In his latest Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria says that Israel’s war against Hamas is not genocide but wonders if it is “proportionate”:
Israel suffered a brutal terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and had a right to respond forcefully. But consider what it has done in a small territory housing 2.2 million people, half of whom are children and of which, by Israel’s own estimate before the war, only 30,000 are Hamas fighters.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of Israel’s bombing campaign notes that by mid-December, “nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. … Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.†Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, only eight can still accept patients. U.N. monitors report that more than two-thirds of all school buildings have been damaged, as have several churches and more than 100 mosques.
The Associated Press reports that according to experts, in roughly two months, Israel caused more destruction in Gaza than the battle for Aleppo in Syria or the razing of Mariupol in Ukraine, and killed more civilians than the United States and its allies did in a three-year campaign against the Islamic State. Proportionally, Israel’s campaign has exceeded the destruction of the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II and, as the University of Chicago’s Robert Pape notes, “is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.â€
Let me start right off and admit that I have no idea whether Israel’s response has been proportionate and I doubt that Mr. Zakaria does, either, but he’s using the language of just war and I believe I understand that.
The question cannot be answered by appealing to the numbers killed in Hamas’s attack or by comparing it with Allied bombings of Germany in World War II or any of the other things to which Mr. Zakaria compares the violence because “proportionate” means something different than I think he realizes. The question is whether the amount of death and destruction being wrought by Israel is proportionate to the threat Israel faces and I don’t believe anybody but the Israelis can answer that.
Hamas has said outright that its intention is to kill every Jew in Israel. That’s part of its mission statement. Hamas has illustrated that it is willing and able to do grievous harm to Israel and kill lots of Israeli Jews. That’s the threat Israel faces.
In three days in February 1945 (mostly) British and American bombers firebombed the German city of Dresden nearly leveling the city and killing something between 25,000 and 125,000 people, mostly civilians. We’ll probably never know for sure. Was Germany an existential threat to Britain or the United States in February 1945? Almost unquestionably not and certainly not the threat that Hamas is to Israel since in February 1945 nobody believed that it was the Germans’ intent to exterminate all of the British or Americans while today nobody doubts that Hamas is serious.
“Proportionate” is inherently subjective. And in terms of military operations, it’s a judgment call about whether the effects to non-combatants of any specific military action are proportional to the military necessity of the military objective.
The idea being that a military has an obligation to use the least amount of force necessary to achieve the military objective. It just so happens that in a lot of cases the least amount of force necessary is subjective or involves tradeoffs, military necessity is subjective (now necessary?), and often the least amount of force in the best circumstances is still going to kill a ton of civilians.
In Gaza you see all these factors in play compounded by a constrained battlefield where the civilian population is not allowed to flee – not only by Israel, but also by everyone else. And where Israel’s enemy wants to create martyrs as an explicit tactic and goal – which clearly is working to undermine Israeli support in various parts of the world.
I think a lot of Americans have watched too many movies
Got to be careful what you wish for.
A proportionate response could well have been viewed by Israeli leaders as a nuclear strike on Iran.
Or by progressive thinkers as a very large crime scene with 1500 suspects at large.
9/11 could have been viewed as such because that’s what it was, a hijacking involving a large number of murders.
Many people believe Bush overreacted and in retrospect maybe he did but would the American people have settled for less than revenge?
If you were alive at that time you know the answer to that.
Proportionate implies some kind of ratio. It’s hard to find reliable numbers but most people are reporting ratios of civilians killed and property damaged much higher than past battles/wars and that is with Israel supposedly having excellent intelligence and precision weapons. It at least looks like Israel is accepting many more civilian deaths in order to kill an enemy than have occurred in recent conflicts.
But you need context. Israel has it within its own power to make sure there is never another 10/7 without killing tens of thousands of civilians. Just keep more of the IDF outside of Gaza instead of promoting record numbers of settlements pulling IDF to the West Bank. Israel has a real military and Hamas is contained. They only get out in numbers if Israel allows it.
Have the settlers stop harassing and killing people so the IDF doesnt need to be there to stop retaliation. Stop supporting conflict between the PLA and Hamas, sometimes supporting Hamas.
Steve
Grey Shambler: Many people believe Bush overreacted and in retrospect maybe he did but would the American people have settled for less than revenge?
That’s a very good point. In fact, it was Bush’s job as president to channel American anger in productive ways, not egg it on in a self-destructive manner, while denigrating those who raised reasonable objections to the war.
Problem is that the crimes of October 7 were not the reasonable actions of a people unreasonably repressed. The attack was planned and planned with the anticipation of a response which would bring enormous civilian casualties in Gaza. which is why Hamas built their headquarters under civilian infrastructure.
Attempts to equate Hamas’ actions to the actions of George Floyd or Rodney King rioters are disingenuous in the extreme and embarrassing for those of us in the West who recognize this as the objective Hamas’ evil plotters envisioned.
Hamas’ says the hell with Jews, the hell with Palestinian civilians, and the hell with the young men they brainwashed for so many years to do their evil for them.
“Israel has it within its own power to make sure there is never another 10/7 without killing tens of thousands of civilians. Just keep more of the IDF outside of Gaza instead of promoting record numbers of settlements pulling IDF to the West Bank. Israel has a real military and Hamas is contained. ”
Sonofa bitch. Kissinger dies, and steve appears. Well, steve, get your ass over there and educate these dopes. You will get a Nobel Peace Prize. What are you waiting for?
When are you going to fill us in on your cure for cancer?
I think you are right, Grey. But have a talk with steve, he’s got it all figured out…….. Israelis baaaaaad. Palestinians, goooooood….
I see things a little differently than steve does. It’s like living in a bad neighborhood. You can put locks on your doors and board up your windows and install an alarm system but it will still be a bad neighborhood. When will you be able to lead a “normal life”? Never. Not as long as you live in that neighborhood. It makes no difference if its where your parent and grandparents and great-grandparents lived it will still be a bad neighborhood. You want a “normal life”? Leave. Trying to make friends with your neighbors or buying an additional house and rehabbing it won’t make the neighborhood any better.
We don’t live in that neighborhood. We aren’t interested in living in that neighborhood. Our interests in that neighborhood decrease practically with every passing day. Truth to tell we would prefer it if the Israelis could make it a good neighborhood but we have no interest in helping them make it into a good neighborhood because we don’t approve of what they’d have to do to accomplish that.