Really thoughtful essay. Not sure I buy the resource idea so much post oil shock in the 1970's but this offers a fascinating alternative viewpoint on this conflict.
Last year, when I was helping to update an economics textbook, I found some links on energy unrest (easy, because 2022 was a "bad year"). I love this one from the BBC:
[Has a table listing countries taking energy cost stabilization measures. Has a list of five
caveats and recommendations.]
So the point is that energy price swings/shocks can be destabilizing and one of the United States' "jobs" in the world is, as much as possible, to prevent instability in the Middle East from becoming a source of these shocks.
Helen Thompson's book was helpful to organize my thinking on this subject, but the lit on energy unrest goes back a ways.
It does so need. The Economist suggested last week that the set of Israel-recognizing Arab states could take the lead. But Hamas is the hot potato all these states fear.
"What I see resembles a total war, albeit in miniature, in which each side’s stated objective is to destroy the other."
This is the fatal defect of your viewpoint. There are not two sides in this war, there are three: (1) Israel, (2) Hamas and its militant supporters, and most numerous (3) 2+ million Palestinian civilians, who have not had a chance to voice their opinion for 15 years. Is the last group that is suffering and the dying. It is so convenient to leave them out of the picture—it simplifies things gigantically.
I am not condemning the Israel ground invasion, but I think their cowardly and poorly targeted bombing of civilians will be condemned by the ICC as a war crime.
There are not always three sides. In Stalingrad, it was an invading army against a united city of civilians. The same was true in the 1000-day long siege of Leningrad.
But in the present case, you totally ignore the fact that two well-armed combatants are fighting in the equivalent of a childcare center, an old folk's home, and a place where a lot of normal people are trying just to live.
Your viewpoint is a convenient, but grotesque, simplification of reality. You call on us to remember the 200 hostages but totally ignore the two million Gazans. Until you issue a “plan” that takes those two million fully into account, I am not buying.
But I can't agree with this. Stalingrad, was defended, inch by inch, by a Soviet army group. The ordinance fired at them and on them killed civilians in droves, as it always does in these siege situations. The fire they returned killed civilians overrun by the German advance. Hospitals, schools, and old-folks homes were not privileged by either side. You can't place civilians on the board in one case and remove them in the other.
For all that, the piece I wrote reaches the conclusion that first despite the parallels between Stalingrad and Gaza, we (the US) probably could do something for the civilians in the Gaza case, and second, we probably won't unless long-term US policy goals in the region (which I called "stability" but could be further elaborated) are threatened.
Lead-time requirements meant that I couldn't take developments like Jon Ossoff's Wednesday night Senate speech, in which he tied a more measured Israeli response to US "national security", into account. I was happy to hear that speech and hope that others take up the theme.
My point was that the vast majority of the civilians in Stalingrad supported the Soviet defense of their city. I don't know the specifics of Stalingrad, but I know that in Leningrad every inhabitant of the city contributed to the defense by digging trenches and other means of supporting the military.
The sight of hundreds of thousands of Gazans fleeing to South Gaza shows that they are not working to support Hamas's defense of its interests.
Indeed, a survey completed by a Palestinian American University Professor which ended on 10/6 [note the date] showed that 20% of Gazans have confidence in Hamas to represent the interests of Gaza. If the people of Gaza supported Hamas, they would be volunteering to pick up automatic weapons and shoot at Israelis. The women of Gaza would be strapping on explosive vests and trying to kill Israeli soldiers. Instead, they are fleeing S, leaving their homes and worldly goods behind in a clear demonstration that this is not THEIR fight.
Hamas is a parasite on Gaza, not a representative of Gaza. Just as the Mafia was a parasite on Italian immigrant communities, not their representative.
If you can't wrap your head around the difference between Stalingrad and Gaza, that is a sad thing.
You mentioned the citizens the civilians of Gaza as an afterthought in your post. I have been thinking about them since the Israeli bombing campaign began.
PS: if you want a link to that survey, I will dig it up.
That's not the only survey. A pretty detailed one from a few days ago showed between 70 and 80% support for Hamas post 10/7. I don't know whether to believe this, but just point out there are other numbers out there.
But surely you are making way too much of pretty contingent differences between Leningrad and Stalingrad and the Strip. In the first two cases the civilians had nowhere to go and they had a effective (and ruthless) governmental authority to organize their resistance. The Nazis didn't issue evacuation advisories or create windows for refugee movements. The battle of Stalingrad was a catastrophe for its inhabitants, yet a huge victory for Russia and its allies. These go hand in hand. Don't romanticize the former.
How could anyone take anything approaching a high quality survey of Gaza sentiment after ten/seven? You will have to get me a link to that before I can think of it as anything more of your than your poor memory or someone's big lie.
The last good information on attitudes about Hamas was a survey taken by a Palestinian American academic less than 60 days ago. It shows that only a minority of Gazans support Hamas. Since there are 2.3 million people in Gaza, 25 percent still equals about 600,000. But that means there are 1.6 million Gazans who want them to drop dead.
AMANEY JAMAL: Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6, 2023. So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So, we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now. But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas,
Kathleen, what is the best source of public information we have to supply evidence that the Israeli military has purposefully targeted civilians rather than military targets with its bombs? There just isn't that much out there and I am having trouble coming up with data I can trust.
Chris, I would not ignore Haaretz as a source, both torn and critical, of everything about this war. You can get their email newsletters and read several articles a day for free.
I subscribe to the Economist and agree with Kathleen that it is a very good source. But I would not conclude that every quote they unearth from a wrathful Israeli spokesperson or operative is the whole story. Israel was caught by surprise and without a plan. There was little they could do at a time when immediate action was demanded than initiate a bombardment -- with the consequences that we all see.
What seems clear is that Israel's instinctive reaction was to think of Gaza as a Hamas fortress and therefore as a target. That view had some validity for Gaza City, perhaps, but Kathleen is among the voices that think this is an absurd and monstrous attitude to take towards the whole strip.
And, of course, that it may be that when it came down to on-the-ground details, like the assault on al-Shifa, Israel was operating with both bad intelligence and callous disregard for basic standards. I don't know, I wasn't there. But that's where the intense focus is now.
