The Limits of Force (Part one)
Recently, a friend sent me a videoclip of an interview in which a retired military commander claimed that the war in Gaza could have been over in two to three days had only Israel acted more forcefully, echoing the claims of pundits who argued that Israel’s early war strategy was flawed since too much restraint was shown, civilians were warned, and the initial bombing campaign was too soft. The reasoning went that more bombs should have been dropped, basically leveling Gaza from the get-go, and that the attempts to warn the civilian population allowed Hamas terrorists to escape. Regarding the deaths of Gazans, the argument goes that “there is no such thing as a non-combattant” in Gaza, that all Gazans are responsible for October 7, and that whatever young people are being killed there are either already terrorists or will grow up to be terrorists.
Proponents of this view typically have few if any qualms about the death of Gazans of any variety, since they regard all Gazans as essentially the same regardless of gender, age, or affiliation with Hamas/Islamic Jihad or other “official terrorist groups. Gazans are the enemy.
Thus, they say, it was crucial to respond with overwhelming force. Ostensibly, this would force Hamas to surrender. However, since the majority of those killed would be civilians, rather than Hamas terrorists, why would Hamas care, since, as evidenced by Hamas’s behavior since the very outset of this war, it values its own survival over the welfare of the population of Gaza?
Instead of being content with several thousand deaths, proponents of what I call the “even-more-force” school of thought contend that Israel should have aimed for fifty thousand deaths on those first days of the war, claiming that the deaths of so many at such an early stage would stunned Gazans and conveyed an unequivocal message that would have led Hamas to surrender. Since then, they say, the army has moved too slowly, too indecisively, hampered by hostage-related considerations, international calls for restraint, and the world’s insistence that the people of Gaza be afforded shelter from the violence and extended humanitarian measures. The world’s demands to facilitate humanitarian aid have kept Hamas in power. What kind of humanity was shown to the victims of October 7, they query. What sort of humanity has been shown to our hostages?
They have a point. And I can certainly understand why many Israelis would be tempted to believe that there is a way out of the present situation that doesn’t involve making a deal with our worst enemies, with those who have always sought our destruction. Even after twenty-one months and two weeks, the events of October 7 are still horrifying. I don’t believe that Israelis can be blamed for feeling a lack of empathy toward Palestinian suffering (see “A Call for Compassion”) – I just wish that they felt more compassion for the suffering of other human beings. October 7 notwithstanding, Palestinians are human beings. Many people who had little or nothing to do with the events of that day have been hurt or killed, including, of course, children. I blame Hamas for their deaths, as they chose to wage a war on the backs of a civilian population. But I believe that at some point, Israel should have shifted from a strategy of brute force to an approach that combined diplomacy and defined a goal for the war according to our highest values and priorities. This is where our leadership has failed us.
The time has come for Israelis to accept the limits of force. Contrary to popular belief, force alone cannot solve all of Israel’s problems. Equally disturbing is the apathy toward Palestinian suffering, regardless of the question of who is to blame for it.
“We need to start speaking Arabic,” was a common refrain in the early stages of the war. The meaning of this phrase was, of course, that Israel had been behaving in a way that was “too soft” for the Middle East, and that it was incumbent upon us to “take the gloves off.” However, what does that mean? Israel has always sought to kill terrorists and militants. Therefore, the only way that this phrase can reasonably be interpreted is that, above all else, it alludes to the principle of non-discrimination, or, in other words, what is commonly referred to as “collective punishment.” Punishment in this case not being intended to “educate”, but, rather, to deter. This collective punishment, this “speaking Arabic,” was meant to come in the form of massive bombardment and the cutting off of basic resources such as food, water, electricity, and so forth. The presumption was that such measures would break the will of the population to resist and force the hand of Hamas so that they would release the hostages and surrender.
It is difficult to determine what percentage of Israelis supported “speaking Arabic” in those early stages, but I believe it was high. I remember many people saying it was time to take the gloves off and come down hard on Gaza. There were only lone voices calling for any measure of restraint. Many said they weren’t capable of feeling empathy for Palestinians, as they saw Gazans as bearing a collective responsibility for October 7. What mattered to most Israelis was getting the hostages back and reestablishing security on our southern borders. I, too, wanted the hostages back and wanted Israel to reestablish security for all its citizens. But I was wary of Israel’s goals because even back then, I intuitively felt they were mutually exclusive.
There is no point denying that many Israelis wanted to see Gaza flattened to the ground. Was this desire only based on revenge, or did it also reflect a conviction that, through the use of massive force, Israel could achieve security and return the hostages? Did Israelis believe Gazans would rebel against Hamas?
