A Brutal Utilitarian View of Gaza
There are no survivable alternatives for Israel or the Jewish people
As one whose military experience was strictly non-combatant, and with a family history of fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution across Siberia, my judgements regarding international conflicts tend to be on the harsh side. Israel was caught completely off-guard from an intelligence point of view on October 7, 2023. As was the U.S.A. with Pearl Harbor, and again more grievously on 9/11. While no U.S. officials appear to have suffered accountability consequences for our prior lapses, Netanyahu’s government may fall when the hostilities with Hamas finally drizzle away in the usual protracted and unsatisfactory (to long-term Israeli security) fashion. The daily news hammers home the visions of unfortunate Palestinians suffering under Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas. Thousands have been inadvertently but foreseeably killed and wounded in this military conflict in a largely civilian environment. But I do not view Israel’s response and ongoing rooting out of Hamas as disproportionate under the circumstances. Robert Pape, a political scientist, notes in the Wall Street Journal, “What you’re seeing in Gaza is….the most intense punishment campaigns in history.” As I will note, our own history provides precedence.
Hamas has governed, whether with ongoing active consent or not, the Palestinians in Gaza since 2008 after that population elected them over the Palestinian Authority or Hezbollah. The people were aware of Hamas’ prior, current, and future aims. Hamas’ goals seem twofold: eradicating both Israel as a state and the Jews as a people, and providing just enough livelihood to its populace as to enable them to produce more children for indoctrination as terrorists (“martyrs”). Out of 2.3 million Gazans, about 40+% are under age 15, and are being educated in madrassas teaching Islamist Fundamentalism and UN sponsored schools that indoctrinate them in antisemitism more successfully than our universities do for our youth. One frequent estimate holds there are 20-40,000 actual Hamas “fighters” in Gaza. Other Palestinians might choose to avoid death and destruction from expected Israeli retaliation for Hamas’ butchery. They might try to find solutions whereby they could live in peace and improve their prosperity. They could overcome Hamas with their numbers. 40,000 terrorists with irregular weaponry could not defend themselves against the IDF and an uncooperative populace.
Gazans’ acquiescence and even active support of Hamas is much the same as that of the Germans for the Nazi’s in WWII, and especially the Japanese people of their Emperor and army in that same war. In both cases, and only after the Germans and the Japanese had attacked civilian targets amongst the Allies (the Blitz) and other countries (the rape of Nanking), did the Allies reluctantly respond in attacking Axis civilian populations.
[much of the following is based in detailed information in Wikipedia]:
The infamous Dresden fire-bombing killed 25,000 mostly civilians although Nazi propaganda and even modern far-right German groups claimed up to 200,000-500,000 deaths, calling it mass murder. This despite the fact that American bombers dropped 300,000 warning leaflets over Dresden. Although some military targets of interest were in Dresden and the city had previously been untouched, the city was a feared way station for reinforcement of the eastern front against the Soviets. "Interfering with mass civilian movements” was a key factor in the decision to bomb the city center. Attacking main railway junctions, telephone systems, city administration and utilities would result in "chaos". Britain had ostensibly learned this after the Coventry Blitz, when loss of this crucial infrastructure had “longer-lasting effects than attacks on war plants”. Our attack on Dresden was no less calculated in its specific destructive capacity that the Israeli intent to collapse large networks of tunnels harbored underneath civilian structures. “The bombers attacked first with 4000lb bombs to rupture water mains and blow off roofs, windows, doors to allow the incendiary bomb fire to feed and spread”. At that time, and even since, "pro-Nazi polemicists--use the bombing in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the war crimes committed by the Nazi government and the killing of German civilians by Allied bombing raids." But the concurrent counter arguments bear repeating:
Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris: "Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect."