Thanks Tom. I've never read Haaretz before. I started reading The Times of Israel a few weeks ago. It's got that wartime booster feel but at least there's some actual reporting in there when I dig a little.
Thank you for taking the time to write the original post, and also to reply to my question (as did Kathleen), and also to engage her criticisms. This is the most adult place I've seen these questions tackled since this horror started.
You're welcome, and thanks for reading. I'm not dissing the Economist btw -- see Kathleen's and my processing of that -- but Haaretz gives one more of a sense of the debate within Israel and its sensitivity to the debate elsewhere.
I actually thought that behavior of the Israelis in Al Shifa was quite appropriate. As you may have noticed, I support the Israeli ground campaign but not the air campaign.
The first quote in the economist was from the Israeli Air Force, and the second was from the official spokesperson for the IDF Admiral Daniel Hagari.
So much for dismissing my quotes as coming from Israeli extremists. Did you bother to read my entire post?
One, I said it "may be" - we are waiting to find out whether the hospital was a command center (or stood over one) or was simply being normally defended against attack. We don't know. So the Israeli behavior may have been appropriate, as you say, or it may not have been.
Two, I agree with you that a risky ground war clears some moral barriers more easily and can use the "fog of war" excuse more readily than an indiscriminate air attack (of we're on tricky ground here), but the whole point of comparing this conflict to a "total war" was to raise the question of whether we have passed the point where such distinctions hold sway, regardless how much third parties condemn their non-observance. Such events attain their own logic and are hard to stop, because the thinking of The Economist's sources starts to seem normal. My title for the piece was "What could push the US back into heavyweight Mideast peacemaking?" and the second two-thirds of the essay explore that question. It would make me very happy is a speech like Jon Ossoff's on Wednesday signaled the start of that turn.
Tom Barson tried to discredit my Economist quotes as possibly from Israeli extremists. In fact, the first quote was from the Israeli Air Force, and the second was from the official spokesperson for the IDF Admiral Daniel Hagari.
I think proposing to literally flatten Gaza represents a view most would consider extreme. Had this been the actual policy and plan, the hospital would no longer have existed by the time the Israelis reached it.
The overall damage, of course, has been colossal and threatens to get worse. That's the reason the essay began with the image it did.
I quoted the Israeli Air Force as saying that they had dropped 6000 bombs in the first week, and I quoted Admiral Daniel Hagari as saying that they were aiming for damage rather than precision.
I did not quote anybody, official or otherwise, as saying that they planned to flatten Gaza.
To me it is clear that the policy of the Israeli Government is not to flatten Gaza—I never said it was. However, destroying 45% of the housing stock seems to be just fine.
Why did you assign to me an extremist quote that I never brought up?
The mainstream publications that are covering the bombing best, are The Economist and Reuters.
In the first week, the Israeli Air Force dropped more than 6000 bombs.
The IDF spokesman said that their emphasis was on destructiveness rather than accuracy. When there are civilians around, international law demands that the emphasis be on accuracy.
The UN estimates from aerial photos that 45% of Gazan housing is destroyed or damaged. That is with winter coming on. If the Russians had been able to do that to Ukraine, the world would be screaming.
Oct 19, 2023 — The Israeli Air Force claims to have dropped nearly 6,000 bombs on the narrow strip of land in the first week of the war—more than the yearly ...
Oct 14, 2023 — There will be no buildings.” Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson ... Then, he added: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Neither ...
Gaza war inflicts catastrophic damage on infrastructure and economy
Reuters
November 17, 20238:28 AM CSTUpdated 8 hours ago
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quoting data from the Palestinian public works and housing department, said Israeli attacks had destroyed more than 41,000 housing units and damaged more than 222,000 housing units. In all, it said at least 45% of Gaza's housing units had reportedly been damaged or destroyed.
Thank you so much. This Substack might be the first "place" I've found a treatment of the military action in Gaza that isn't hopelessly biased in one way or another. We are talking about massive levels of death and suffering, so it's understandable that people have trouble being objective. On the other hand it's circumstances like this in which accuracy and precision are the most important, especially including the ability to say "I don't know yet" regarding the facts on the ground.
I need some time to work through this. I subscribed to the print version of The Economist for years but I've let it lapse. Might be time to renew.
Thanks again for taking the time to lay all of this out in reply to my question.
"The demonstrators calling a ceasefire do not always show the same sympathy for Israeli hostages as they do for Gazan civilians under bombardment."
I am not a demonstrator and I do not call for a ceasefire. What I do call for is an end to aerial bombardment especially of S Gaza. S Gaza is now perfectly accessible to IDF land forces.
I have the same level of sympathy for Israeli hostages as for Gazan civilians. Are probably 200 hostages left alive but there are over 2 million Palestinian civilians, most of them in South Gaza.
Thus, the weight of my sympathy for one side is great, but for the other side it is crushing.
Thanks for the comment, Kathleen. I probably should not have attempted to qualify "sympathy." (But I think your stance is covered later in the paragraph.)
Oil is undoubtedly important in the Middle East. But I do not understand what this piece is arguing. What oil interests does Israel serve by occupying the Palestinians?
Israel is a regional superpower who is a close ally of the US. It has security partnerships with other allies like Saudi Arabia. The Palestinian issue is, if anything, an irritant in even closer relationships between Israel and the other US allies in the region.
A more relevant example is Egypt after 1967. In the 1967 war -- when the military occupation of Palestine began --- Israel also conquered Sinai from Egypt. Egypt threatened to go to war unless Israel returned it. Recall that there were Soviet miliary advisers in Egypt at the time.
There was indeed a war in 1973, and afterwards -- under US pressure -- Israel indeed returned the Sinai in 1979. Egypt kicked out the Soviet advisors and hopped on to the US train. Now Egypt is a fairly reliable US ally who gets a fair amount of military aid.
Second, I think the your examples are bleed-through from the other great US geopolitical preoccupation, what we used to call the Cold War, and what has are resurfaced as a great power competition with Russia and China. So, sure the US was happy to get Russian advisors out of Egypt, but I would argue that it was far more relieved that Israeli-Egyptian accord reduced the chances of another MidEast war and another oil embargo. Today, with Europe trying to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, preventing such a disruption is just as important as in the "old days" of the Cold War.
