Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been bombarded with misguided, though I’m sure well-intentioned, opinions of various self-proclaimed pro-Israel people on social media who, though they claim to support Israel’s right to defend herself, are nonetheless against the Israeli military effort currently underway in Gaza. They seem to believe that sending the current Palestinian government “humanitarian aid” is not equivalent to supporting Hamas. They make a point of stating that not every citizen in Gaza is a terrorist, a point with which I agree. They claim that there should be no pointing fingers; that the fact that Hamas initiated the conflict is irrelevant. They further argue that regardless of whose fault it is, we should do more to prevent the deaths of any civilians, to the extent of arguing that, in fact, Israel should stand idly by and do nothing while under the threat of constant terrorist attacks aimed at murdering her citizens. They say that we’ve tried military force in the past and we are still warring with the Islamic radicals and so it would be futile to employ the same tactics as before to deal with them.

Now I will tell you why they are wrong.

First of all, all you have to do is look at how much money was given to Gaza over the past years as “humanitarian aid” and then look at the conditions in which their citizens live versus how the Palestinian government/Hamas lives to know that the vast majority, if not all, of every dollar being sent as “humanitarian aid” is being used to fund Hamas and terrorist activity. For example, all the concrete that Israel gave them for humanitarian purposes, to build up their cities, were used instead to build tunnels for terrorist attacks against Israel. To send millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority, a joint government with Hamas, an internationally-recognized terrorist organization, is to ultimately support terrorism.

Labels are just that: labels. You can call something whatever you want, it doesn’t change the reality of the situation. When you call funds “humanitarian aid” yet you know the money is being misused to supply missiles and fund terrorism, it is the same thing as giving the money directly to finance the missiles themselves. For those who still don’t grasp this concept, allow me to try using an analogy. Let’s pretend you have a mouse. You put the mouse in a cage with a snake and the snake eats it. You do this time and again, but each time the snake eats the mouse. Your intention may not be for the mouse to be eaten, you may claim that you did not label the mouse as “snake food.” But, when this happens over and over, you must eventually acknowledge that by putting the mouse in the cage, you are offering it as prey. At some point, you must be held responsible for the known outcome of your actions.

Next, no one is saying that all Arabs are part of Hamas. No one is saying that the Palestinians living in Gaza do not need our help. In fact, I believe many Palestinians are victims of Hamas as well, and require assistance to break free from their deplorable living conditions and the tyranny of a terrorist ruler. The Palestinians absolutely should not be subjected to their current living conditions, but that is exactly why the world should be against Hamas. Israel pulled out of Gaza, ripped its own citizens out of their homes in order to give the Palestinians their own land. Israel has been sending them humanitarian aid. Israel left them a set-up horticulture industry so they could have a viable economy. What did they do? They destroyed it because it was created by Israel. Then, they purposefully elected a known terrorist organization to lead their government. They took the majority, if not all, of the money given to them by Israel, the United States, and others, and invested it not in strengthening their infrastructure and helping their people, but rather in amassing weapons and erecting tunnels to be used for terrorism. If you want to help the citizens of Gaza, you should support Israel’s elimination of Hamas. That is the only way the people of Gaza will be able to live freely and have a chance at a peaceful, successful society. If Hamas cared at all about civilian lives, it would have accepted at least one of the recent ceasefires and not continued to fire rockets while Israel was holding back its attacks. Furthermore, Israel uses multiple methods —calling citizens, dropping leaflets, roof knocking — to warn citizens of target sites for future attacks (the sites where Hamas stores its weapons purposefully amid civilians). Yet, Hamas instructs them to ignore all warnings from the IDF. Thus, the members of Hamas are the only people to blame for the high amount of civilian casualties.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, for Israel not to fight back is for her to be suicidal. Regarding Israel employing non-military methods, let’s review the effectiveness of that plan.  Peace talks, giving up land, UN intervention, and ceasefires have all been tried multiple times and have failed. Even during the current conflict, over the past couple of weeks, Israel has accepted multiple ceasefires, all of which were either rejected or violated by Hamas. What else do you want Israel to do? Should the state of Israel sit back and do nothing while an organization, whose mission statement calls to eliminate her from existence at all costs (including the loss of innocent lives), continues to attack her and will not stop until she’s destroyed? Should Israel just sit around and allow Hamas to amass weapons, build more tunnels, and continue to attack her until they finally get rid of Israel once and for all? The only reason Israel still exists is because every time the surrounding Arab countries and/or terrorist organizations attempted to annihilate her, Israel fought back.  Had Israel followed the advice of the so-called pro-Israel yet anti-Operation Protective Edge people, there wouldn’t be an Israel.  Had Israel followed their advice, Israel would have been destroyed in 1948, 1967, 1973, and so on, including right now.