United States Strategic Bombing Survey: "these attacks left the German people with a solid lesson in the disadvantages of war. It was a terrible lesson; conceivably that lesson, both in Germany and abroad, could be the most lasting single effect " (Apparently not; as argued below that effect may be nebulous depending on the culture of the people)
Almost all the Allied attempts at strategic bombing of military/industrial targets in Japan failed. The main issues defeating all attempts at precision bombing were the jet stream over Japan and heavy cloud cover, as well as the necessary distances flown with a higher fuel load and fewer bombs. In recognition of this failure, as well as the widely distributed network of military production facilities often in homes or civilian neighborhoods, a new commander, Curtis LeMay, decided on a deliberate campaign of firebombing large areas of cities. This was a repeat of the Japanese strategy of bombing civilian city targets in China to terrorize civilians. Here the clear intent was to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties at the minimal cost. The initial planning in 1943 anticipated greater than 500,000 deaths and 7.75 million homeless with 3.5 million evacuees. Careful studies for the most successful incendiary devices and tactics were carried out in the U.S. Nighttime low level non-formation flying was chosen as it reduced fuel requirements and increased bomb load. The plan’s signature event was the Meetinghouse Raid on Tokyo in March 1945. The area in Tokyo chosen was the densest populated and most susceptible to fire due to the wooden and paper structures present. This firestorm caused 100-200,00 casualties, mostly civilian women, children, and elderly. 1 million were left homeless. Overall, the numbers killed, and the area destroyed were greater than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki as individual events. Given the known obstinacy of the Japanese military government and the people themselves, “Few (were) concerned with (the) morality of attack: ‘these attitudes reflected the limited options to end the war which were available at the time’. The thought was to bring the war toa a close more rapidly and save American lives.” As expected, “the Japanese Government encouraged the media to emphasize the extensive scale of the destruction in an attempt to motivate anger against the United States....Reporting focused on the perceived immorality of the attack ... Radio Tokyo reported the attack it labeled as ‘slaughter bombing’... Other radio broadcasts focused on ...the claimed desire of Japanese civilians to continue the war." Despite this initial horror purposefully visited upon the Japanese civilian population, their wholehearted support of their cause, their absolute faith in ultimate victory despite all intervening defeats, appeared unwavering.
Our plans for the invasion and subduing of Japan were more unnerving than those of Israel for eliminating Hamas in Gaza. The Allied plan was well known to the Japanese military given their wartime experiences, the nature of their island homelands, and their military capacities. They had 2.3 million active-duty troops and 28 million trained civilian militia. The other civilian population was no less doughty than the British Home Guard touted by Churchill when a German invasion seemed imminent. Japan expected up to 20 million casualties amongst their people. “American studies suggested 1.7-4 million Allied casualties with 400-800,000 deaths, Japanese deaths 5-10 million.” Small wonder that poison gases were considered and obtained for possible use, and biological warfare entertained. The perceived fanatical devotion to death in battle by all the Japanese people was no less than that of modern Islamist Fundamentalists.
Logistics limited the utility of firebombing campaigns; poison gas was finally judged beyond the pale. Coincident with these two judgements was the success of the nuclear weapons program in late spring/early summer 1945. Trinity successfully exploded in the New Mexico desert July 16. Our government issued the Potsdam Declaration, a blunt demand for unconditional surrender by the Japanese containing the genuine threat of annihilation far beyond that seen with the firebombing campaign. The Japanese Prime Minister rejected the demand out of hand, vowing Japan would fight to the end. Here was a weapon logistically feasible and deliverable but ghastly in its controllability against combined civilian/military targets. When the cost both to the Japanese and the Allies seemed unacceptable in amount of casualties and ongoing duration of warfare, the new possibility of nuclear attack gained purpose. "It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released". A vast number of people, civilian and military, were to be eradicated in the shortest possible moment in the most spectacular attack that would ever be experienced by mankind.
Despite the clear strategic intent, our Commander in Chief ordering the attacks still disregarded the foreseeable consequences, perhaps to assuage his own conscience or to diminish his historical responsibility. Truman’s diary recorded: "This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.” With the clearly known nature of atomic weapons’ destructive power, we knew, if unwilling to admit it, that vast numbers of civilian casualties would result, as had been the intent of the firebombing campaign. Yet no demonstration in kind would be given as a warning to the Japanese government or their people and a clarification of the true meaning of the Potsdam Declaration. “It was to be used without special warning; it was felt that a non combat demonstration would be discounted by the Japanese as propaganda.” After all, this coming degree of destruction would be unbelievable.