For a more developed view of "geopolitics from the standpoint of energy," I really recommend the Helen Thompson "Disorder" book that I mention in the note following the essay. She distills a number of sources, including Daniel Yergin's still-wonderful "The Prize."
However, I don't really see how the comment addresses the point I made. Let me restate, if only to clarify.
I'm saying that we agree that oil is important to US interests in the Middle East, but the occupation of Palestine doesn't serve them -- if anything it is an irritant. I don't see any argument in the article that Israel's occupation serves any US interests. Therefore, I don't see why this factor creates an obstacle to solving the conflict.
I gave the example of Egypt, who also lost territory in the 1967 war. The main issue between Israel and Egypt was the Israeli occupation of Sinai -- not the Soviet advisors. Sure, they helped exacerbate the problem, but the problem was there independently of them. We can establish this fact by looking at what happened when Israel gave back the Sinai: the Soviet advisors became irrelevant, were kicked out and Egypt became a US and Israeli ally.
The 1967 war did raise Israel's stock in the US considerably: Israel defeated multiple Arab armies and helped defeat Arab nationalism. For instance, Gamal Nasser of Egypt never recovered from the 1967 defeat. But: winning a war is different from continuing an occupation. The latter, by itself, doesn't serve any US interests.
OK, I'm going to ignore the Egypt and Soviet advisors example, which perhaps distracted me, and just answer your question directly.
"What oil interests does Israel serve by occupying the Palestinians?"
Answer: None. It's the opposite; it's that Israel does NOT currently threaten the flow of oil by occupying the Palestinians. For all the sound and fury, Israel's actions have not been destabilizing with respect to the oil flows, as they were in the 1970s. And so the US has no motive to become the broker and guarantor of some imposed compromise between Israel and the Palestinians, one which possibly the majorities on both sides would reject and which the extremes on both sides would seek to undermine, possibly through terror directed at US troops or the US itself. For the US to get involved in a way that might leave it "owning" the solutions, things would have to get much worse (in terms of the US's ability to do its job of keeping oil moving) than they are today.
What I just wrote is what I take to be the geopolitics (i.e., long-term tending to essential interests) of the extreme case of "heavyweight" US peacemaking. There is also the domestic politics of the issue (which could unseat the Democrats, since their coalition includes elements of both sides) and also involves less extreme cases of US public pressure upon and behind-scenes arm-twisting of the Israelis to show "moderation," etc. I think this low-level arm-twisting will continue, I think it will have some effect, but I do not think it will go so far as to make US aid contingent upon some solution that an Israeli government could not survivably accept. That's just my hunch, but here I acknowledge that destabilized US politics are a wild card.
I think this is a case where intellectuals get bolluxed up by their intelligence and end up spewing nonsense. In what world will Hamas hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority? In what world can Hamas be trusted on anything at all? When someone says they want you destroyed, dead, r*ped, and decapitated, you should take him at his word. A "ceasefire"? Would Imperial Japan's calls for a ceasefire a few weeks after Pearl Harbor have been taken seriously by anyone? A two-state solution is actually being discussed with a straight face right now? Who among those advocating this would agree to live next door to barbarians who had just [brutally harmed] some of their family members ... and streamed it live? Answer: none of them.
The panic from the Left is that Israel is finally decapitating Hamas; thus the UN/Europe/Biden's frantic demands for a "pause" to let Hamas escape, rearm, and retrench. And the planet's 50 majority-Muslim nations, and the Arab world, are terrified that someone might ask them to accept some - even one! - of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, 99% of whom are Muslim, according to the US State Department. 17% of Israelis are Muslim and Christian voting citizens of the Jewish State. Once an Arab or Muslim nation can match that, then we'll talk. Until then, Israel should do what is necessary for her own people.
As for the US, we should remember that 36 Americans were murdered by Hamas on 10/7, and we have not lifted a finger to bring justice to their killers. Ten Americans are still being kept as human shields. Arming Israel is a way for America to avenge American deaths without putting a single American boot on the ground, as Biden is suggesting with a multi-lateral "peace-'keeping'" force. Another gift to Trump: Biden sending young Americans to stand guard on the Hamas/Gaza-Israel border.
The idea that Hamas terrorists, elected by Gazans 17 years ago - and that this author concedes have hundreds of thousands of supporters in Gaza today - should be free from retaliation provided they embed among hospitals and other human shields, is a preposterous position that America would never impose on itself (although Obama got close with our rules of engagement in Afghanistan) and that we would never ask any non-Jewish ally to accept.
The last good information on does an attitudes about Hamas was a survey taken by a Palestinian American academic less than 60 days ago. It shows that only a minority of Gazans support Hamas. Since there are 2.3 million people in Gaza, 25 percent still equals about 600,000. But that means there are 1.6 million Gazans who want them to drop dead.
AMANEY JAMAL: Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6, 2023. So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now. But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas,
Your observation that this is a “total war” is essential to understanding what is happening and what must be done. Hamas is, like Al Qaeda and ISIS, an offshoot of the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood. This is the reason that Egypt is reluctant to have an influx of Gazan refugees. Hamas is dedicated to the eradication of Jews from the Palestine region and is willing to martyr themselves and millions of other Muslims to “purify” the region from infidels. Sadly, any Palestinians who are not fully on board with their zealotry are considered infidels as well subject to Hamas’s “final solution.”
Israel is being forced to fight by “Hamas rules” which are to the death no holds barred. Are the Israelis being savage because they are cruel? No, they are so because this is a savage total war on Islamofascism and standard rules of modern combat do not apply. One cannot negotiate with a fascist death cult and total surrender is the only possible end point. Yes, Hamas has 200 Jewish hostages and 2 million Palestinian ones all of which are considered expendable in achieving the “purity” of the region as sacred ground for Islamists. The problem with extremists is there can be no middle ground only total war and martyrdom. Israel knows how to fight at this primal level and the U.S. needs to back away until the bloody barbaric job is complete… Hamas rules.
