself. nobody with any sense is thankful for people that stand up for a war that left 35,000 dead for the sake of eliminating a group that’s Israel’s fault it exists at all. People that call for an end to this are not anti semitic. If anything I thank them for not standing for the same type of dehumanization wanton slaughter and opportunistic racism that targeted Jewish people first, and are being used to target Palestinians now.
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You are absolutely clueless and your logic makes no sense. What is happening in Gaza is unquestionably a genocide. It is the ethnic cleansing of a population that has been forced into an apartheid state by the settler colonial Israeli regime. You cannot deny this. This article is absolutely spewing with white supremacy from the name of the article alone. You should be ashamed of yourself, and whoever let this get published should be ashamed as well.
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I do not think it prudent to classify every military operation a genocide, as I have pointed out in multiple articles; a war with death is always a tragedy. Genocide is a horrific act that intends to kill off an ethnicity/race/religion etc. We must not mix these two things with Israel, which is trying to neutralize Hamas and continues to urge Palestinian civilians to stay away from active areas and to use humanitarian corridors during pauses. This does not stipulate a genocide. That being said Hamas of course is not very keen on limiting civilian murder, considering they build tunnels under schools and attack hospitals.
Also, would remind the commenter that the case in the ICJ is not particularly promising and seems to be back largely by a concerning amount of authoritarian dictatorships (like Iran, Syria and Venezuela). This case seems spurred more by political opportunity than by actual care for the Palestinian or Israeli people.
The conflation of apartheid with Israel, a modern democracy that guarantees the rights of all her citizens, be they Arab, Jewish or other is truly some mental gymnastics for which I have few words (and in fact a little bit of admiration). No where else in the Middle East could we hold this conversation with certainty for our rights and rule of law. I dare say that the use of the term apartheid even belittles the history of the struggle against it in South Africa, an actual case of white supremacy. Respectfully, I hope you can realize that.
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bro did NOT try to claim israel is *HOLDING BACK*
how do you explain the defense minister saying the emphasis of bombing campains is on “damage rather than accuracy”?
what about the IDF official who vowed to turn gaza into a “city of tents”? https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/city-of-tents-israeli-defence-official-vows-every-building-in-gaza-will-be-destroyed-in-ground-manoeuvre/news-story/203242e24af1dd4757e0250001e7ed8a
what about when the minister of social equity said she was “proud of the ruins in gaza”?
what about the israeli kill zones, whom anyone who crosses is shot?
what about the three hostages waving white flags that the IDF shot?
israel is bar none the most trigger happy army of the 21st century. literally step off.
also, let’s not ignore that israel created hamas. Ahmed yassin was only motivated to create the group because his vilage was ethnically cleansed in 1948, and the cofounder only joined him because he witnessed his uncle shot in front of him in the khan younis massacre.
Please stop the flag-humping, respectfully.
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also, please refer to israel’s nation state bill.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-bill-explained-apartheid-netanyahu-democracy
“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
there was also the time where netanyahu tweeted “israel is not a state for all its citizens”
idk, sounds prettyyyyy apartheid-y to me.
and before you say it was a “symbolic law”, an addenum was motioned to change the language of the bill from “jewish people” to “everyone” which was shot down on the grounds of the following:
“the bill includes several articles that are meant to alter the character of the State of Israel from the nation-state of the Jewish people to a state in which there is equal status from the point of view of nationality for Jews and Arabs.”
i reiterate: step off.
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Israel is holding back (as they well should).
Your second two claims are presumably paraphrases from the Defense Ministry at the very beginning of the war, during which both speakers made it clear that they were talking about storming Hamas strongholds within Gaza and eliminating them as quick as possible. Again, this is in reference to the fact that Hamas literally tunnels underneath and within almost every building in the Gaza Strip.
The 3rd claim is from politician May Golan, who again, is talking about Hamas in the press interview and is reminding the world why Israel invaded Gaza– in response to murdering terrorists, who (once again) hide underneath civilian buildings.
In regards to the shooting of 3 hostages by the IDF (as well as the aid truck incident, for that matter), the IDF and Israeli government apologized and noted the tragedies as logistical errors that should’ve never happened.
“what about the israeli kill zones, whom anyone who crosses is shot?” — that is what we call an active shooting zone or battlefield, a thing found in every modern war, but which the IDF and Israeli government have continually urged civilians and non-combattants to avoid.
Also, about the creation of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin was a byproduct of the 1948 War, before which it was agreed that British Palestine would be shared by Israel, Jordan and Palestine, but ultimately was rejected by the Arab states, which then invaded the newly born state of Israel. Either way, the 1948 War does not justify Yassin’s ideology of hate and Hamas’s chants of death to Israel, annihilation of all jews and glory to Islam.
