Israel-Hamas war: Three times Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times’ foreign affairs columnist Thomas L Friedman compared India’s response to the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai to Israel’s retaliation to Hamas’ October 7 attacks and lauded the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to not retaliate. He said that India’s response was a “remarkable act of restraint”.
“Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable act of restraint,” he wrote in his opinion column dated October 29. To elaborate on the logic behind the decision, Friedman quoted then foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon’s book ‘Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy’.
Menon had written that to retaliate for the attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba, that resulted in the death of over 160 people in Mumbai, would have been “emotionally satisfying” but concentrating on “diplomatic, covert and other means was the right one for that time and place”.
The outrageousness of the terror attacks would have been lost had India retaliated, Menon had written in his book, adding that a retaliation would have just been seen by the world as another India-Pakistan dust-up. India’s retaliation would have united Pakistanis, and an eventual war would have costs that would have set back the progress made by the Indian economy.
While making a distinction between the 26/11 attacks in India and Hamas’ attack on Israel, Friedman said that it is important to “reflect on the contrast'' between the two responses. He said that after the initial horror on the “sheer barbarism” of Hamas, the narrative quickly shifted to the brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazans. The counterstrike overshadowed Hamas’ attack and even made it a “hero to some”, he said. The retaliation has also prompted Arab allies to distance themselves from the Jewish state, he added.
Friedman also highlighted that the Israeli economy will bear the brunt of the war if it continues for months, as predicted. The Israeli economy is expected to shrink 10 per cent on an annualised basis for the last 3 months of the year.
The columnist called out people who sided with Hamas against Israel and said that the Jewish people are entitled to self-determination and self-defence.
Friedman also said that the Israel government was presented with “terrible choices”. “But it was precisely because I closely followed Singh’s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully thought-through response by Israel. It should have called this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every parent could understand that,” he wrote in the column.
The columnist highlighted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “wipe out” Hamas has inflicted triple the number of civilian casualties and “caused far more destruction in Gaza than Israel suffered”.
Friedman said that Israel could not have turned the other cheek “in that neighbourhood” but it has a half-baked plan for after the war. Citing Israeli officials, Friedman said that Israel will not govern post-Hamas Gaza and Hamas will never again govern Gaza. An arrangement that will see Palestinians administer day-to-day life and Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the muscle, is what is being suggested.
“Who are these Palestinians” who will enlist to govern Gaza on Israel’s behalf, he said, highlighting possible retaliation by Hamas militants.
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Who will pay for Israel’s control, healthcare and education of Gazan people, and how till Israel manage such a complex operation when there is “scant trust in Netanyahu”, he asked. Friedman said that Israel must also know that the US' tolerance for massive civilian casualties in Gaza is not unlimited.
“That is why I raise the Indian example. Because targeted use of force with limited, achievable goals may serve Israel’s long-term security and prosperity more than an open-ended war to eradicate Hamas. I hope Israel is stress-testing the costs and benefits of both approaches,” he wrote.
Friedman said that Hamas leaders should come out of their tunnels and look in the eye of their people and the world media and tell everyone why they thought it was such a great idea to mutilate and kidnap Israeli children and grandmothers and trigger this blowback.
Israeli tanks have been active in Gaza for at least the last four days. Reports of Israeli airstrikes hitting a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza, killing at least 50 Palestinians and a Hamas commander, and wounding around 150 made headlines on Wednesday.
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