I totally support Israel's ground campaign in Gaza. However, the IDF bombing campaign is doing far more to kill civilians than it is to eliminate Hamas. The bombing of S Gaza where Israel told people to find refuge is particularly abhorrent. There is absolutely nothing that Israel can accomplish by poorly targeted bombing that they can't accomplish by well targeted ground demolition.
Do you actually think that Israel in the middle of an existential war is wasting ordinance on indiscriminate bombing? Yes, the carnage is abhorrent, but that is Hamas's goal to draw Israel into a total war to the death. This is only recently abnormal. Hamas is dragging Israel into a 12th century war in the 21st century and we are shocked. Again, Israel remembers how to operate at this regressed level and will do what is necessary to perceiver. My father fought fascists in Europe during WWII using total war tactics and the Middle East war against Islamofacism is being fought using similar tactics of total annihilation. Is it horrible? Yes. Is it necessary? Sadly, yes.
The only way this could possibly turn into an existential war for Israel is if Iran smuggled a bomb into Israel and detonated it.
Look at the score. Israel got sloppy with its perimeter defense. a criminal gang called Hamas snuck out one night and killed 1400 and kidnapped another 200. The first five minutes of the first period yielded a score of 1400 for Hamas zero for Israel.
Now we are part way through the second quarter. Hamas hasn't scored any more points, but Israel has racked up at least 10,000 Gazan deaths, only a small percentage of them Hamas. BTW, I am totally in favor of Israel's ground offensive: it is only the air offensive that I object to.
I think you'd have a hard time finding a bet that doesn't say Israel wins.
Yes, Hamas wants to annihilate Israel, but Hamas cannot be an existential threat until it is able to annihilate Israel.
Several times in the past, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt attempted to conquer Israel and failed. How could a criminal gang like Hamas, with an estimated 20 to 30,000 fighters, ever do what they could not do?
Indeed, the Israel ground offensive is going better than it I thought. They pretty much have control of Gaza City on the ground level, not the subterranean level.
Nov 18, 2023·edited Nov 18, 2023Liked by Tom Barson
Hamas knows it can't win in a direct fight, but it can do a lot of damage on the informational war front. By attacking Israeli civilians and retreating back into densely populated Gaza, Hamas knows it will force Israel into an ugly duel to the death. Sure, Israel will likely be the winner of the fight, but Hamas sacrificing itself (and Gazas civilians) for the Islamists of the world is garnering all sorts of geopolitical wins in the Arab world. For Israel it is damned if you do, damned if you don't. By not eliminating Hamas all sorts of other flavors of Islamists will be emboldened. By savagely competing by Hamas rules Israel will pay a huge political price with the rest of the world. Again, Hamas is calling the shots here, not Israel. Inshallah...
I think many take this view, John. Still, it attributes a sort of strategic fatalism to Hamas's military wing that they may not have possessed. It's also possible that they believed they could provoke an Israeli response that would bring Hezbollah and Haathi directly and Iran semi-directly into the war near-term. If that's the case, it's been a miscalculation (so far).
You said that only a small percentage of the dead in Gaza were Hamas. Do you have reliable information to back that claim? And if so, what is a "small percentage"? I'm curious because I have not seen a lot of information about how many Hamas fighters were among the dead.
Prior to 2023, the deadliest Hamas-Israel War was in 2014, in which the Gazan Health Ministry reported that 2310 Palestinians were killed. Once the war ended, the UN investigated the identities of the dead to try to determine whether they were civilians or not.
- The **United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)** stated that **72% to 84%** of the fatalities were civilians².
Given that most of the known deaths have come in 2023 from bombing, I would suspect that the percentage of civilian casualties would be even higher. I applaud the Israeli ground campaign, because I think they have a much better chance of killing Hamas terrorists as opposed to blowing up civilians.
The use of human shields is nothing new in warfare. In asymmetrical terrorist warfare and psyops, the more deaths of civilians the better for Hamas’s cause. To Hamas, the cause - to eliminate Jews and Westerners from Palestine - justifies any means. Yes, they probably envisioned a regional uprising of fellow Islamists but so far sanity rather than zealotry has prevailed.
Provoking military response while hiding among civilians is a cruelly calculated tactic to turn world opinion against Israel and bolster Hamas’s claim of victimhood. The population of Gaza are hostages of Hamas and their sacrifice will be used as a weapon. Can Hamas “out-crazy” Israel or will this terror backfire as ISIS did leading to general condemnation and disgust? Hamas is declaring a medieval total war designed to shock contemporary sensibilities. They are betting they can use our “soft” morality against us. This is right out of the ISIS playbook and the rubble of Syria next door is a testament to the level of savagery Hamas is willing to embrace.
This needs to be taken out of the hands of the principals. Despite being fully capable, the parties have failed and with 20k dead now the ante has been upped. This is now Bosnia/Kosovo/Serbia.
I think this conflict, like many others in recent decades, is showing that conventional war (the kind that comes with “laws of war” attached) was a historical anomaly. Future wars will be more like Bosnia, Rwanda, Ukraine and Syria than more restrained, orderly conflicts like the Yom Kippur War or the Gulf War.
We in the “civilized” West thought humanity was past the brutality of the ancient world, but it never went away. A high death toll by itself does not mean a war is unjust (look at the civilian death tolls in Dresden in 1945 and Mosul in 2017). If such a death toll is necessary to rid the world of Hamas (a legion of vicious barbarians that brings no good to anyone on this planet), so be it. It is not the fault of Israel that these monsters use human shields.
The rest of the world had close to two decades to eliminate Hamas, but chose not to. Thank God Israel is finally doing so.
Really thoughtful essay. Not sure I buy the resource idea so much post oil shock in the 1970's but this offers a fascinating alternative viewpoint on this conflict.
Thanks for the comment, Sam.
Last year, when I was helping to update an economics textbook, I found some links on energy unrest (easy, because 2022 was a "bad year"). I love this one from the BBC:
Fuel protests gripping more than 90 countries
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63185186
October 17, 2022
[Animated map show energy cost protests worldwide by week in 2022.]
