For nine months between October 2016 and July 2017, the Iraqi military, with direct support from the United States and NATO allies, fought a bloody battle to li

For nine months between October 2016 and July 2017, the Iraqi military, with direct support from the United States and NATO allies, fought a bloody battle to liberate the city of Mosul from ISIS. This battle caused thousands to tens of thousands of civilian casualties, many of which were inflicted by Western airstrikes and Iraqi artillery. Concurrently, between November 2016 and October 2017, Kurdish forces in Syria, alongside foreign volunteers and with Western support, fought an offensive in the Raqqa Governate of Syria to remove ISIS and capture their capital city of Raqqa. Thousands more were killed there. All told, the process of eliminating ISIS’ control over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria led to many thousands of civilian casualties. And yet, everyone seems to agree that between that outcome and the possibility of allowing ISIS to persist, this was the preferable choice between two very bad outcomes. It was a goal that, although briefly and inconsistently, was shared by the US and Russia, all sides of the Syrian Civil War, Turkey, and even Iran. Just like ISIS, allowing Hamas to persist is no longer a viable possibility. People call for a cease fire, but the last cease fire was broken by Hamas when they committed the bloodiest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust—itself an atrocity that was only ended through a war that entailed the deaths of probably millions of German civilians at the hands of the Allies. Innocent people in Gaza do exist. They exist as hostages of Hamas. I don’t mean just the hundreds of hostages they captured on October 7th; I mean that Hamas is holding the entire population of the Gaza Strip hostage. They build underground tunnels to protect their fighters and their weapons, but nothing to protect civilians. Instead they place refugees on top of their underground command centers and weapons caches. Even when they fire their terror rockets into Israel, many of them never make it past the borders of Gaza. And when this happens, they lie, they accuse Israel of committing attacks on the innocent people of Gaza that actually happened at the hands of Hamas and their allies, and they completely fabricate numbers. Any of the numbers you see reported and attributed to a “health ministry” in Gaza are Hamas fabrications; Western media is strangely gullible about this sort of thing for reasons I can’t explain. And so claims about “the destruction of thousands of children” are little more than Hamas propaganda. Israel has held back their offensives for weeks, provided directed warnings to Gaza residents (at the expense of tipping off Hamas when and where they would strike), and given several days’ warning for Gaza residents to evacuate south of the Wadi Gaza. In response, Hamas blocked the roads and bombed Palestinian refugees traveling towards this safe zone. The only path to a peaceful future for the people of Gaza and Israel is the elimination of Hamas, just as ISIS had to be eliminated. It is a horrible situation, but it is Hamas who has made it this way and that is why Hamas needs to be destroyed. Just because they have better PR than ISIS did doesn’t change the situation on the ground.