THE word “war” was first used by Israel to describe its response to the unprecedented Hamas attack on itself on October 7.

This itself is unprecedented because Israel did not consider itself at war with Hamas before 7 October, despite previous rounds of conflict stretching back many years.

Judging from the Israelis’ response so far, it looked really like the Israelis, instead of destroying Hamas, are bent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza by its indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructures – buildings, homes, hospitals, mosques, churches and schools.

The truth speaks for itself – Israel’s focus is not on destroying Hamas as can be seen in the less than a dozen deaths of Hamas’ military leaders at Israeli hands.

Instead, it is the Palestinian civilian deaths that are mounting by the day. Such is the ferocity of the Israeli response that it has paid scant attention to the issue of the hostages captured by Hamas.

In fact on a number of occasions, Israeli bombings on Gaza have caused the deaths of some of these captives and their Hamas guards.

Because it is so busy killing civilians, Israel has not given attention to the release the Israeli soldiers and civilians taken captive by Hamas ala the Entebbe raid in 1976.

The Entebbe raid or Operation Entebbe, officially codenamed Operation Thunderbolt, was a 1976 Israeli counter-terrorist mission in Uganda launched in response to the Palestinian-led hijacking of an international
civilian passenger flight operated by Air France between the cities of Tel Aviv and Paris.

After flying some 4,000 km from Israel to Uganda, the Israeli force rescued the hostages within an hour of landing. All seven of the militants were killed, and 11 MiG fighters supplied to Uganda by the Soviet Union were destroyed. The Israelis lost one soldier and three hostages during the operation.

It seems Israel no longer has such expertise or perhaps no longer has the stomach to conduct such daring operation and is contented with just killing civilians.

The next party on a war footing despite not using the word “war” is the US.

Within hours of the October 7 attack by Hamas, the US began moving warships and aircraft to the region to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond.

One US aircraft carrier and its strike group, the USS Gerald Ford, is already now in the eastern Mediterranean and a second one has left the US and is heading that way.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in recent days ordered the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group to join the Ford in the Eastern Mediterranean.
 
In addition, three Marine warships are moving into the region. Scores of aircraft were dispatched to US military bases around the Middle East, and American special operations forces are working with Israel’s military in planning and intelligence.

The three marine warships include the USS Bataan amphibious ready group, which consists of three ships carrying thousands of Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the USS Mesa Verde, an amphibious transport dock, already in the Mediterranean Sea, and the USS Carter Hall, a dock landing ship, now heading toward the Red Sea.
 
As of October 17, five shipments of US weapons and equipment have arrived in Israel.

The key mission for American ships and warplanes is to establish a large and visible presence that will deter Hezbollah, Iran or others from taking advantage of the situation. 

But does this war-mongering stance by the US have an ulterior motive? This is because Iran has said it is not involved in the Hamas’ incursion on Israel on October 7 because it was also caught off guard like everyone else.

Moreover US intelligence confirmed there was no Iranian involvement in the Hamas attack on Israel.

So why is the US so worked up with an imaginary war with Iran? From its action in sending many warships, it really looks like it is the US which is gunning for a fight with Iran.

It also looks like the US is an accomplice of Israel in the impending ground offensive, not so much against Hamas, but against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank by sending all these lethal weapons of to Israel.

And it doesn’t make sense for Israel, the superpower of the region to cower behind the might of THE superpower of the unipolar world in facing the “might” of a ragtag resistance that Hamas is.

US Defence officials say the Biden administration has already given Israel small diameter bombs, other munition and interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome air defence system, and more will come.

The packages also include JDAM kits – essentially a tail fin and navigation kit that turns a “dumb” bomb into a “smart” bomb that can be guided to a target.

The JDAM bomb is said by some analysts to be the bomb that Israel had dropped on the al-Ahli Arab Christian Hospital in Gaza a few days ago that killed an estimated 500 civilians.

No wonder one good soul in the Biden administration followed his conscience by resigning.

On October 18, the US State Department arms transfers chief, Josh Paul, who has served as the Director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, resigned over Israel.

Paul has characterised Washington’s rush to provide military aid as “short-sighted” and “destructive”. He took his job knowing it entailed “moral complexity and moral compromises” and, strived to make sure “the harm he might do could be outweighed by the good.”

The next country to use the word “war” rather rightfully is Jordan.

On October 18, its Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi while emphasising that Jordan will not become complicit in another expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, said the kingdom is doing all it can to stop the conflict but at the same time vowed to treat any attempt to displace Palestinians as “a
declaration of war”.

Amman will not allow “a new catastrophe” nor will it let Israel “shift the crisis created and exacerbated by the occupation to neighbouring countries,” he added, as quoted by the Royal News outlet.

Catastrophe, or ‘Nakba’, is how the Palestinians refer to their 1948 exodus from territories claimed by Israel. Jordan ended up annexing the West Bank while Egypt took control of Gaza, but Israel seized both territories in 1967.

Displacing the Palestinians from Gaza to another country would be a war crime, Safadi said.

“There is no justification for what Israel is doing in Gaza,” the Jordanian foreign minister said. “We demand for the war to be stopped, to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza Strip and to protect civilians.”

Jamari Mohtar reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.