And this one, from the World Bank, detailed the types of measures governments took to counteract the energy price shock
Amid energy price shocks, five lessons to remember on energy subsidies
https://blogs.worldbank.org/energy/amid-energy-price-shocks-five-lessons-remember-
energy-subsidies
May 13, 2022
[Has a table listing countries taking energy cost stabilization measures. Has a list of five
caveats and recommendations.]
So the point is that energy price swings/shocks can be destabilizing and one of the United States' "jobs" in the world is, as much as possible, to prevent instability in the Middle East from becoming a source of these shocks.
Helen Thompson's book was helpful to organize my thinking on this subject, but the lit on energy unrest goes back a ways.
It does so need. The Economist suggested last week that the set of Israel-recognizing Arab states could take the lead. But Hamas is the hot potato all these states fear.
Absolutely
"What I see resembles a total war, albeit in miniature, in which each side’s stated objective is to destroy the other."
This is the fatal defect of your viewpoint. There are not two sides in this war, there are three: (1) Israel, (2) Hamas and its militant supporters, and most numerous (3) 2+ million Palestinian civilians, who have not had a chance to voice their opinion for 15 years. Is the last group that is suffering and the dying. It is so convenient to leave them out of the picture—it simplifies things gigantically.
I am not condemning the Israel ground invasion, but I think their cowardly and poorly targeted bombing of civilians will be condemned by the ICC as a war crime.
Yes, in your sense of "side" there are always three (at least). The sense I intended was "combatants."
There are not always three sides. In Stalingrad, it was an invading army against a united city of civilians. The same was true in the 1000-day long siege of Leningrad.
But in the present case, you totally ignore the fact that two well-armed combatants are fighting in the equivalent of a childcare center, an old folk's home, and a place where a lot of normal people are trying just to live.
Your viewpoint is a convenient, but grotesque, simplification of reality. You call on us to remember the 200 hostages but totally ignore the two million Gazans. Until you issue a “plan” that takes those two million fully into account, I am not buying.
But I can't agree with this. Stalingrad, was defended, inch by inch, by a Soviet army group. The ordinance fired at them and on them killed civilians in droves, as it always does in these siege situations. The fire they returned killed civilians overrun by the German advance. Hospitals, schools, and old-folks homes were not privileged by either side. You can't place civilians on the board in one case and remove them in the other.
For all that, the piece I wrote reaches the conclusion that first despite the parallels between Stalingrad and Gaza, we (the US) probably could do something for the civilians in the Gaza case, and second, we probably won't unless long-term US policy goals in the region (which I called "stability" but could be further elaborated) are threatened.
Lead-time requirements meant that I couldn't take developments like Jon Ossoff's Wednesday night Senate speech, in which he tied a more measured Israeli response to US "national security", into account. I was happy to hear that speech and hope that others take up the theme.
My point was that the vast majority of the civilians in Stalingrad supported the Soviet defense of their city. I don't know the specifics of Stalingrad, but I know that in Leningrad every inhabitant of the city contributed to the defense by digging trenches and other means of supporting the military.
The sight of hundreds of thousands of Gazans fleeing to South Gaza shows that they are not working to support Hamas's defense of its interests.
Indeed, a survey completed by a Palestinian American University Professor which ended on 10/6 [note the date] showed that 20% of Gazans have confidence in Hamas to represent the interests of Gaza. If the people of Gaza supported Hamas, they would be volunteering to pick up automatic weapons and shoot at Israelis. The women of Gaza would be strapping on explosive vests and trying to kill Israeli soldiers. Instead, they are fleeing S, leaving their homes and worldly goods behind in a clear demonstration that this is not THEIR fight.
Hamas is a parasite on Gaza, not a representative of Gaza. Just as the Mafia was a parasite on Italian immigrant communities, not their representative.
If you can't wrap your head around the difference between Stalingrad and Gaza, that is a sad thing.
You mentioned the citizens the civilians of Gaza as an afterthought in your post. I have been thinking about them since the Israeli bombing campaign began.
PS: if you want a link to that survey, I will dig it up.
That's not the only survey. A pretty detailed one from a few days ago showed between 70 and 80% support for Hamas post 10/7. I don't know whether to believe this, but just point out there are other numbers out there.
But surely you are making way too much of pretty contingent differences between Leningrad and Stalingrad and the Strip. In the first two cases the civilians had nowhere to go and they had a effective (and ruthless) governmental authority to organize their resistance. The Nazis didn't issue evacuation advisories or create windows for refugee movements. The battle of Stalingrad was a catastrophe for its inhabitants, yet a huge victory for Russia and its allies. These go hand in hand. Don't romanticize the former.
How could anyone take anything approaching a high quality survey of Gaza sentiment after ten/seven? You will have to get me a link to that before I can think of it as anything more of your than your poor memory or someone's big lie.
The last good information on attitudes about Hamas was a survey taken by a Palestinian American academic less than 60 days ago. It shows that only a minority of Gazans support Hamas. Since there are 2.3 million people in Gaza, 25 percent still equals about 600,000. But that means there are 1.6 million Gazans who want them to drop dead.
AMANEY JAMAL: Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6, 2023. So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So, we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now. But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas,
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-amaney-jamal.html
Kathleen, what is the best source of public information we have to supply evidence that the Israeli military has purposefully targeted civilians rather than military targets with its bombs? There just isn't that much out there and I am having trouble coming up with data I can trust.
Chris, I would not ignore Haaretz as a source, both torn and critical, of everything about this war. You can get their email newsletters and read several articles a day for free.
https://www.haaretz.com/
I subscribe to the Economist and agree with Kathleen that it is a very good source. But I would not conclude that every quote they unearth from a wrathful Israeli spokesperson or operative is the whole story. Israel was caught by surprise and without a plan. There was little they could do at a time when immediate action was demanded than initiate a bombardment -- with the consequences that we all see.
What seems clear is that Israel's instinctive reaction was to think of Gaza as a Hamas fortress and therefore as a target. That view had some validity for Gaza City, perhaps, but Kathleen is among the voices that think this is an absurd and monstrous attitude to take towards the whole strip.
And, of course, that it may be that when it came down to on-the-ground details, like the assault on al-Shifa, Israel was operating with both bad intelligence and callous disregard for basic standards. I don't know, I wasn't there. But that's where the intense focus is now.
