Israel’s deadly campaign in Gaza is not a righteous response to the Hamas atrocity of Oct. 7

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Dec. 26, 2023

On the morning of Oct. 7, militants organized by Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist organization, attacked multiple military and civilian targets in Southern Israel. Ultimately, around 1,200 Israelis were killed. Attackers deliberately and sometimes brutally killed unarmed civilians, including children and partygoers at a music festival. There are numerous reports of women being sexually assaulted. In addition, Hamas militants took about 240 hostages. The prisoners include both Israeli citizens, some of whom hold dual citizenship, as well as guest workers.

The attack was an atrocity, plain and simple. Not since the Holocaust had so many Jews been killed in a single day. The experiences of victims and survivors are terrifying to contemplate.

Israel began bombing the Gaza Strip within hours of the Hamas attack. A ground invasion began toward the end of October. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have declared their intent to destroy Hamas, although many high Israeli officials seem eager to rain death and humiliation upon the entire population of Gaza.

So far, a number of Hamas leaders have eluded Israeli weapons. But Israel largely seems to have fulfilled the latter objective. The bombing campaign, in combination with ground fighting, has reduced some blocks and neighborhoods to rubble. Schools and hospitals have not been spared from the destruction. As of Dec. 22, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that more than 20,000 people had been killed by Israeli attacks, with 70 percent of those being women and children. Gaza has a population of slightly more than 2 million, so these deaths represent nearly 1 percent of the territory’s residents.

Skeptics of the death toll remind observers that Gaza’s health ministry may be inflating the casualties at Hamas’s behest. But the World Health Organization believes that Palestinian deaths are, if anything, being undercounted. Thirty of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are closed, and bodies that were buried without being registered by hospital morgues — or bodies that were simply never recovered — do not appear in the official casualty tally.

Let’s say, however, that due to a combination of various factors — deliberate inflation and Hamas fighters being counted among the dead, for instance — the number of Gaza civilian deaths is actually much lower. Let’s say the actual figure is just 10,000, or half the amount reported last week. That’s still more than eight times the number of Israelis killed by Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. The New York Times recently ran a story on how the Israeli attack had resulted in “family trees dismembered, whole branches of them obliterated.”

How can anyone defend this Israeli offensive when it has resulted in so many civilian fatalities? Even granting the numerous Israeli assertions that Hamas has deliberately used ordinary people as human shields, I struggle to justify Netanyahu’s counterattack. The bloody operation has soured support for Israel both around the world and in the United States, long a staunch ally of Israel. By the same token, it has boosted approval of Hamas globally and in the Palestinian Territories.

Further, a number of reports suggest that the Israel Defense Force has failed in its mission to protect and recover hostages. If IDF has rescued any hostages in military action, I haven’t heard of it. Around half of the original 240 captives remain in Hamas custody. Of the rest, some have died, and a few dozen were recovered in prisoner exchanges.

Recently, three escaped hostages were shot and killed by Israel soldiers who apparently violated rules of engagement. Hamas claimed last month that an Israeli hostage and her two young sons had been killed by Israeli bombs. There has not been independent verification of the status of Shiri Silverman-Bibas, 4-year-old Ariel Bibas or 10-month-old Kfir Bibas. The status of Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the boys’ father, who was also abducted by Palestinian gunmen on Oct. 7, is similarly uncertain. But overall, the track record for retrieving Hamas hostages through military action seems dismal.

What is the long-term plan for securing Israel? I suspect that most Palestinians who have lost a home, a business, a school or a household of relatives because of the Israel Defense Force counterattack are unlikely to want a lasting peace with Israel once the immediate fighting ends.

I think Israel is perfectly entitled to hound Hamas into oblivion. But this heavy-fisted offensive may be doing more to hurt Israeli interests than a more strategic approach might have.

Let’s not be naïve. Short of Gazans turning over Hamas leaders and fighters en masse to Israeli or international authorities for prosecution, there was no way the Oct. 7 attack could have occurred without some kind of Israeli military operation. Military actions lead to fighting and death in all but the most favorable circumstances — circumstances that Gaza does not offer. When Hamas launched its Oct. 7 strike on Israel, the group sentenced innocent bystanders on both sides to death.

In Gaza, Israel has killed many times the number of its own Oct. 7 casualties and has relatively little to show for it. Unless and until Netanyahu and his cabinet change their approach, hundreds if not thousands more civilians are going to die to no purpose. Many Israelis and their most ardent supporters may not care about that. But Palestinians and their sympathizers in the Middle East and around the world will care. They will care, and they will remember the cruelty, and their resentment of Israel’s heavy-handedness will make it harder to forge any future peace in this troubled part of the world.