New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof seems like a good man, a decent human being. He reminds me of many of the dedicated liberals I went to law school and college with, always gathering signatures to ban the bomb, end a war, fight pollution, cure cancer, save whales, get universal employment…you know the list. These are the people who tear up when they hear “Imagine.” They were classic liberals before the ethics rot of progressivism, and that’s Kristof too.

Today he issued a characteristic Kristof primal scream about the carnage in Gaza, and if there was ever a “Think of the children!” lament, this is it.

It is the fourth such column by Kristof since the Hamas attack, having earlier submitted “I’m Crying for All the Victims That Are Going to Suffer”, “We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit“, “We Must Not Kill Gazan Children to Try to Protect Israel’s Children.” The beating and bleeding heart of “What Can We Possibly Say to the Children of Gaza?” or, in another format, We Can’t Justify This Much Suffering, is in these sentences…

Over the years, I’ve covered many bloody wars and written scathingly about how governments in Russia, Sudan and Syria recklessly bombed civilians. This time, it’s different… as a taxpayer, I’m helping to pay for the bombs.

Gaza is also different from Syria and Ukraine, of course, in that Israel did not start this war. Instead, Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas in a rampage of murder, torture and rape. Any government would have struck back, and Hamas maximized the suffering of civilians by using them as human shields.

Yet military response is not a binary choice; it exists on a continuum. Israel, traumatized by the attack it suffered, elected to retaliate with 2,000-pound bombs, destroy entire neighborhoods and allow only a trickle of aid into the territory, which is now teetering on the brink of famine. The upshot is that this does not feel like a war on Hamas but rather a war on Gazans.

The rest of the lament is devoted to 1) anecdotes about suffering children (“One life, as precious as that of any American or Israeli child, belongs to a bright 10-year-old girl in Gaza who should be excitedly planning a trip to Japan. Instead, she smiles bravely through excruciating pain and must endure an amputation if her life is to be saved…”), a device that can be and has always been employed to build resistance against any war, no matter how justified and necessary. 2) pithy quotes about cruelty and war in the abstract ( “…the great Elie Wiesel described indifference as “the most insidious danger of all” and observed, “Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”) and “yes, but” passages like, “Some will blame all this on Hamas: If it had not attacked Israeli civilians, there would be no Israeli bombing. That’s true, but to me it seems an evasion of moral responsibility. Israel and America have agency, and the atrocities suffered by Israeli civilians do not justify the leveling of Palestinian neighborhoods.”

That’s a rhetorical trick, and beneath Kristoff. The duty of Israel now is to make certain no more of its civilians die in terrorist attacks launched by an intractable and relentless foe that raises and trains its children to hate Jews and to vow to destroy Israel in the next generation. The Hamas attack on October 7 does justify Israel’s warfare, and winning the war obligates Israel to bring Hamas to its knees as quickly as possible, which means that Gazans of all ages will suffer until it happens.

Kristof doesn’t want to frame the situation like that, because it would require him to concede that the horrors of war being inflicted on the children of Gaza is an ethical necessity in utilitarian terms. As I said, he’s a nice man. Fortunately, it looks like the majority of Times readers not dealing in pure emotion—like Kristof—don’t buy his argument. Here are three examples; there are many more:

“We might [say to them]something along the lines of: don’t grow up to elect and normalize a terrorist ethos and government; don’t lob unguided missiles into your neighbor’s cities; don’t invade your neighbor’s territory and murder and rape 100’s on civilian non-combatants, don’t hide your neighbor’s kidnapped women and children in your houses.”

and,

“….All the killing and collateral damage in Gaza could have ended quickly and easily had only Hamas released the hostages it holds, laid down their weapons and surrendered. Hamas failure to do this makes them solely responsible for all further deaths after Oct 7th, of Israeli soldiers as well as Gaza civilians. WHY isn’t a statement like the above calling for Hamas to surrender included in this column?“

and,

“I was one of around 150 this past Tuesday evening to attend a talk by Youseph Haddad, the Arab-Israeli journalist, followed by an exhibition of the 46 minute film curated from the victims cell phones, security cameras, and Hamas-ISIS GoPro’s. There really no words to describe the barbarity. I was sickened by what I saw. Not only the Hamas terrorists who murdered, raped, and burned 4 times as many civilians as IDF soldiers on 7 October, but “regular” Gazan’s who cheered the returning terrorists and did horrible things to the hostages and desecrated the bodies of the dead.

Kristof thinks Israel has gone too far. He is dead wrong. The enemy, Hamas, must be destroyed at all costs.

Unless it is willing to accept the possibility or better said the likelihood of another attack, murders, rapes, beheadings in the future, Israel must go further.”

I sense from the numbers of “recommends” each comment got that the “Think of the children!” sympathizers are more numerous among Times readers, but that they have nothing else to offer of substance.