Thanks Tom. I've never read Haaretz before. I started reading The Times of Israel a few weeks ago. It's got that wartime booster feel but at least there's some actual reporting in there when I dig a little.
Thank you for taking the time to write the original post, and also to reply to my question (as did Kathleen), and also to engage her criticisms. This is the most adult place I've seen these questions tackled since this horror started.
You're welcome, and thanks for reading. I'm not dissing the Economist btw -- see Kathleen's and my processing of that -- but Haaretz gives one more of a sense of the debate within Israel and its sensitivity to the debate elsewhere.
I actually thought that behavior of the Israelis in Al Shifa was quite appropriate. As you may have noticed, I support the Israeli ground campaign but not the air campaign.
The first quote in the economist was from the Israeli Air Force, and the second was from the official spokesperson for the IDF Admiral Daniel Hagari.
So much for dismissing my quotes as coming from Israeli extremists. Did you bother to read my entire post?
One, I said it "may be" - we are waiting to find out whether the hospital was a command center (or stood over one) or was simply being normally defended against attack. We don't know. So the Israeli behavior may have been appropriate, as you say, or it may not have been.
Two, I agree with you that a risky ground war clears some moral barriers more easily and can use the "fog of war" excuse more readily than an indiscriminate air attack (of we're on tricky ground here), but the whole point of comparing this conflict to a "total war" was to raise the question of whether we have passed the point where such distinctions hold sway, regardless how much third parties condemn their non-observance. Such events attain their own logic and are hard to stop, because the thinking of The Economist's sources starts to seem normal. My title for the piece was "What could push the US back into heavyweight Mideast peacemaking?" and the second two-thirds of the essay explore that question. It would make me very happy is a speech like Jon Ossoff's on Wednesday signaled the start of that turn.
Tom Barson tried to discredit my Economist quotes as possibly from Israeli extremists. In fact, the first quote was from the Israeli Air Force, and the second was from the official spokesperson for the IDF Admiral Daniel Hagari.
I wish Mr Barsen was a lot more careful.
I think proposing to literally flatten Gaza represents a view most would consider extreme. Had this been the actual policy and plan, the hospital would no longer have existed by the time the Israelis reached it.
The overall damage, of course, has been colossal and threatens to get worse. That's the reason the essay began with the image it did.
I quoted the Israeli Air Force as saying that they had dropped 6000 bombs in the first week, and I quoted Admiral Daniel Hagari as saying that they were aiming for damage rather than precision.
I did not quote anybody, official or otherwise, as saying that they planned to flatten Gaza.
To me it is clear that the policy of the Israeli Government is not to flatten Gaza—I never said it was. However, destroying 45% of the housing stock seems to be just fine.
Why did you assign to me an extremist quote that I never brought up?
Got it. See my reply to your references above.
The mainstream publications that are covering the bombing best, are The Economist and Reuters.
In the first week, the Israeli Air Force dropped more than 6000 bombs.
The IDF spokesman said that their emphasis was on destructiveness rather than accuracy. When there are civilians around, international law demands that the emphasis be on accuracy.
The UN estimates from aerial photos that 45% of Gazan housing is destroyed or damaged. That is with winter coming on. If the Russians had been able to do that to Ukraine, the world would be screaming.
Mapping the destruction in Gaza
The Economist
https://www.economist.com › briefing › 2023/10/19
Oct 19, 2023 — The Israeli Air Force claims to have dropped nearly 6,000 bombs on the narrow strip of land in the first week of the war—more than the yearly ...
Is Israel acting within the laws of war?
https://www.economist.com › is-israel-acting-within-th...
Oct 14, 2023 — There will be no buildings.” Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson ... Then, he added: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Neither ...
https://www.economist.com/is-israel-acting-within-the-laws-of-war-in-gaza
Gaza war inflicts catastrophic damage on infrastructure and economy
Reuters
November 17, 20238:28 AM CSTUpdated 8 hours ago
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quoting data from the Palestinian public works and housing department, said Israeli attacks had destroyed more than 41,000 housing units and damaged more than 222,000 housing units. In all, it said at least 45% of Gaza's housing units had reportedly been damaged or destroyed.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-war-inflicts-catastrophic-damage-infrastructure-economy-2023-11-17/
Thank you so much. This Substack might be the first "place" I've found a treatment of the military action in Gaza that isn't hopelessly biased in one way or another. We are talking about massive levels of death and suffering, so it's understandable that people have trouble being objective. On the other hand it's circumstances like this in which accuracy and precision are the most important, especially including the ability to say "I don't know yet" regarding the facts on the ground.
I need some time to work through this. I subscribed to the print version of The Economist for years but I've let it lapse. Might be time to renew.
Thanks again for taking the time to lay all of this out in reply to my question.
"The demonstrators calling a ceasefire do not always show the same sympathy for Israeli hostages as they do for Gazan civilians under bombardment."
I am not a demonstrator and I do not call for a ceasefire. What I do call for is an end to aerial bombardment especially of S Gaza. S Gaza is now perfectly accessible to IDF land forces.
I have the same level of sympathy for Israeli hostages as for Gazan civilians. Are probably 200 hostages left alive but there are over 2 million Palestinian civilians, most of them in South Gaza.
Thus, the weight of my sympathy for one side is great, but for the other side it is crushing.
Thanks for the comment, Kathleen. I probably should not have attempted to qualify "sympathy." (But I think your stance is covered later in the paragraph.)
Oil is undoubtedly important in the Middle East. But I do not understand what this piece is arguing. What oil interests does Israel serve by occupying the Palestinians?
Israel is a regional superpower who is a close ally of the US. It has security partnerships with other allies like Saudi Arabia. The Palestinian issue is, if anything, an irritant in even closer relationships between Israel and the other US allies in the region.
A more relevant example is Egypt after 1967. In the 1967 war -- when the military occupation of Palestine began --- Israel also conquered Sinai from Egypt. Egypt threatened to go to war unless Israel returned it. Recall that there were Soviet miliary advisers in Egypt at the time.
There was indeed a war in 1973, and afterwards -- under US pressure -- Israel indeed returned the Sinai in 1979. Egypt kicked out the Soviet advisors and hopped on to the US train. Now Egypt is a fairly reliable US ally who gets a fair amount of military aid.