I do not recall almost anyone coming out against the idea of blockading basic necessities into Gaza – most Israelis felt this was a completely legitimate tactic to force Hamas into compliance, especially after the return of several emaciated hostages. After Eli Sharabi, Or Levi, and Ohad Ben Ami came home and started sharing their stories, whatever remaining sympathy people might have felt for Gazans evaporated. Israelis wanted to see the hostages returned, Hamas defeated, and security re-established on the southern border. We accepted that this was going to be a messy affair and involve civilian deaths, as well as the deaths of many soldiers. We blamed Hamas and its supporters, and viewed the war and its consequences as the inevitable result of Hamas’s strategy and actions before, during, and after October 7.
After Israel’s devastating air campaign at the beginning of the war, in which thousands of people died, including certainly many Hamas terrorists but not only, many Israelis claimed that the bombing campaign had been too soft. It seems they believed that Israel should have wrought even more massive devastation. Granted, in those days, the army still warned civilians in advance to evacuate before razing neighborhoods to the ground. This sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t work to save lives, for various and complicated reasons. Many criticized Israel’s policy of seeking to evacuate civilians to safe zones, saying that this gave Hamas terrorists time to escape. It seems that these critics felt that Gaza’s civilians deserve the same fate as Hamas militants.
Some bluntly stated that what was needed was more death. More casualties – civilian or otherwise. It was incidental to them, since they claimed there was no fundamental distinction between Hamas and the “so-called” civilian population of Gaza. Everyone in Gaza supported Hamas, directly or indirectly, and the children were all being indoctrinated to grow up to be terrorists. By that logic, since the lives of these children were going to be dedicated to terrorism anyway, it made little sense to try to avoid killing them in the present. Indeed, many people in Israel were opposed to this line of reasoning, but the fact that this point of view was not only treated with legitimacy but also enjoyed some degree of popular support is frightening, since it amounts to a justification for killing innocent people by claiming that no one in Gaza is innocent.
For those Israelis who entertain the notion of dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza, as if doing so could end the war there as it did in Japan. Beyond being morally reprehensible, it seems that advocates of such a strategy fail to grasp that what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened on an entirely different historical backdrop than that which pertains today. Dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as drastic as it may have been, was intended to save lives, considering that an invasion of Japan could have led to millions of lives lost on both sides.
What is the rationale of those who advocate for enlisting such brutal tactics? The answer is simple – such propositions as using nuclear weapons in Gaza seek to end the threat posed by Hamas, once and for all. Just as Hamas and other local Jihadists would like to “eliminate Israel” by killing all the Jews and driving them away, there are Israelis who would like either to see Gazans dead or driven out of Gaza, far away from where they can harm us. While I can understand this sentiment, I strongly believe that we name this desire for what it is: a longing for a “final solution” to the conflict. Can Jewish people endorse a final solution, even considering October 7 and all the acts of terror committed against us before and since? I would argue that we cannot contemplate such a solution while remaining faithful to the core beliefs of Judaism.
Israelis often say that if the tables were turned, Hamas would not hesitate to commit atrocities, and I believe that the truth of this proposition is self-evident, as shown on October 7: Were Hamas as powerful as Israel, Israel would be in existential peril. But look at Gaza today – is Gaza not itself in a kind of existential peril? Sure, one can say that many Arab countries in the region could hypothetically absorb refugees. But will they? Is that at all realistic? Even if, as many claim, Gazans have forfeited the right to live in Gaza… where should they go? What if the Arab states do not want to take them? Is the dream of “mass relocation” supported by anything other than the fantastical desire to make our enemies “go away?” If so, how is this ethos any different than that of Palestinians and their supporters chanting “From the River to the Sea…?” How can we consider applying to others that which we would not accept for ourselves? No matter the cost, the Jewish people are not going anywhere. And yet, we are so dismissive of the statements by Gazans that they do not intend to vacate “their” land. Is it that we cannot appreciate Gazans’ refusal to leave Gaza because it is inconvenient with our own hopes and desires?
It is common knowledge that many Israelis would like to cleanse Gaza of Gazans. Again, this could arguably be seen as understandable, all things considered. If my own family and friends had been murdered on October 7, I might see things differently than I do now. I acknowledge that. But putting aside the moral argument, is it seriously possible to make them? Where will they go? To Egypt? To Jordan? To France? Good luck with that, as they say. If that was what they indeed wanted, and those countries or others were supportive of that, that would be one thing. But it seems that there is not a great deal of enthusiasm for such an outcome on those nations’ part. Therefore, the notion of a Gaza without Gazans seems just the mirror image of the idea of driving the Jews into the sea… a fantasy, a delusion.