Four Misconceptions About the War in Gaza
The past week in Israel and the Palestinian territories has been horrific, and the next few weeks promise only more misery and pain.
Every shooting war is also a war between competing narratives—each side has its preferred way of framing the conflict—and few have been as fiercely contested in this regard as the war between Israel and the Palestinians. A week in, we should pause to interrogate some of what we have heard combatants and pundits say.
Hamas is ISIS.
In the aftermath of the attacks on Israel, which included atrocities such as the murder of children and the elderly, Israel and its defenders have likened Hamas to the Islamic State, the violent Islamist movement that briefly took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria before its defeat by local forces.
The comparison is at once understandable and misguided.