And finally, the Nation-State Law. Yes this in fact is a symbolic law, which cements Israel’s identity as a country reborn in the wake of the Holocaust. There are over a dozen Arab states that define themselves as Arab nations, yet I assume you haven’t a problem with that. Israel is the only Jewish state defined as Jewish, and even though she guarantees the rights of Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, you label the country “apartheid-y.” Also, while it’s totally fine to quote Vox, I’d suggest reading more into the actual legislation and politics behind it, which emphasizes that langue rights will and are preserved in Israel. Furthermore, the Israeli Supreme Court has reaffirmed that all protections for all Israelis are not changed by the 2018 law. It is quite literally mostly a powerful symbolic law to remind everyone of the history of Israel.
also, in the same tweet, Netanyahu literally says “As you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us”
All in all, I don’t think I am “flag humping” if I point out that Israel is a democracy and in fact not a genocidal apartheid. Israel is far from perfect, but quite a bit better than you may (or the despotic regimes around it) make it out to be.
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No, dude, they’re really not.
Im sorry but this is straight up fed politics. You can hide behind “but the TUNNELS” all you want but at the end of the day it’s completely undeniable that this is a problem of Israel’s creation due to their unequal treatment of people both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, where there is little Hamas presence but Palestinians are still treated as second-class.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/16/israel the fact that long before October Israeli blockades have had the stated goal of “putting the Palestinians on a diet” may interest you. Notice how they didn’t say Hamas. Palestinians. Also, there’s the little factoid that 97% of water in Gaza Is undrinkable. I suppose you’ll also say this was justified, again, because of Hamas, the problem Israel invented and now whines about? I know you’re smart enough to see these are repeated governmental talking points that don’t align with reality. I hope at least. You can have problems with Hamas, but break out of the western exceptionalism for once in your life and see that it is precisely “the west” to blame for this. Please, take one sociology class. Just one.
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Addenum since I didn’t see you mention the world kitchen incident: saying “i’m sorry” won’t bring those innocent people back, especially when their deaths are a result of israel’s, again, hyper trigger-happy practices (if they weren’t, then why did they still carry out the strike in spite of being informed of the trucks’ movement?). If they were “sorry”, why were the military officials responsible simply fired instead of being, you know, prosecuted or facing any punishment at all? there’s no justifying a war crime with an “i’m sorry”, especially if it tracks with previous behavior.
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“was the Allied bombings and invasion of the Third Reich a genocide against Germans? How about the Union’s march through Confederate Georgia– was that a genocide too?”
I don’t know, did Roosevelt and Lincoln ask the soldiers to remember amalek? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/
1 Samuel 15:3: Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys
Where’d you get that poorly thought-out checkmate from, PragerU?
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I would politely remind you not to forget that Lincoln oversaw the “Scorched Earth” policy that decimated Georgia and was meant to cripple Confederate morale.
Roosevelt likewise is not without his sobering military affairs. Surely, you’ve heard of the bombings of Dresden, Hamburg Tokyo, and not to mention, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in which hundreds of thousands of civilians perished)?
As for the video linked within the Mother Jones article, the Amalek is indeed mentioned by Netanyahu– although it is unclear if he is referencing the passage in Samuel (not Deuteronomy)– and minutes later, he is urging Palestinians to move southward to avoid the active war zone, which undermines the notion that this is a call for wanton destruction and suggests he was actually referencing the story of the Amalekites to remind Israel of its long history of surviving prolonged enemy attacks.
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i’m so glad you mentioned that because hiroshima and nagasaki were both also unneccessary military operations with the sole goal of sticking it to the commies.
as per MacArthur (you may know him as the man who wanted to turn north korea into a sea of irradiated cobalt) https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs#:~:text=MacArthur%20thought%20the%20use%20of,gladly%20I%20have%20no%20doubt.”
in addition, how merciful of him to tell the gazans to move south into the city he’s now planning to invade, lay off the hasbara dog 😭
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with that acknowledged, you gloss over the goal of these shows of force. This war, unlike the show of strength of hiroshima and the punishment of the march through georgia, has something the others miss: total dehumanization of the enemy, and the glorification of not just war but slaughter. Referring to the enemy as “human animals”, completely ready to “go all the way” and take the “gloves off”, are among just the examples I could give off the top of my head. https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-the-gloves-are-off/ (who sometimes, the only crime of these “animals” was stepping into an arbitrary line, see above for source).
at least america gave even a half-hearted apology for internment, instead of reacting to allegations by saying “hague shmague” like a 2 year old, as Ben-Gvir did. This dehumanization is not only of no concern to israel, they continue to double down and cheer it on. No wonder 40% of israelis think the IDF should be using more force, despite more bombs being dropped in less than a week of the war than in afghanistan over a period of a year.
you must at least acknowledge israel’s intentions are not pure, and are absolutely of slaughter and dehumanization of an enemy they created, civilians be damned. Otherwise, you need to stop getting your politics from the CIA.
