A few honest questions for supporters of Palestine

My view is simple:  October 7 changed everything, Hamas needs to be destroyed, and an invasion, which will necessarily be brutal and bloody, is the only means to do that.  Someone, somewhere might have a superior plan that would achieve the same objective with less loss of life.  It would be helpful, however, if they explained it.

There are those who support Palestine purely out of antisemitism and a desire to see the Jewish state wiped from existence, believing anything and everything including the atrocities committed on October 7 is justified to achieve this goal.  Individuals that say as much are beyond the point of reasoning with and can simply be condemned the way we would a Nazi sympathizer.  There are others, however, who admit that October 7 was an atrocity, something that should be totally condemned by all fair minded people.  Members of this group might also agree that Israel has a right to defend itself.  Their primary concern is over how the war has been conducted and the large number of civilian casualties, some 11,000 by recent accounts.  The harder line of this thinking goes, Hamas might have committed an atrocity, but responding with atrocities of Israel’s own is equally unacceptable.  What we might call a softer version of this view was noted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, when he commented that “far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks.”  The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart put it this way, Israel has a right to defend itself, but they must do so in a manner “befitting” a Democratic country.  At least on the surface, it doesn’t appear that these individuals and others are making unreasonable points.  We should expect Israel to carefully consider each action and take steps to limit the loss of innocent life, rather than unleash the IDF as the equivalent of the same barbarian horde that attacked Israel in the first place.  At the same time, no one should be above answering key questions to help illuminate their position.  Identifying vague standards for what is acceptable and unacceptable in the middle of a war, and offering criticisms of how a war is being conducted has never been difficult.  The stakes, meanwhile, have perhaps never been higher when both can easily be adopted as talking points by those literally chanting “Death to Israel” and “Kill All Jews.”  The same way we should be careful to avoid an anti-Muslim backlash, we are already witnessing an anti-Israel backlash on an unprecedented scale.  A pro-Hamas protester in London last weekend actually said on camera with no fear of reprisal whatsoever that “Hitler knew how to deal with these people.”  Politicians, government officials, and prominent pundits should clearly be taking great care with their choice of words under these circumstances, and should equally be expected to fully explain themselves.  In that regard, a few critical questions come to mind.

First and perhaps most importantly, do you believe the attack on October 7 permanently changed the dynamics in the region and necessitate the complete destruction of Hamas?  As I have written, the dynamic prior to October 7 was less than ideal in almost uncounted number of ways, but nothing to date compares the savagery the world witnessed when infants were intentionally burned in their cribs and approximately 100 times as many Israelis were killed in a single day as the entire yearly average in almost a decade.  No nation state with the power to respond can risk another incident even close to this scale.  Israel’s leaders are bound by oaths to ensure such a thing never happens again.  Claiming that we are all somehow responsible, as former President Barack Obama has done, is irrelevant.  Events do not reach this point without plenty of blame to go around, some of it going back decades, but whatever the case, allowing Hamas to continue to operate at any scale is a betrayal of their duty to their country and their people from Israel’s perspective.  In principle, I think most fair minded supporters of Palestine would agree with this and the majority of fair-minded differences of opinion stem from how the destruction of Hamas should be achieved, prompting the next question:  If you do not believe a full scale invasion and occupation are the appropriate strategies to destroy Hamas, what strategy would you implement to achieve the same objective?  I do not pretend to be an expert in military affairs, but it certainly seems to me that Hamas is deeply embedded in the Gaza Strip and the only way to remove them is by forcibly dismantling their presence.  Accurate intelligence is difficult to come by, but Hamas itself claims to have built over 300 miles of tunnels under the Strip, a network known as the “Gaza metro.”  The entire New York City subway system is only about twice this size.  “It’s a very intricate, very large – huge – network of tunnels on a rather small piece of territory,” explained Daphne Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University and expert on underground warfare.  Constructing such a system is obviously labor intensive and expensive, suggesting that Hamas, which has almost no income of its own, diverted millions or even tens of millions of dollars to the effort, likely robbing the Palestinians themselves of needed supplies and other equipment.  Needless to say, removing Hamas from such a system is inherently challenging.  “It’s always difficult to deal with tunnels, don’t get me wrong, in any context, even when they are in a mountainous area, but when they are urban area, then everything is more complicated – the tactical aspects, strategic aspects, the operational aspects, and of course, the protection that you want to ensure for the civilian population,” Ms. Richemond-Barak continued.  “There is no foolproof solution to deal with a tunnel threat,” she added. “There’s no Iron Dome for tunnels,” referencing Israel’s missile defense system.  Complicating matters even further, Hamas’ headquarters is also believed to be underground, beneath Shifa Hospital.  Under normal circumstances, targeting a hospital would be considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but there is a specific provision for combatants who use this protection for military purposes, “under no circumstances shall medical units be used in an attempt to shield military objectives from attack.”