First, great handle!
Second, I think the your examples are bleed-through from the other great US geopolitical preoccupation, what we used to call the Cold War, and what has are resurfaced as a great power competition with Russia and China. So, sure the US was happy to get Russian advisors out of Egypt, but I would argue that it was far more relieved that Israeli-Egyptian accord reduced the chances of another MidEast war and another oil embargo. Today, with Europe trying to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, preventing such a disruption is just as important as in the "old days" of the Cold War.
For a more developed view of "geopolitics from the standpoint of energy," I really recommend the Helen Thompson "Disorder" book that I mention in the note following the essay. She distills a number of sources, including Daniel Yergin's still-wonderful "The Prize."
Thanks for the reply. I'll check the book out.
However, I don't really see how the comment addresses the point I made. Let me restate, if only to clarify.
I'm saying that we agree that oil is important to US interests in the Middle East, but the occupation of Palestine doesn't serve them -- if anything it is an irritant. I don't see any argument in the article that Israel's occupation serves any US interests. Therefore, I don't see why this factor creates an obstacle to solving the conflict.
I gave the example of Egypt, who also lost territory in the 1967 war. The main issue between Israel and Egypt was the Israeli occupation of Sinai -- not the Soviet advisors. Sure, they helped exacerbate the problem, but the problem was there independently of them. We can establish this fact by looking at what happened when Israel gave back the Sinai: the Soviet advisors became irrelevant, were kicked out and Egypt became a US and Israeli ally.
The 1967 war did raise Israel's stock in the US considerably: Israel defeated multiple Arab armies and helped defeat Arab nationalism. For instance, Gamal Nasser of Egypt never recovered from the 1967 defeat. But: winning a war is different from continuing an occupation. The latter, by itself, doesn't serve any US interests.
OK, I'm going to ignore the Egypt and Soviet advisors example, which perhaps distracted me, and just answer your question directly.
"What oil interests does Israel serve by occupying the Palestinians?"
Answer: None. It's the opposite; it's that Israel does NOT currently threaten the flow of oil by occupying the Palestinians. For all the sound and fury, Israel's actions have not been destabilizing with respect to the oil flows, as they were in the 1970s. And so the US has no motive to become the broker and guarantor of some imposed compromise between Israel and the Palestinians, one which possibly the majorities on both sides would reject and which the extremes on both sides would seek to undermine, possibly through terror directed at US troops or the US itself. For the US to get involved in a way that might leave it "owning" the solutions, things would have to get much worse (in terms of the US's ability to do its job of keeping oil moving) than they are today.
What I just wrote is what I take to be the geopolitics (i.e., long-term tending to essential interests) of the extreme case of "heavyweight" US peacemaking. There is also the domestic politics of the issue (which could unseat the Democrats, since their coalition includes elements of both sides) and also involves less extreme cases of US public pressure upon and behind-scenes arm-twisting of the Israelis to show "moderation," etc. I think this low-level arm-twisting will continue, I think it will have some effect, but I do not think it will go so far as to make US aid contingent upon some solution that an Israeli government could not survivably accept. That's just my hunch, but here I acknowledge that destabilized US politics are a wild card.
I think this is a case where intellectuals get bolluxed up by their intelligence and end up spewing nonsense. In what world will Hamas hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority? In what world can Hamas be trusted on anything at all? When someone says they want you destroyed, dead, r*ped, and decapitated, you should take him at his word. A "ceasefire"? Would Imperial Japan's calls for a ceasefire a few weeks after Pearl Harbor have been taken seriously by anyone? A two-state solution is actually being discussed with a straight face right now? Who among those advocating this would agree to live next door to barbarians who had just [brutally harmed] some of their family members ... and streamed it live? Answer: none of them.
The panic from the Left is that Israel is finally decapitating Hamas; thus the UN/Europe/Biden's frantic demands for a "pause" to let Hamas escape, rearm, and retrench. And the planet's 50 majority-Muslim nations, and the Arab world, are terrified that someone might ask them to accept some - even one! - of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, 99% of whom are Muslim, according to the US State Department. 17% of Israelis are Muslim and Christian voting citizens of the Jewish State. Once an Arab or Muslim nation can match that, then we'll talk. Until then, Israel should do what is necessary for her own people.
As for the US, we should remember that 36 Americans were murdered by Hamas on 10/7, and we have not lifted a finger to bring justice to their killers. Ten Americans are still being kept as human shields. Arming Israel is a way for America to avenge American deaths without putting a single American boot on the ground, as Biden is suggesting with a multi-lateral "peace-'keeping'" force. Another gift to Trump: Biden sending young Americans to stand guard on the Hamas/Gaza-Israel border.
The idea that Hamas terrorists, elected by Gazans 17 years ago - and that this author concedes have hundreds of thousands of supporters in Gaza today - should be free from retaliation provided they embed among hospitals and other human shields, is a preposterous position that America would never impose on itself (although Obama got close with our rules of engagement in Afghanistan) and that we would never ask any non-Jewish ally to accept.
The last good information on does an attitudes about Hamas was a survey taken by a Palestinian American academic less than 60 days ago. It shows that only a minority of Gazans support Hamas. Since there are 2.3 million people in Gaza, 25 percent still equals about 600,000. But that means there are 1.6 million Gazans who want them to drop dead.
AMANEY JAMAL: Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6, 2023. So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now. But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas,
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-amaney-jamal.html
Your observation that this is a “total war” is essential to understanding what is happening and what must be done. Hamas is, like Al Qaeda and ISIS, an offshoot of the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood. This is the reason that Egypt is reluctant to have an influx of Gazan refugees. Hamas is dedicated to the eradication of Jews from the Palestine region and is willing to martyr themselves and millions of other Muslims to “purify” the region from infidels. Sadly, any Palestinians who are not fully on board with their zealotry are considered infidels as well subject to Hamas’s “final solution.”
