OpEd: Jewish Values Demand Moral Clarity–Not Equivalence–in Gaza

By Mitch Danzig
Times of San Diego

SAN DIEGO — Recently, the Times of San Diego published an opinion piece, (which was republished by San Diego Jewish World) titled “As a Father, Jew and Councilmember, I’m Appalled by Brutality in Gaza” by Sean Elo-Rivera.

While I respect the sincerity behind that essay and the concern it reflects for the lives of all children, it represents a troubling trend in our public discourse: invoking Jewish identity as a moral credential to justify arguments built on ahistorical comparisons and dangerous false moral equivalence.

Jewish values do indeed reject indiscriminate violence, dehumanization, and cruelty. But applying those values to the current war in Gaza requires moral clarity — starting with an honest account of who is responsible for this war and the suffering it causes. That responsibility lies squarely with Hamas:

–An openly genocidal terrorist organization that has openly vowed to annihilate Israel.
–The orchestrators of the October 7th Massacre, murdering nearly 1,000 civilians in under eight hours.
–The kidnappers of more than 200 innocent civilians, including babies and the elderly.
–Systematic users of Gaza’s civilians as human shields.
–Builders of military infrastructure under schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods.
–Embezzlers of over $1 billion in international aid to construct more than 500 kilometers of fortified terror tunnels—directly under civilian areas—while refusing to allow ordinary Gazans to shelter in them.
–Serial rejecters of multiple ceasefire offers, each of which would have spared countless lives, because they would have required Hamas to release the hostages and relinquish power in Gaza.

Any moral analysis must start with this reality. The above are all indisputable facts. Including that over the past four months, Israel has repeatedly accepted ceasefire proposals mediated by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar; while Hamas has rejected every one of them because each required it to relinquish power in Gaza and release the hostages.

Hamas has never offered to release all the hostages together — or even close to all. Its strategy is to string out the releases to maintain leverage, while Gaza’s civilians, the hostages, and their families continue to pay the price.

That is why simply saying, we cannot fight “brutality with brutality” or “atrocities with atrocities” is not an answer. It does not explain how to free all the hostages or how to end the massacres and mass-kidnappings Hamas has promised to repeat — again and again — until Israel is destroyed.

All wars, even the most “just” wars, from the American Civil War to World War II, are brutal and involve atrocities meeting other atrocities. War itself is an atrocity. But the moral question is never whether war is a brutal atrocity — it is whether the alternative is worse.

In World War II, by the final year of the conflict, German civilians were facing far worse food shortages than Gazans face today (because of Hamas stealing and hoarding food). During WWII, the U.S. and Britain carried out bombing campaigns that tragically killed more than 80,000 German children.

Had Allied leaders listened to calls like those in Elo-Rivera’s article, the Nazis would have remained in power — free to subjugate Germans and continue slaughtering Jews and others across Europe. The same moral muddle today would leave Hamas in power to mortgage the future of Gaza’s children on the altar of violent jihad and condemn more Israeli babies and children to the promised endless rounds of violence, which Hamas and its supporters openly celebrate.

Moral equivalence obscures this reality. To suggest that Israel’s democratically elected government and Hamas — a Islamist Supremacist terrorist dictatorship that revels in civilian casualties on both sides — share equal blame is not an act of Jewish conscience. It is a distortion that undermines the very values it claims to uphold.

Jewish history, with its long memory of persecution, demands recognition of the necessity of self-defense. It teaches that liberty cannot coexist with tyranny, and that protecting innocent life sometimes requires dismantling the forces that would destroy it. Judaism is not a pacifist faith — it understands the concept of a “just war.” This is why, despite the excruciating costs, most Israelis — across political lines — agree that Hamas’s military and political control over Gaza must end.

Holding Israel to account for its conduct in war is not antisemitic, and it is consistent with Jewish values. But equating Israel’s war to defend itself after October 7th with the deliberate actions of a terrorist organization committed to its destruction is neither just nor moral. Jewish ethics demand precision, not platitudes — and moral courage will always require more than the comfort of slogans.

In this moment, clarity is not optional. It is the very thing Jewish values demand.

*
Mitch Danzig is a San Diego attorney and past president of Stand With Us in San Diego. This article initially appeared in Times of San Diego with which San Diego Jewish World trades articles.