The media personality shares his thoughts on the Gaza War.
I have to give Piers Morgan credit. Oftentimes, he brings to his show people with diametrically-opposed views and lets them go after each other. He serves as a very light-touch referee as someone pro-Israel and one of the Hamas lovers scream past each other in regards to the present war. His approach is even more impressive if we give weight to what Tucker Carlson said about his friend when the two were in Saudi Arabia, namely that Morgan “hates Israel with every fiber in [his] body.” Morgan was quick to deny that he had made such a comment off-camera, as claimed by Carlson.
Piers Morgan recently stated that the Gaza war should be over and anything that Israel is doing is completely unnecessary and unacceptable. Apparently, he makes some type of very simple comparison. Israel lost 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, and the Gazans have suffered 50,000 dead (according to Hamas), many more wounded and nearly complete destruction of their towns and villages. On a pure scorecard approach, the Gazans have gotten a lot more than they gave. Aerial views show Jabalya, Rafah, Khan Younis, Gaza City and beyond flattened beyond recognition. External food deliveries have been absent for two months and are apparently slated to start again now. I am not aware of Morgan coming to Israel recently and entering Gaza to assess for himself the situation. So, he—like most of the world—gets his information from videos and statements from the players.
If one decides when wars end based on how things look, then Piers Morgan—and now the heads of England, Canada, and France—would probably be right. But wars have traditionally involved goals. The formal objective of the Allies was the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. Fifty-thousand French civilians died from Allied bombing applied to weaken Germany prior to the Normandy landings. Millions of Japanese and German civilians died from bombing raids (including the nuclear attacks) and direct fire from approaching forces. Maybe the Allies should have thought like Morgan and concluded: “We should stop this war now. Look how many on their side have died. Their cities look like hellscapes. Forget about victory and unconditional surrender. Let’s just call it a day.”
The problem with Morgan’s approach is that since Hamas and its supporters are psychotic lunatics, if you give them the chance to attack again at scale, they will. Did he not see the macabre return of living and dead hostages? Does he not see the videos of Gazans promising to do another October 7th every year? Stopping the war because the numbers look bad and the Gaza Strip looks awful is an invitation for more dead Israelis. If Tucker Carlson spoke honestly, then maybe such a prospect does not bother the British-American celebrity.
If one had said a few years ago that the pacification of Gaza by the IDF would take two years, you would have thought him daft. Israel’s super powerful air force and advanced army would conquer Gaza in two weeks tops. So how has this war gone on so long? There definitely are some mitigating factors that clearly work against Israeli war-making:
*Concern for hostages limiting some military action
*International pressure over Gazan civilians playing outsized role in war planning
*Need to bring humanitarian aid—a first in warfare—to the enemy
*Breaks for ceasefires/hostage repatriation
*Muddled signals from the Biden administration including material not being sent as promised
*A difficult enemy using tunnels and civilians to their advantage.
If Israel had been given the green light to simply destroy Gaza with zero concern for how, I think that in less than a month she could have had complete control from the north to the south. Steve Witkoff and others in the Trump administration are apparently adding their voices to pressure Israel to prematurely end the war. Witkoff wants to broker a hostage release deal that would have Israel stopping warfare after the ceasefire—the key Hamas demand. The only ones who understand the situation are the UAE leaders who said that the hostages need to be set free and Hamas has to leave the strip. Finally, some clarity from people who truly understand the moral depravity of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
I would suggest that Morgan read up on the 1944 battle for Caen. Caen was the biggest town just off of Sword Beach, and it was up to the British and Canadians to capture it. It was supposed to be captured on landing day, June 6th. In practice, Caen was finally fully captured two months later. Montgomery and his officers had to change their plans on a daily basis to deal with stiff and shifting German resistance. The city was flattened, many of its residents killed, and it was not rebuilt until 1962. In the end, Monty got the job done and opened up the path forward through France.
It would be nice if Israel could stop the war right now with all of its objectives complete. All hostages are returned, Hamas agrees to leave the Strip, and a plan is in place to make a future attack from Gaza impossible. The unfortunate reality is that Hamas wants relevance and will not go quietly into that good night. The hostages are their sole bargaining chip. Israel has started a very aggressive offensive and has told all of the residents of Hamas stronghold, Khan Younis, to leave. External pressure to end the war may be making Israel move faster, as it sees that its war-making time is running out.
In order to get the Russians to attack the Japanese in the summer of 1945, Harry Truman promised Stalin that he could take several islands that they had lost in the Russo-Japan war of 1905. And so, even after Tokyo surrendered, Soviet forces kept fighting until they had taken the last square inch of what was promised by the American president at Tehran. Wars can end in one of two ways. They can end when victory by one side has been realized. They alternatively can end when people sick of the conflict say that it’s time to end the fighting. The latter approach is all but a guarantee that a new war will dawn sometime in the future. Israel needs to completely defang Gaza, and as all of its residents are Hamas or Hamas supporters, this requirement takes time. I know that everyone wants this war and the one in Ukraine over. Finishing it prematurely means the next conflict has already started. Macron, Morgan, Witkoff and their hurried ilk can’t think beyond next week; Israel has to worry about its citizens for the next 80 years.
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