Are Gaza's civilians innocent?

Yes and no.

For weeks, the mainstream media has mournfully talked about the damage Israel has inflicted on “innocent civilians” in Gaza. Outlets like CNN have shown us images of destroyed buildings — the same ones over and over again. And sources like CNN and the Washington Post have presented uncritically the unsubstantiated claims of the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry about the number of civilian Palestinian deaths in Gaza.

And consistently the narrative has been that the civilians in Gaza are innocent.

Are they? If (1) they did not participate in the massacre of October 7 or in other terrorist activity and (2) they are not members of Hamas, then I regard them as innocent in a narrow legalistic sense. And certainly, the IDF should not be targeting them. Nor has it done so.

But in my view, the moral innocence or guilt of Gaza’s civilian population turns on the degree to which it supports Hamas and/or its crimes against humanity. I can’t regard civilians who back Hamas or terrorism in general as morally innocent.

Claims that Gazans support Hamas usually start with the fact that, in 2006, Hamas won the most recent general election in Gaza. However, that election was so long ago, and Gaza’s current population is so young, that it’s unlikely most current Gaza residents participated in the voting. Moreover, many of those did participate didn’t vote for Hamas.

We also know that many Gaza civilians took to the streets to show their support for the October 7 massacre. But a greater number did not.

Recently, a group called the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) polled Palestinians on these subjects. I view the findings of this survey as the best evidence of how Gaza civilians view Hamas and the slaying of Israeli civilians.

The survey encompassed adult Palestinians in Gaza and in the area commonly referred to as the West Bank. A total of 668 adults participated. 41.5 percent of them are residents of Gaza.

Asked whether they support or oppose Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7, 59.3 percent said they “extremely” supported the attacks and 15.7 percent said they “somewhat” supported the killing spree. Only 12.7 expressed disapproval. The remainder said they neither approved or disapproved.

Support for the massacre was more robust on the West Bank than in Gaza. That’s natural because Gazans have paid a substantial price for Oct. 7 whereas Palestinians in Judea and Samaria have not.

Yet even after weeks of Israeli bombing and raids, 63 percent of Gazans were good with the massacre, compared to 20 percent who said it was a bad idea. In America, we call that margin a landslide.

The survey also found that 70.4 percent of Gazans favor “a Palestinian state from the river to the sea.” In other words, they favor the destruction of Israel. Only 22.7 percent favor a two-state solution.

As for Hamas, the survey found that it remains popular. This is particularly true in the West Bank. There, the terrorists enjoy a 88 percent approval rating.

In Gaza, the number is considerably lower — 59 percent. But 69 percent of Gazans approve of Hamas’ military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigade. And the Al Qassam Brigade, the direct terrorist arm of Hamas, holds a 78 percent approval rating in Gaza.

Thus, the terrorists who are massacring Israelis are wildly popular among Gaza’s civilians. The ones responsible for getting the garbage collected, less so.

I wish AWRAD had included more Gaza residents in its survey. Nonetheless, this survey tells me that most adult civilians in Gaza are not morally innocent because, in all likelihood, most favor butchering Israelis.

As for non-adults, given the way Hamas educates them and given the views of their parents, it’s nearly certain that they are at least as supportive of butchering Israelis as adults in Gaza are. There is an age below which one isn’t morally responsible for one’s opinions, but non-adults in Gaza above that age — whatever it is — shouldn’t be view as morally innocent, either.