How do nation states behave towards forces that want to invade and to destroy them?

Historically, what is the responsibility of a nation that has been overrun by an enemy—or in this case, Islamists who massacred 1,200 of your citizens, burning their homes to the ground, mutilating and murdering families in front of one another, and taking 251 men, women and children hostage?

Where does basic morality enter into the equation? And why was it so grossly overlooked when the Americans bombed Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and massacred 504 civilians in My Lai?

On Sunday, Israel began allowing truckload after truckload of food into the Gaza Strip and began implementing an airdrop of humanitarian aid. It also began opening humanitarian corridors in Al Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. to facilitate the distribution of food and water. It’s doing more for the citizens in Gaza than their own leaders and the rest of the Arab world.

On Friday, Germany, France and the United Kingdom assailed Israel to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid, saying that it is now unacceptable. Also on July 22, the ministers of 28 countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, issued a joint statement condemning “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.” They also proclaimed that “the war must end now.”

The ramifications of these allegations are vast, devastating and horrific, spreading around the globe like an unchecked, virulent cancer, and creating an even more heightened wave of antisemitism.

Last week, more than 50 French Jewish children were pulled off a Spanish Vueling Airlines flight after singing songs in Hebrew. In a viral video, a 21-year-old camp counselor was thrown to the floor and handcuffed after objecting to demands that the children surrender their phones.

Last month at Glastonbury Music Festival, the punk rapper Bob Vylan led thousands of attendees in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah—free,” basically declaring the death to every Jew living in Israel. Shortly after, the Irish band Kneecap made revolting remarks against the Israel Defense Forces to adoring fans waving Palestinian flags.

The complexity of such crises reverberates on the ground and in international discourse, where the tension between the legitimate right of a nation for their people’s self-defense and humanitarian concern remains palpable. Aid convoys have been lined up, until now, on the border of Gaza, because of difficulties with distribution by the United Nations and the attempted, and often realized, violence of Hamas to disrupt the distribution. Israel finds itself in a “lose-lose situation.”

We all know that for almost two years now, Hamas has been commandeering aid off of the trucks. We have seen photos of members of Hamas in tunnels, well fed, devouring food meant for Gaza civilians. We know that Hamas has sold items to them at exorbitant prices.

We also know that Hamas wins twice: denying food to civilians and enjoying the public relations victory when tiny, malnourished bodies are flashed across television screens. This is a war of the airwaves.

The aid delivery moves under the scrutiny of cameras and the shadow of suspicion—every action dissected from a Zionist motive and consequence by the international community.

The situation on the ground is tangled in layers of accusation, grief and political maneuvering. As humanitarian organizations grapple with the logistics of aid under the constant shadow of threat, civilians are caught in an impossible bind between the intractable hostilities and the desperate scramble for survival. The world watches, polarized, while each fresh report of deprivation or atrocity fuels another round of condemnation or justification, depending on the observer’s perspective.

International debate has become a cacophony of voices, each demanding action, each questioning the sufficiency or sincerity of what is being done. Is the delivery of aid a genuine attempt to alleviate suffering, or is it, as some assert, a reluctant gesture made under duress and scrutiny? Meanwhile, suffering persists, the lines of morality blur, and the urgency only grows more acute.

The world watches, divided between calls for uncompromising security and urgent pleas for compassion. For Israel, as with any nation in a similar position, the calculus is fraught: how to respond to external condemnation, and how to balance the absolute right to protect its citizens with the undeniable suffering of innocents on the other side of the border.

For aid workers, the challenge is existential—how to deliver sustenance without inadvertently fueling the machinery of suffering they seek to alleviate. For civilians, every rumor of a new shipment brings a flicker of hope, quickly dimmed by the knowledge that hope, too, can be rationed and stolen.

For Israelis and ordinary Gazans caught in the crossfire, the result is brutal: When starvation becomes a strategy, peace moves further out of reach.

The story of aid in Gaza is not one of simple charity but of a world order struggling with its own limitations. The crisis exposes unresolved questions about sovereignty, collective responsibility and the value of human life amid protracted conflict. In the swirl of headlines and televised debates, it is easy to forget that beyond the abstractions of policy, real people endure, with hunger gnawing at their bodies and uncertainty clouding their every tomorrow.

Each plan is a difficult compromise between idealism and reality, hampered by generations of distrust and fear that relief will be weaponized by Hamas, or worse—altogether denied.

Source: JNS