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I mean, I actually agree with you in some regard… the nuclearization of two cities and the even more deadly fire bombing of others were horrific. As you put it though, they were tragic necessities in order to defeat the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich. And while every death is a tragedy, you clearly understand that we must put lives at risk in order to save lives sometimes. The neutralization of Hamas comes at a price, which the terrorists are more than glad to hike up (ie hide in hospitals and schools). The situation in Gaza is sad, but I fail to see how else terrorism is supposed to be stopped with practically the least amount of death possible. All this said, I am a little confused as to why you tried to pull a “gotcha” with the amalek stuff in reference to Lincoln and Roosevelt if you already clearly know well of their respective strategies.
“in addition, how merciful of him to tell the gazans to move south into the city he’s now planning to invade, lay off the hasbara dog”
It isn’t merciful, it’s just a human decency for the Israelis to urge them to move out of the way, which is more (believe it or not) than others have done in modern times.
“…has something the others miss: total dehumanization of the enemy, and the glorification of not just war but slaughter.” Didn’t you just say that MacArthur (who was in charge of the pacific theater) wanted to turn North Korea into a sea of irradiated cobalt? I’m certain there was other examples of strong language in both cases. And while I personal don’t fancy such vitriolic language, we are talking about terrorists here. Hamas has not only killed innocent civilians, beheaded babies and sexually assaulted women, but they recorded it, glorified it, and then took hundreds of hostages (whom they still refuse to give up). If that’s not enough, think about what Hamas has done for Palestinians— nothing good. They’ve had two decades in the Strip and they haven’t succeeded it uplifted Gazans but instead tunneling under their schools and homes. It would be wrong to moralize their horrific actions so readily in the face of Israeli peril. I hope you can understand why people refer to these terrorists as animalistic and won’t go easy on them.
I am not very familiar with Ben Gvir, but the case in the ICJ is currently being propped up by a few countries (the majority of which are not liberal democracies by any means), so I think its inappropriate to call an act of dehumanization to question the current case’s standing.
As you have stated, 40% of Israelis supported greater action in Gaza. Likewise, Americans support Israel’s right to defend herself (and to exact a war in Gaza against Hamas). Of course, people have their concerns, but once again we must fundamentally remember the alternative for countries like Israel. One cannot negotiate with terrorists, as Hamas reaffirms, and they must be reprimanded.
Once more, I agree with you; Israel’s intentions are not fully pure and cheery. No nation is in such a dreamy position, and to believe otherwise is not prudent. However, to compare the Hamas’ morality (or lack there of) with that of Israel and to conclude that they are even close to equal is wrong. Israel is not perfect, but she is far better and more just than anywhere else in the Middle East. Her campaigns are messy and tragic, and the death of everyone is sad, but to use that as an excuse to let terrorists to get away is a luxury the Israelis (or frankly, the Palestinians) can’t afford.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/idf-says-wont-back-up-beheaded-babies-disrespectful-2023-10
for christ’s sake, hamas did not decapitate babies. This is a made-up story they’re feeding you to support war. And, no, they were not “tragic necessities”. No part of dropping the atom bomb was a necessity, which was apart of my argument. And the way to stop hamas is to acknowledge that their existence is the fault of Israel’s continued abuses, and creating an example out of gaza with ruins and innocent carcasses is not going to decrease terrorism, it is going to raise it exponentially. This was quite literally the folly of the war on afghanistan. I’m absolutely in agreement that hamas is bad for palestinians, but Israel is objectively the worse evil for palestinians. This is the same reason that only 12% of palestinians who voted for hamas did so out of sympathy with their charter, but also why so many support october 7th: they recognize both. The simple “alternative” for israel is literally to just stop being evil, and dissolve the reason such hatred is prevalent.
Second, the reason I brought this up as a “gotcha” is that the difference is MacArthur was fired for his obviously deranged opinion, and Yoav Gallant is cheered on and still retains his position.
And, mind you, we’re not talking about “terrorists”. The median age in gaza is 18. We are talking about children whipped into violence by intergenerational trauma.
Finally, there is absolutely no way you view if a country is a “liberal democracy” as the be all end all to whether or not they’re worth listening to. If not, that explains the hasbara addiction. Whether or not you’re allowed to perform lip service in a country does not determine whether or not it is a “valid” nation. Good opinions can come from bad nations. My sympathies don’t align with every country on the ICJ, to be sure, but put simply, the behavior of israel has been untenable.
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