Excessive Force – Then and Now

The number of casualties, civilian casualties have been far too high. – United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Israeli military activity in Beirut, October 19th, 2024

The protests were launched to demand the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns in what is now Israel, and to call for an end to Israel’s blockade. They culminated on 14 May [2018], on the day of the US embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians commemorate the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands in 1948-9 during the conflict following the creation of the state of Israel. On that day alone, Israeli forces killed 59 Palestinians, in a horrifying example of use of excessive force and live ammunition against protesters who did not pose an imminent threat to life. – Amnesty International, October 19th, 2018

“Excessive force.” “Civilian casualties have been far too high.” Sentiments like these carry tremendous emotional weight. But what do they mean, exactly?

To answer that, let’s look back at the date cited by Amnesty International: May 14th, 2018. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we have a far better understanding of what was actually happening that day – the seventieth anniversary of Israel’s founding, and the day that the United States embassy opened in Jerusalem. With our improved comprehension, we can establish some rules of the game that, even if consciously ignored by the anti-Israel hordes, will help us consider the justice of Israel’s military tactics, and understand better what can fairly be termed “excessive force.”

On May 14th, to protest President Trump’s moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered at the border fence separating Gaza from Israel. While large protests by the Israel-Gaza border had been taking place every Friday since the end of March, this was significantly larger, more intense, and more threatening to Israel. Hamas leaders encouraged the protesters to breach the fence and cross into Israel, and “posted maps and pictures on social media showing the easiest routes to Israeli towns near the border, worrying Israeli authorities that communities could be targeted by arson and vandalism and attempts to kidnap soldiers.”  This was far from an empty threat; “crowds of protesters were seen rushing towards the fence,” and “some young men brought knives and fence cutters. At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them.”

Approximately 60 Palestinians were killed that day, and well over a thousand injured, as the IDF used tear gas as well as live ammunition to prevent anyone from crossing the border into Israel.

Naturally, Israel’s response was condemned by the vast majority of the civilized world. The United Nations held a moment of silence for the Palestinian victims, European nations summoned Israeli ambassadors for the ritual condemnation of the Israeli government, and countless NGOs announced that Israel was guilty of war crimes.

Who stood behind these Gazan protests? According to Matti Friedman of The Free Press, “One of the most striking figures caught on camera at the border was a man screaming in Arabic at followers to cross the border and ‘tear out the hearts’ of Israelis. Most reporters either ignored this call for violence, or decided it was some kind of colorful metaphor. The man was Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander who’d become the terror group’s new Gaza chief the previous year.”

Very few people talk about or remember May 14th, 2018. Looking back at the descriptions in newspapers from that day, however, we clearly see that Hamas was engaged in a dry run of October 7th – a dry run that failed, but which anticipated a far more effective attempt five-and-a-half years later. Indeed, the reported Israeli fears of arson and vandalism woefully underestimated the far more sinister and deadly reality that would occur in 2023.

We rarely know the consequences of an alternate course of action; in this case, however, we do – as that alternate course actually took place on October 7th, 2023. On that tragic day, Israel was blindsided by another Hamas attempt at infiltration; the results, as we now know, were catastrophic.

We know, in other words, that if Israel had used less force on May 14th, 2018, untold numbers of Israelis would have been slaughtered. In Sinwar’s words, the Israelis would have had their hearts ripped out of their chests – a threat which may have sounded like an exaggeration then, but certainly doesn’t anymore. What some called “excessive force” was absolutely necessary; anything less, which would have led to the breaching of the fence and the violent entrance of thousands of Hamas-led protesters into Israel, would have directly led to the deaths of far more Israelis and Palestinians alike.

It seems obvious that any objective analysis of whether a particular course of action was ”excessive” or “disproportionate” must take three factors into account:

1. What makes the action under consideration excessive or disproportionate?
2. What alternative course of action – if any – should have been taken instead?
3. What would have been the likely consequences of that alternative action or inaction?

If you can answer all three questions effectively, demonstrating thereby that a militarily acceptable result could have occurred using less lethal military force, then your argument is worth considering. If you cannot, then you are essentially saying nothing meaningful at all; your reaction is based on emotion at best, and antisemitism at worst. (Deciding that a military response is disproportionate because you recoil at the numbers of enemy or civilian deaths is both emotionally healthy and morally meaningless.)

All of this brings us to United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s assertion that “civilian casualties have been far too high” in Beirut – along with countless other equivalent pronouncements by government officials from almost every country in the world. Even if the casualty count in Gaza and Lebanon is believable (and far too often it is not), the oft-repeated claim that Israel is acting in a disproportionate manner is almost never coupled with responses to the three questions I listed above. Without these responses, such condescending declarations are, at best, empty pandering to an electorate that uses raw emotion and racial bias to determine how it feels about a conflict about which it is utterly ignorant.

Has Israel ever used excessive force? Presumably yes (albeit unintentionally), like any country engaged in a war for survival and where some decisions are inevitably misguided or mistaken. Does Israel use excessive force as a matter of policy? Unquestionably not. When someone argues that it does, we all must demand that he explain how he determined that the force used was excessive, what Israel should have done instead, and how that alternative course of action would have effectively solved the problem while causing fewer casualties.

If these questions remain unanswered, then recognize that the assertion is worthless. Give it the attention – or lack thereof – that it deserves.