Lord Austin: Slaughtering families and babies is not self defence as Hamas claims

Kidnapping toddlers and pensioners, slaughtering families – even babies – in their homes or kids at a music festival is not self-defence as Hamas claims.

It is brutal terrorism, just like ISIS.

The attack on young people at a music festival would be the same as more than 2,000 British kids butchered at Glastonbury.

Over 7,000 missiles have been aimed at residential areas in Israel in a fortnight. That is about the same number of rockets the Germans fired at Britain in the whole of the Blitz.

In 2017 I visited Nir Oz, one of the small villages attacked by Hamas. It looks like 240 of the 400 residents are either missing or dead. Around 80 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. The rest were murdered.

In the face of all that, Israel doesn’t just have the right but a duty to defend its citizens, rescue the hostages and deal with the terrorists.

Israel has recently normalised relations with three Arab states and was in negotiations with Saudi Arabia. Iran are desperate to scupper the talks. That is why Hamas launched the attack. They knew exactly what Israel would have to do and do not care that ordinary people in Gaza would be put in harm’s way.

I have campaigned for a Palestinian state all my life. The Palestinians were offered a state when Israel was established in 1947 and on three occasions since, but the leadership rejected them all, and terrorism continued.

The terrible position of people in Gaza is not Israel’s fault either.

Hamas’ founding charter calls for Jews to be killed. It is opposed to the very idea of a peace process, which it says would involve the surrender of ‘Islamic land’.

Gaza has not been occupied for 18 years. When Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, it had a successful economy, control over imports and exports, open borders, plans to build a seaport and discussions on an airport. Hamas, funded by Iran and committed to Israel’s destruction, staged a bloody coup, banned elections and murdered moderate Palestinians.

They launched a vicious terrorist campaign killing Israeli civilians. Instead of building hospitals and schools or a successful economy, Hamas spends funds on rockets and tunnels to attack Israel.

That is why Israel had to build border controls and security fences and last week’s brutal attacks show how necessary they were.

According to the UN, it stores its rockets in schools used to host displaced people.

The next few weeks will be awful – war always is, but British army officers tell me that no army in the world that takes as much care as Israel’s to protect civilians and uphold international law.

No one wants to see a single civilian hurt in Gaza, but no one apart from Hamas even wanted this war in the first place.

There are some very clear differences:

Israel uses its weapons to defend civilians. Hamas use civilians to defend their weapons.

Israel’s aim is to minimise civilian casualties. Hamas aim to kill as many civilians as they can.