Direct predictive warnings had been given during the firebombing campaign, much like those multimedia instructions given by the Israelis to the Gazans before and during IDF attacks on Hamas targets embedded amongst the common people. Leaflets had been used for months to warn Japanese civilians in targeted cities of conventional air raids, which destroyed up to 93% of some cities (currently approximately 80% of the buildings in northern Gaza are damaged or destroyed, higher than Dresden). Historical research indicates that Japanese civilians regarded these messages as truthful, and often evacuated based on their instructions. But their government resisted any dissemination of this information, arresting those found in possession of the leaflets. Hamas has gone further, actively preventing many Palestinians from seeking refuge. Hamas’ decentralization of their fighters amongst the Palestinian civilian population was analogous to the Japanese scattering of their military production facilities amongst and within civilian neighborhoods and homes. Unlike those Japanese efforts, those of Hamas are deliberately chosen to use the civilian population, mostly actively supportive of their cause of genocide, as incidental and often willing shields from Israeli military action. The clearest evidence of this tactic to engage Western morality—which they hold in contempt—is their use of hospitals as centers of shelter, weapons storage, and operational planning and control. A recent video interview (Ben Shapiro, Dailywire.com) shows a Gazan hospital director openly admitting to long term membership as an officer of Hamas and use, with his knowledge, of the hospital to hide various members of Hamas leadership. Despite this blatant disregard by Hamas for the welfare of their “governed” population, and the belief by a large percentage of Palestinians that dying in combat or as unintended innocent victims guarantees accession to paradise, Israel has continued to limit military action in ways designed to minimize civilian casualties. Given the physical constraints of the Gazan battlefields, the brutal savagery of Hamas even towards their own, and the 7th century belief system of the Palestinians molded into a fanatical ideal of self-sacrifice no less deadly than that of the Japanese or core elements of the Nazis, avoidance of significant casualties amongst the non-combatant population including women, children, and the elderly is practically impossible. The obstinacy of many Gazans may sadly have its own historical precedent. “In 332 B.C., it was the last city to resist Alexander the Great’s march to Egypt—an act of defiance that fueled a mythology of a people who would never bow.”
We gave no specific warning to the targets of our atomic bombs due to our desire for maximum shock value—a predecessor to our “Shock and Awe” campaign in Iraq. Hiroshima was considered a high value military target due to its status as a supply and logistics base and key shipping port as well as a large war industrial center. Its geography made it more attractive—the surrounding hills would “focus” destruction on a large area of the city. That same factor spared a lot of Nagasaki, as the second atomic weapon, a larger plutonium device, was dropped off target and exploded above ground but in a valley within the city, shielding large areas from its vaporizing power.
That power killed 66-140,000 with 69,000 injured, many to die later of burns and radiation effects, in Hiroshima. Nagasaki suffered only 35-40,000 killed in a flash with 60,000 injured, perhaps ultimately 60-80,000 killed. After the first blush of disbelief despite Truman broadcasting the nature of the weapons to the Japanese and the confirmation of it by Japanese scientists on August 7. 1945, their government deferred to the military command who felt only one or two more atomic bombs could be used and so “there would be more destruction, but the war would go on.” The same blind insanity drives Hamas to continue their self-defeating resistance at the horrible expense of their own populace, touting that very fact as a kind of pyrrhic victory. Sinwar, the leader of the attacks of October 7 and of Hamas in Gaza, has stated openly that Israel’s high valuation of their own people and soldiers is their weak spot that will be exploited as much as possible. Hamas will not release the hostages without extreme concessions that will enable their further killing and hostage-taking. Given that he was freed amongst 1,000 other Palestinian terrorists and criminals in exchange for 1 Israeli hostage, that viewpoint may be valid. But its corollary is Hamas’ belief that the more of their own civilian population dies or are injured, the greater their progress towards erasing Israel from the world map and butchering all Jews. Hamas, Hezbollah, and their willing subject populations show no signs of changing their resolve to extinguish the Jewish people and to recapture a land that was never in history entirely theirs.
