How Many Is Too Many?

A question for those who support continuing the offensive in Gaza. An honest question. In other words, not a rhetorical question, but one truly seeking answers. And answers in numbers.

How many deaths would make you call for a ceasefire?

How many IDF troops and/or how many Gazan civilians?

How many is too many for you?

This isn’t just an abstract moral question. It’s central to one’s policy position. In some senses, the most important question.

One answer is, of course, until deterrence is reestablished. But does that mean that there is no number? The entire population of Gaza? The entire IDF? I doubt many of us are committed to such apocalyptic goals or contingencies, though more would obviously accept the former than the latter.

But first, there are two kinds of deterrence. Deterrence isn’t the ability to fend off another horrific attack. Another unthinkable attack. Or an unthinkably more horrific one. Rather, deterrence is the state in which the enemy is dissuaded from launching an attack to begin with.

Our deterrence failed on October 7^th due to Netanyahu’s failed konseptzia, as we refer to strategy now. Because it sounds smarter, I guess. Or something. Under this konseptzia, our deterrence crumbled, and we got caught with our proverbial and literal fatigues down. Hamas was no longer dissuaded from attacking us.

They were no longer deterred because they were aware that we had shifted enormous amounts of weaponry and troops from the Gaza envelope communities to secure the West Bank settlers of Judea and Samaria. And they were aware that we had set up a surveillance network based on advanced cellular technology but failed to secure the cell towers from rudimentary technology like simple drones with simple explosive devices.

There may have been other calculations as well, such as the rift over the past year due to the government’s pursuit of a fundamental reconfiguration of our judicial system without building consensus and in defiance of mass popular opposition. Yes, I know, some blame the protestors for violating the government’s overwhelming mandate to reorganize our system of government in their favor based on 48% of the electorate. But it’s rather hard to believe that this, more than disastrous tactical changes were determining factors of our failure to deter them.

The extent of Hamas’ “success” had to do with things they likely didn’t know. We failed to attend to intelligence. Perhaps most egregiously, arrogant officers dismissed the warnings of tatzpitaniyot (spotters), enlisted women tasked with being our constant eyes and ears in real time. They had raised alarms in the weeks and days before the attack that something was afoot. They had detected mass maneuvers and irregular movements and reported them, fulfilling their duty and doing the jobs they were tasked with. But what did these girls know?

All of this is documented and known. Negligence and arrogance and politicized manipulation of priorities cost us dearly. Over 1,200 dead. Close to 5,000 injured, many seriously. Dozens are still hospitalized four months later. Two hundred fifty-three kidnapped, more than half of whom, living and dead, are still in Gaza.

We had all the means we needed to defend ourselves from Hamas’ subterfuge, strategy, tunnels, and weapons. But they knew we were dropping the ball and vulnerable. Investigations have been promised and they will flesh out many inexcusable details. But we already know the outlines of the calamity. Hamas’ build-up and planning of a multi-pronged attack included unleashing an unprecedented barrage of rockets and missiles, exponentially more than any previous occasion. They knew our Iron Dome units were insufficient and overwhelmed them. Had we had more of them, perhaps that would have deterred them in this aspect. But not in the context of their overall onslaught. They’d built up their arsenal and kept their powder dry for the appropriate moment. We provided them with one.

On the other hand, Hamas has proven highly adept at asymmetrical warfare. They are fanatical annihilationists more than willing to sacrifice their own people to advance their goals. They wanted to spark war on all our borders, even a regional conflict. They failed in that. So far, at least. But we nonetheless played into their hands. They know we are less willing to sacrifice a huge percentage of our fighters than they are. And they, unlike us, are willing to sacrifice a huge percentage of their own people. In fact, the more we kill, the better. Martyrs. Though the idea of involuntary martyrs makes little sense to many of us. How can you die for a cause when you don’t choose to do so? But even then, we’ve often deterred them. At least in the immediate.