Israel is being forced to fight by “Hamas rules” which are to the death no holds barred. Are the Israelis being savage because they are cruel? No, they are so because this is a savage total war on Islamofascism and standard rules of modern combat do not apply. One cannot negotiate with a fascist death cult and total surrender is the only possible end point. Yes, Hamas has 200 Jewish hostages and 2 million Palestinian ones all of which are considered expendable in achieving the “purity” of the region as sacred ground for Islamists. The problem with extremists is there can be no middle ground only total war and martyrdom. Israel knows how to fight at this primal level and the U.S. needs to back away until the bloody barbaric job is complete… Hamas rules.
I totally support Israel's ground campaign in Gaza. However, the IDF bombing campaign is doing far more to kill civilians than it is to eliminate Hamas. The bombing of S Gaza where Israel told people to find refuge is particularly abhorrent. There is absolutely nothing that Israel can accomplish by poorly targeted bombing that they can't accomplish by well targeted ground demolition.
Do you actually think that Israel in the middle of an existential war is wasting ordinance on indiscriminate bombing? Yes, the carnage is abhorrent, but that is Hamas's goal to draw Israel into a total war to the death. This is only recently abnormal. Hamas is dragging Israel into a 12th century war in the 21st century and we are shocked. Again, Israel remembers how to operate at this regressed level and will do what is necessary to perceiver. My father fought fascists in Europe during WWII using total war tactics and the Middle East war against Islamofacism is being fought using similar tactics of total annihilation. Is it horrible? Yes. Is it necessary? Sadly, yes.
The only way this could possibly turn into an existential war for Israel is if Iran smuggled a bomb into Israel and detonated it.
Look at the score. Israel got sloppy with its perimeter defense. a criminal gang called Hamas snuck out one night and killed 1400 and kidnapped another 200. The first five minutes of the first period yielded a score of 1400 for Hamas zero for Israel.
Now we are part way through the second quarter. Hamas hasn't scored any more points, but Israel has racked up at least 10,000 Gazan deaths, only a small percentage of them Hamas. BTW, I am totally in favor of Israel's ground offensive: it is only the air offensive that I object to.
I think you'd have a hard time finding a bet that doesn't say Israel wins.
Yes, Hamas wants to annihilate Israel, but Hamas cannot be an existential threat until it is able to annihilate Israel.
Several times in the past, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt attempted to conquer Israel and failed. How could a criminal gang like Hamas, with an estimated 20 to 30,000 fighters, ever do what they could not do?
Indeed, the Israel ground offensive is going better than it I thought. They pretty much have control of Gaza City on the ground level, not the subterranean level.
Hamas knows it can't win in a direct fight, but it can do a lot of damage on the informational war front. By attacking Israeli civilians and retreating back into densely populated Gaza, Hamas knows it will force Israel into an ugly duel to the death. Sure, Israel will likely be the winner of the fight, but Hamas sacrificing itself (and Gazas civilians) for the Islamists of the world is garnering all sorts of geopolitical wins in the Arab world. For Israel it is damned if you do, damned if you don't. By not eliminating Hamas all sorts of other flavors of Islamists will be emboldened. By savagely competing by Hamas rules Israel will pay a huge political price with the rest of the world. Again, Hamas is calling the shots here, not Israel. Inshallah...
I think many take this view, John. Still, it attributes a sort of strategic fatalism to Hamas's military wing that they may not have possessed. It's also possible that they believed they could provoke an Israeli response that would bring Hezbollah and Haathi directly and Iran semi-directly into the war near-term. If that's the case, it's been a miscalculation (so far).
So far...
You said that only a small percentage of the dead in Gaza were Hamas. Do you have reliable information to back that claim? And if so, what is a "small percentage"? I'm curious because I have not seen a lot of information about how many Hamas fighters were among the dead.
Prior to 2023, the deadliest Hamas-Israel War was in 2014, in which the Gazan Health Ministry reported that 2310 Palestinians were killed. Once the war ended, the UN investigated the identities of the dead to try to determine whether they were civilians or not.
- The **United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)** stated that **72% to 84%** of the fatalities were civilians².
Given that most of the known deaths have come in 2023 from bombing, I would suspect that the percentage of civilian casualties would be even higher. I applaud the Israeli ground campaign, because I think they have a much better chance of killing Hamas terrorists as opposed to blowing up civilians.
Jodi Rudoren, “Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead from the Gaza Conflict,” New York Times, August 5, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/civilian-or-not-new-fight-in-tallying-the-dead-from-the-gaza-conflict.html
Thank you
The use of human shields is nothing new in warfare. In asymmetrical terrorist warfare and psyops, the more deaths of civilians the better for Hamas’s cause. To Hamas, the cause - to eliminate Jews and Westerners from Palestine - justifies any means. Yes, they probably envisioned a regional uprising of fellow Islamists but so far sanity rather than zealotry has prevailed.
Provoking military response while hiding among civilians is a cruelly calculated tactic to turn world opinion against Israel and bolster Hamas’s claim of victimhood. The population of Gaza are hostages of Hamas and their sacrifice will be used as a weapon. Can Hamas “out-crazy” Israel or will this terror backfire as ISIS did leading to general condemnation and disgust? Hamas is declaring a medieval total war designed to shock contemporary sensibilities. They are betting they can use our “soft” morality against us. This is right out of the ISIS playbook and the rubble of Syria next door is a testament to the level of savagery Hamas is willing to embrace.
This needs to be taken out of the hands of the principals. Despite being fully capable, the parties have failed and with 20k dead now the ante has been upped. This is now Bosnia/Kosovo/Serbia.
I think this conflict, like many others in recent decades, is showing that conventional war (the kind that comes with “laws of war” attached) was a historical anomaly. Future wars will be more like Bosnia, Rwanda, Ukraine and Syria than more restrained, orderly conflicts like the Yom Kippur War or the Gulf War.
We in the “civilized” West thought humanity was past the brutality of the ancient world, but it never went away. A high death toll by itself does not mean a war is unjust (look at the civilian death tolls in Dresden in 1945 and Mosul in 2017). If such a death toll is necessary to rid the world of Hamas (a legion of vicious barbarians that brings no good to anyone on this planet), so be it. It is not the fault of Israel that these monsters use human shields.
The rest of the world had close to two decades to eliminate Hamas, but chose not to. Thank God Israel is finally doing so.