On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that the Israeli military had months to figure out how to avoid shooting most of the people coming across the fence in Gaza and “took no effort” to do so.
Brooks began by saying, “I think one of the things we’ve seen — it was relatively quiet on the West Bank, and much more militant [in] Gaza. And so one of the issues to me that — which is an open question among the two different Palestinian governments is, is the problem 1967 or is the problem 1948? For the Palestinian Authority, traditionally, 1967 has been the problem. Get Israel to roll back to the ’67 borders or something like that, and we can have peace. For Hamas, the problem is 1948. It’s the existence of the state of Israel itself. And so, there you’re dealing with an entirely different entity, which we saw the effects of.”
He continued, “The final thing to be said is that Hamas started announcing what happened on the fence there in March. The Israeli military had months to prepare and months to take the — most of the people who are coming across the fence and figure out a way not to shoot them. And they took no effort to do that.”
Brooks added, “And so, that redounds to their debt. And that’s an insult to the — a government that has gotten less clever and, frankly, a little more callous.”
Later, Brooks further stated, “I would just put it on the planners. I mean, the troops that are there — and full disclosure, my son formerly served in the IDF. He’s back in the US now. But there were actual armed terrorists in the group. And so, they were trying to pick out the terrorists from the non-terrorists. So, they’re in a tough situation with 40,000 people coming at them. But the planning is what I fault.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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