Of course, much of the debate over whether or not an invasion is the right course of action to eradicate Hamas is driven by concerns over civilian casualties rather than tactics.  If Israel could invade without significant loss of life, many voicing objections would not be.  Likewise, if in some alternative reality, Israel opted to respond from the air while still killing thousands of residents, the objections would largely be the same.  Secretary Blinken, for example, would not be saying that 11,000 dead is acceptable because Israel only mounted airstrikes rather than deploying ground troops.  The root cause of the criticism is that these deaths are perceived as excessive, but is that really the case?  At the risk of sounding somewhat crass, what number of dead is acceptable?  If 5,500 Palestinians had been killed rather than the estimated 11,000, would that be OK?  If so, how about splitting the difference?  This is a question that cannot truly be answered, hence my need to be blunt about it.  Each and every life is precious, and certainly 11,000 might seem like a high number to some on its own without considering any other factors.  The real question, however, comes in two parts.  First, do you believe that Israel is, generally speaking, making decisions that take into account the potential for the loss of innocent life?  To be clear, you might disagree with any individual decision, believing a given action is riskier than you might undertake in the same situation and you might well be right in some cases, but do you think as a matter of policy that Israel is intentionally killing civilians?  This is after all a country that announced the invasion in advance, encouraged civilians to evacuate, and recently opened up humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow more people to flee the warzone.  Why go to these lengths, which offer at least some advantage to their enemy, if the goal was the wanton destruction of innocent life?  The second part of the question is trickier:  How can any country limit civilian casualties when maximizing them is part of Hamas’ plan?  As President Biden put it, “Hamas is a bunch of cowards. They’re hiding behind the civilians…The Israelis are gonna do everything in their power to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.”  Secretary Blinken said much the same thing, “Hamas doesn’t care one second or one iota for the welfare, for the well-being of the Palestinian people…It cynically and monstrously uses them as human shields, putting his commanders in command posts, its weapons and ammunition, within or beneath residential buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals.”  The extent of this exploitation of civilian lives was highlighted just yesterday by a report from The Washington Post that claimed Hamas planned October 7 with the specific goal of prompting a massive counter attack.  As they put it, “A Hamas official, Basem Naim, asserted in an interview Friday that the group planned in advance for a severe Israeli retaliation.”  “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo, told Beirut’s LCBI television in an interview last month. “We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”  If this attack did not provoke a massive invasion, “There will be a second, a third, a fourth,” he added. In that case, how much control does Israel really have over the extent of civilian casualties?

There are some who separate the invasion and any resulting casualties from the occupation, believing Israel has the right to invade the strip, but not remain after Hamas is destroyed.  To a large extent, this has been the public position of the Biden Administration.  As early as October 15, President Biden was warning the Israeli government about occupying Gaza, claiming it would be a “big mistake.”  “What happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people,” the President told 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley.  In the same interview, he voiced his support for destroying Hamas entirely, “but there needs to be a Palestinian Authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.”  “Look, there’s a fundamental difference. Israel is going after a group of people who have engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust,” President Biden also said.  “So I think Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas.”  Israel itself has been rather unclear on the question.  Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog appeared to have ruled out an occupation around the same time of the President’s interview.  “We have no desire to occupy or reoccupy Gaza. We have no desire to rule over the lives of more than 2 million Palestinians,” he said.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more vague, saying that there would need to be a “credible force” after the invasion.  “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility, because we have seen what happens when we don’t have it.  When we don’t have that security responsibility, we have the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”  He also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which marginally controls the West Bank, was capable of leading the Gaza Strip without saying who else could possibly play the role.   Technically, this prompts two questions.  I don’t think any rational person believes Israel can roll in and immediately roll out after Hamas is destroyed.  Clearly, they will need to maintain a presence for some period to ensure victory over Hamas is complete, otherwise the terrorist group could simply hide out for a few days or weeks before reemerging.  The length of this period – a month, three months, six months, a year or more – is the real question as well as what comes next.  Unfortunately, this strikes me as impossible to answer at this point, not knowing what the conditions on the ground will be after the invasion is complete.  We do know that Israel has previously occupied the Gaza Strip before withdrawing in 2005.  At least for now, it seems reasonable to assume that they do not have an interest in retaining a permanent role and will likely attempt to set up some form of local government, but admittedly that is speculation to a large extent.

In the meantime, it is reasonable that fair minded people will disagree on how Israel should respond to such a heinous attack.  Personally, I don’t pretend to have all the answers.  I do attempt to consider things carefully and compare them to similar situations in the past, updating and evaluating my positions as the overall context changes.  I’ve made no secret that my view is simple:  October 7 changed everything, Hamas needs to be destroyed, and an invasion which will necessarily be brutal and bloody, perhaps more so than any we have seen in recent years, is the only means to do that.  I could be wrong and someone, somewhere might well have a superior plan that would achieve the same objective with less loss of life.  It would be helpful, however, if those voicing criticism clearly explain their own positions instead of merely generalizing that this number is too high and that is too low.  The enemy and their supporters are watching, seizing on these criticisms to win the propaganda war and they are making no secret about it.  Answering these and other questions would be a good start.