This all brings us back to the question of numbers. But it’s not about deterrence. Clearly, we had the capabilities to deter them. We just didn’t use them. And by about October 10^th, we had restored it. Does anyone think they weren’t dissuaded from sending more fighters/murderers/terrorists through the fence at that point? Or any point until then? They are deterred. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad was explicit about their desire to launch “do it twice and three times… and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” They aren’t doing it now. They know they cannot. They are deterred. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they try it? Take the war to us, if you will.

So, now we have sacrificed over 200 soldiers and over 300 more have been wounded. And counting. Killed and maimed in the name of restoring deterrence that didn’t require their deaths, because Hamas was deterred before we sent them in. It only required corrections of grievous errors of deployment and tactical operations.

But while we have possessed immediate deterrent capabilities that successive Netanyahu governments misapplied due to corrupt and confused rationale, we’ve never had long-term deterrence. We’ve never dissuaded Hamas and other Palestinian groups from dreaming of and planning future attacks. Because the idea of deterrence reliant primarily on military violence has always been another flawed konseptzia. Perhaps our biggest one.

In his 1956 eulogy for Roi Rothberg, who was murdered in the fields at Nahal Oz, one of the kibbutzim hardest hit on October 7^th, Moshe Dayan acknowledged the context that many today castigate others for considering in any degree or fashion whatsoever.

For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. It is not among the Arabs in Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roi’s blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate, and see, in all its brutality, the destiny of our generation? Have we forgotten that this group of young people dwelling at Nahal Oz is bearing the heavy gates of Gaza on its shoulders? Beyond the furrow of the border, a sea of hatred and desire for revenge is swelling, awaiting the day when serenity will dull our path, for the day when we will heed the ambassadors of malevolent hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms. 

Beyond the fact that it wasn’t serenity, but arrogance and incompetence that proved the chink in our armor of deterrence on October 7^th, Dayan erred in placing two bad bets.

We are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the cannon’s maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is inflaming and filling the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us. Let us not avert our eyes lest our arms weaken. This is the fate of our generation.

Within the space of three sentences, he pronounced generation in the singular twice, following a previous mention describing the destiny of our generation. All total, three times, and each in the singular. Generation, not generations. After that, it seems by implication, it would no longer be necessary. It has been three generations since then. He and Ben Gurion were correct in recognizing the source of Arab rage as historical and in a sense rational – no, I don’t think the atrocities of October 7^th were justified – not metaphysical and ontological, as some argue today, licensing us to ignore the mounting numbers of dead Gazans. But, in addition to the question of duration of the necessity of deterrence, what he got wrong was that military violence would achieve a new reality in which deterrence would become obsolete in any amount of time.

Dayan, and most of his generation, and the subsequent generation, and perhaps the one after that, envisioned a future in which our enemies will no longer need to be dissuaded because they will no longer be our enemies. He was correct in positing that deterrence must not be the indefinite and permanent answer. And, at any rate, deterrence will always include failures, which might be relatively small, like Rothberg’s murder, though it was far from an isolated occurrence, or catastrophic, like Yom Kippur 1973 or October 2023.

Ultimately, we still have not fully learned the lesson that a konseptizia for true enduring security requires a shift in political objectives and horizons, not simplistic applications of game theory. Many argue that we’ve tried that and refuse to see the flaws in our supposed “generous offers” to the Palestinians. And certainly their leadership bears a great portion of responsibility for the awful suffering of both our peoples. But our konseptzia of deterrence has also proved a failure. After multiple generations, not a single one, we are still locked into the same dynamics of enmity and revenge. Yet diplomatic failures are no more reason to abandon attempts than our failures of deterrence over multiple generations are reason to unilaterally and immediately decommission the IDF and give up defending our people and communities altogether.

There are indeed reasons to completely reconfigure the operations of the IDF in the immediate, urgently, as it works to extend enmity that ultimately makes us less secure, and affects our moral identity. Even if you believe that the doctrines of the IDF are purely defensive, which I dispute, the abuses and tactical decisions have continued to inflame enmity and degrade our morality. We must recognize the failure of the foundational konseptzia that military deterrence will ultimately lead to peace, just as we must drop the Netanyahu konseptzia that we will be made more secure by propping up Hamas in order to maintain an indefinite political rift among Palestinians to avoid their achievement of statehood.

