The latest moral confusion about the Hamas/Gaza problem is whether or not to continue bombing.  The plea is that civilians are innocent and must be spared.  A mainstream TV broadcast showed a wide-eyed Gaza man saying, “I was as surprised as the Israelis by the October 7 attack.  So why punish me with bombing?”

This is a message for you, Mr. Average Gazan, and any other Gazan like you.  Here’s why Gaza is still being bombed.

First of all, it’s hard to know if you are telling the truth.  The terrorists planning the attack acted for two years as if they were peaceful, all the while stockpiling weapons.  Taqiyyah, or lying to your enemies, is endorsed in the Koran (3:28) and in other Muslim writings.  An apparent peacemaker, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, who was responsible for the Gilad prisoner exchange, turned out to be totally treacherous.  While fooling the leftist chump he bargained with, Hamad talked about negotiating peace.  Now Hamad shows his true colors, vowing to repeat the October 7 massacre over and over until Israel is eliminated, as Caroline Glick points out.

Also, Mr. Ordinary Gazan, although you may not have known the exact date of the latest massacre, all Hamas has been screaming about is death to Israel from the start.  So don’t play innocent.

Secondly, you have been receiving food, water, electricity, and medicine mostly from Israel, your so-called oppressor.  Actually, Israel has been your daddy, and you have let yourself live like a ward of the state — a supremely ungrateful ward.  When Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, it left you orchards and sophisticated greenhouses, which produced income for the Jews who developed them and could have for you, too.  But you tore them down out of spite.  You also could have developed your beautiful beaches into profitable resorts.  There was no Israeli “occupation” preventing your economic development, since Israel was not there.  But Hamas was, and you apparently accepted Hamas’s dictatorial, one-party control.

Wake up to how your Islamist leaders have been taking international money that was meant for you and using it for their own luxurious living as well as for secret armaments.  That is a big part of why you are poor.

Thirdly, Israel has offered peace to you on multiple occasions, but you preferred war, and a continuation of your hostile dependency.  Looking at this mess from a family systems dynamic, you are the deeply troubled child refusing to help himself, relying totally on others to support him, and staying emotionally and financially crippled, taking pride not in accomplishments, but in destruction.  Beyond that is your insane conviction that your host country must die, even as you bite the hand that feeds you.  Apparently, neither you nor the world has noticed yet how untenable your demands are.  You have successfully put up a smokescreen of self-pity and victimhood, which does nothing to help you getting well.

Playing the victim card right now, begging the world to make Israel stop the war, is a continuation of the smokescreen, giving Hamas more time to get strong and renew the attacks it has announced it will resume.

Fourthly, Gazans owe the world and especially Israelis an apology for all of the above.  You must declare that you reject Hamas’s goal to kill all the Jews and take over Israel and the world.  Tell the worldwide “hate Jews” movement yelling in support of you that it’s time for them to grow up, too.  If you, Mr. Average Gazan, really want the bombing to stop, you must cooperate with Israel and help the Israelis find Hamas operatives and weapons caches, and whatever else will help the Israeli war effort.

In short, Gazans must take full responsibility for their support of Hamas and do all they can to disable it.  Otherwise, Israel has no good reason to stop the bombing.  You, Mr. Average Gazan, have been given the benefit of the doubt as an innocent victim.  And you have shown you don’t deserve it.

Prove otherwise.  Work now with Israel to halt the war and then develop a peaceful way of life.  Or get bombed.  The choice is yours.

Will this happen?  Not very likely.  But it is the moral path forward.  Stating it can help you get clear on your need to take responsibility for yourself.  It can also help the guilt-ridden international community make a decision to no longer let themselves be manipulated by your endless irrationalities.

Madeline Brooks is a conservative and counter-jihad writer.  She can be reached at resistjihad@aol.com.

Image via Pxhere.