Israel has continued to do everything reasonably possible in an urban battlefield webbed with booby traps, IEDs, tunnels, and guerilla fighters disguised as civilians to minimize civilian casualties with extraordinary measures of warning the populations via phone calls, text messaging, emails, radio broadcasts, and leaflets (note power needed to be on for most of this and is controlled by both Israel and Hamas). Corridors and safe spaces have been specified, inadequate as they may be in such crowded circumstances. That civilian population is certainly aware of Hamas tunnel openings and redoubts, especially in inappropriate areas such as hospital grounds, schools, etc.—these require long periods of excavation and importation of concrete, wiring, interior facilities, etc. and that population chooses to hide their existence and locations from the “invaders”. They are completely aware that Hamas does/will use these facilities to prolong the war above ground and continue the deathly risks to the civilian population. Most have “bought into” the thesis that Israel and the Jews should be eradicated, and Gazan Palestinians should be free from the consequences of Hamas’ actions and their cooperation in these actions. Those consequences are a violation of their international human rights originating in Hamas’ actions and that passive or active cooperation. The reluctance of Israel to provide food, water, and fuel to the population is not a violation given almost complete diversion of those supplies to support Hamas’ war efforts. The endless ongoing litany of “Death to Israel, Death to all Jews” at the willing price of one’s own or one’s child’s life is the “mass formation” psychological process
writes about on a truly mass scale. Israel at peace, Israel at war, Jews in peace, Jews in war, equally damned. We have only seen this before amongst the wartime Japanese and many of the wartime Nazis. The Germans, previously jewels of Western civilization, quickly freed themselves of Hitler’s stuporous slanders. The Japanese were of a non-Western high civilization, but gradually accepted their responsibilities and defeat perhaps due to the combined factors of partial Westernization in evolving to a major naval, air, and ground force after 1854, and their acquiescence to the will of their Emperor, the revered and absolute arbiter of their destiny. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, and their guiding sponsor, Iran, all revere an anachronistic uncivilized version of a 7th century fanaticism that they believe requires their deaths to reach the goal of worldwide dominance of unwilling infidels.Avoiding that fate will require that Israel set aside their most vulnerable social value of the lives of their own, since Hamas actively seeks to sacrifice Gazans and gain more hostages to achieve further killing. The killing of 3 hostages recently by IDF was a predictable and terrible accident of war, no less than the killing of Gaza civilians even when used as shields. Israel should do all MILITARILY to find and release as many hostages as possible, but the horror remains that these hostages, in the absence of IDF action, must be thought of as dead. The costs to Israel’s future and to future Jewish peoples of exchanging wholly dedicated terrorist martyrs by the dozens, hundreds, or thousands for a handful of their own is too great. Would they exchange Nazi concentration camp executioners, or the Munich terrorists? Prior historical alternatives are unlikely or impracticable. Israel cannot hunt down, capture, extract, and try dozens or hundreds of Hamas leaders, nor hunt down most/all Hamas’ active fighters for assassination. They could, now perhaps, kill Hamas’ “diplomats” in Qatar and elsewhere to make a point of their stated resolve to eliminate Hamas. But that result may be as unreachable as killing off the very last cell of a malignancy. Destroying that malignancy into a kind of internationally controllable remission will require many months or even years of continued military intervention in Gaza and perhaps elsewhere, with the same kinds of collateral damage one sees in treating an organic, rather than cultural, cancer. How would such a remission be managed?
If the U.N. was other than an effete joke, they might contribute not by providing logistics to Hamas but by establishing an international coalition of military forces that would assume control of Gaza, the southern border zone of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah, and the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, not as passive peacekeepers but active enforcers of an international mandate (as had happened in Mali). Slow persistent removal of indigenous military capabilities in these areas by the U.N. forces over some years—yes it will require that long—could be accompanied by a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and what will be required for any possible two-state solution, the peaceful removal of Israeli West Bank settlements. The U.N. mandate and forces would require the gradual formation of a third Palestinian controlling government under direct international supervision, as Hamas and Hezbollah are internationally illegitimate on their face and the Palestinian Authority is powerless over their own population. The control of this whole process and the formation and peaceful persistence of a Palestinian state, with the eventual reward very late in the process of entry into formal status with the U.N. rather than the current observer status would be by the now inactive “Trusteeship Council” of the U.N. That body, whose members were elected by the General Assembly, became inactive after 1994 after monitoring the conversion to statehood of the colonies of the great powers. That conversion has been of questionable outcomes, but here we have a very limited area and only 2 people and 2 “nation-states” involved. The U.N. enforcement forces would control and populate buffer zones between Israel and Egypt and Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank. Movement between these areas would be based on the usual international standards of passports and required visas. Such complete control will be absolutely necessary in Gaza, as one to three decades may be required to eliminate the residual hard assets of Hamas and rebuild the infrastructure of basic civilization that has and will be destroyed. Recidivism is expected, and continuing acts of domestic and international terrorism will need pre-fabricated means of suppression, investigation, and adjudication based in the International Court of Justice, with enforcement measures well beyond the “wrist-slapping” seen so often now. Under these circumstances, Islamic Fundamentalism may wither over two to three generations to the more tolerant and peaceful Islam seen in southern Europe between 750 and 1450 A.D.
One could only hope. Hope is not likely to be reality, as Israel has learned repeatedly since 1948. Until important members of the world community are willing and able to agree on appropriate long-term measures of actively suppressing terrorism at a cost that the terrorists and their supporters find unsustainable, Israel has no choice but to continue a brutal and utilitarian policy of quashing Gaza.