Even if you disagree with this analysis, and even if you believe that it’s possible to eradicate Hamas altogether militarily and achieve whatever our leadership means when they say that the objective is total victory, and the deradicalization of Palestinian society, something that the years between Dayan’s eulogy in 1956 and today give no evidence is achievable by these means, how many soldiers and Gazan civilians are you willing to sacrifice?

How many will be too many for you? How many will lead you to call for a cease fire?

What is your number?

At the time of writing, we’re nearing 30,000 dead in Gaza. It’s a number that is always qualified with “according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry”. But the number of Gazans reported dead in past wars have not proven wildly exaggerated. This number also doesn’t take into account how many more lives will be lost in the near term due to food insecurity, sanitation deficiency, spread of disease, lack of access to medical care, and even simple lack of shelter. Accuracy in estimating them is devilishly difficult at this point, though the ultimate number will almost certainly be horrific. But let’s set it aside. For now.

Let’s say Hamas is exaggerating by a third. It so, the number is 20,000 dead. We don’t know how many of these were non-combatants. Different fractions are offered by different people. But given the destruction of apartment buildings and neighborhoods and civilian institutions, including clinics and hospitals, two thirds non-combatants does not seem hyperbolic. Yet let’s be conservative here as well and say half are civilian deaths. Now we’re at 10,000, which is likely a significant underestimation. This 10,000 certainly includes many children. Likely more than half, but let’s say half. Only five thousand children. You may shrug and shake your head and pronounce the irrefutable fact war is hell and express sincere sadness while pleading necessity as the numbers climb, performing your humanity. But will that putatively unwilling concession to reality hold regardless of the number?

We should certainly be asking our government how many they are willing to accept. Ask the prime minister and defense minister. Ask the war cabinet, the security cabinet, and the full cabinet. Ask all Knesset members, whether in the majority coalition or in the opposition. The question of how many would be much more useful than asking questions that elicit the same hopelessly and terminally vague answer until complete victory. At least follow up with approximately how many are you willing to sacrifice and kill for whatever you mean by ‘complete victory’? And call out deflection and obfuscation for what it is. Such difficult considerations are part of tactical planning for all offensives. The answers are often mistaken in the end. But the questions are asked and estimates taken into account in designing and approving operations.

But we Israeli voters also have a responsibility to ask ourselves this question. Trusting the government and army to make decisions without asking questions is an abdication. No deferrals such as that’s above my pay grade will serve here. Implication is a fact of democracy. Not only can we not evade responsibility given our participation in all sorts of ways like paying our taxes and participating in the economy and consenting to be governed by governments we voted against, we will all bear the consequences, whether we support the government or dissent. It may not be fair, but it’s unavoidable. It will affect our lives and it will affect how we are perceived, and even perceive ourselves. This is a reality in every democracy. Even a broken one, like ours. We have a moral obligation to take a position, even if it may shift.

So, regardless of how you view our deterrent capacities and abilities to eradicate Hamas and deradicalize Palestinian society by killing Palestinian children at this moment, how many IDF troops killed in action is too many and would lead you to support a ceasefire? Five hundred? A thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand?

In terms of civilian Gazan deaths, if 10,000 do not merit your call for a ceasefire, do 15,000?

Let’s invert Abraham’s negotiating strategy when he faces God regarding the imminent annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah:

If 15,000 non-combatant deaths do not merit your call for a ceasefire, do 20,000?

If 20,000 non-combatant deaths do not merit your call for a ceasefire, do 30,000?

If 30,000 non-combatant deaths do not merit your call for a ceasefire, do 40,000?

If not 40,000, then 50,000? How about 75,000? 100,000?

We all have some vague sense. It’s hard to believe that many would support continuing the offensive after 5,000 troops have been killed. Or after 1,000,000 Gazans are dead. Towering mounds and mounds of corpses. Trenches after trenches of mass graves. Far surpassing those we are already seeing.

So, what are your numbers? Don’t flinch and deflect. Ask yourself. And answer.

How many?