Totally Destroying Gaza: Rational or Rationale?

Along with a solid majority of Israelis, I too think that the Israeli government should place the hostages’ return as its number one priority – and totally defeating Hamas as only a secondary goal at this point in time. Unfortunately, the issue has become so explosive in Israel that neither side is willing to understand the other side’s position, regardless of possible ulterior motives. I’m going to attempt that here, but first some “philosophical” background.

Daniel Dennett, one of the world’s leading philosophers (he died last year) propounded a very useful set of “instructions” for any controversial issue in which we (society or individual) are arguing our side of the issue. In his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, he suggested that any true debate involve each of us taking a “steel man” position – the opposite of what is generally called the “straw man” where we push our opponent’s position to the extreme, and then their stance becomes obviously “absurd” or untenable.

Here’s what he suggests for creating our “steel man”: 1) Express our opponent’s position as clearly, vividly, and fairly as we can; 2) Make a list of all the points where you and your debating opponent agree; 3) Be aware of arguments or evidence in which s/he has brought up something new to you; 4) Only after all this should you try rebutting or criticizing their position.

So here goes my “steel man” argument for Netanyahu et al placing Hamas’s destruction first and center in their Gaza War policy (#1 above) – and then several rebuttal arguments (#4).

By almost universal agreement, the most heinous regime in modern history was Nazi Germany – aligned with another utterly ruthless army: the Japanese. World War II ended only after the total destruction of Germany and Japan. In the former, entire cities were essentially leveled: Dresden, Berlin etc.; the latter country, of course, suffered no less with two atom bombs basically erasing Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Earth.

The result? (West) Germany and Japan became two of the most pacifist countries in the world!! Again: Germany had a deep-rooted militaristic culture going back centuries; Japan (albeit relatively isolationist until the mid-19th century) had its own profound Samurai ethos over many generations. Only their overwhelming defeat in WWII forced a 1800 change in approach to their neighboring countries and international relations in general.

Closer to home, it’s not a coincidence that Egypt sought peace with Israel only after it was on the brink of its army’s annihilation at the end of the Yom Kippur (1973) War. Without America’s intervention holding back the IDF that was only 40 kilometers outside of Cairo, Egypt’s capital could have been reduced to rubble as well. In short, with the specter of future regime collapse if Egypt continued to fight Israel in the future, Sadat sought peace.

The lesson? When faced with an implacable enemy who is bent on “our” side’s subjugation, if not destruction, the only possible way to change the enemy’s behavior is to beat it to a pulp. The change in its behavior emanates from top to bottom: on “top,” the leadership is either completely replaced (Nazi Germany), or rendered docile (Japan); at the “bottom,” the populace becomes so traumatized by the destruction around them that they switch mental gears i.e., continuing to attack the “enemy” is perceived as completely counter-productive for any semblance of normal living.

Why, then, don’t most wars end this way? Why choose Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as exemplars for Gaza? Because they were all fanatically extreme: racist and xenophobic to the core. Most wars – even the major ones e.g., Napoleonic, India-Pakistan, Vietnam, Ukraine-Russia – involve material issues: land, economic resources, power. They usually end with the victor attaining (most of) its goal(s), but this does not necessitate complete subjugation or mass killing of the enemy.

Hamas is much closer to Nazism in its hatred of the “other” – it has even taken several pages from the Nazi book e.g., promulgating the rabidly antisemitic (and spurious) Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Indeed, there are a couple of parallelisms between the two. First, Germany was defeated in “normal” fashion in World War I (then called “The Great War,” no one back then could countenance another world war!), and returned for an even deadlier battle with Europe; similarly, Hamas had fought several “wars” with Israel starting fifteen years before 2023 (coincidentally the exact number of years between Germany’s defeat at the end of WWI in 1918, and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933!). Second, in both cases the “ultimate enemy” were the Jews, and from the perspective of Hamas (and the Nazis) only a “Final Solution” would do.

Given all this, one can understand the rationale of the Netanyahu government in seeking the complete elimination of Hamas, and not some (once again) temporary cessation of hostilities.
Does this mean that such a policy is the correct one to pursue? Not necessarily. As Dennett’s fourth point suggests, a “steel man” argument does not mean accepting the opposing argument. In our case here, there are several possible rebuttals:

A) As Mark Twain is reputed to have opined (he actually didn’t!): “History doesn’t repeat, but it sure rhymes.” Just because a situation today looks similar to one in the past, doesn’t mean that we can learn something relevant from the former. Surrounding circumstances could be different. For instance, the Allies bombed the sh** out of Germany and Japan, but the rules of war have changed since then.

B) As Israel has the upper hand militarily versus Hamas – now and in the future – there’s no reason we can’t stop the war, get back all the hostages, and then deal with Hamas afterwards. For instance, if Bibi stops his policy of enabling Qatar to finance Hamas, there won’t be much that a rump Hamas could do to Israel.

C) The destruction in Gaza is already so great that even if the “top” (Hamas officials and fighters) wanted in the future to continue attacking Israel, the “bottom” (Gaza’s civilians) most probably wouldn’t let them, given the extreme traumatization they underwent in this war.

In conclusion, what should be the decisive factor in Israel’s internal debate is not the correctness of this or that side’s arguments but the fact that a very large majority of Israelis have clearly placed the hostage return as the number one goal that their government ought to be pursuing. Argumentation aside, in a democracy the public should have the last word.