Israel, Palestine, and the Consequences of Moral Coarsening
A special kind of hell is unfolding in Gaza.
A recent Netflix documentary recovered and re-colored video footage of the Blitz in London during the war. I’d been brought up only a couple of decades later and the Blitz was still embedded deep in the national psyche. My own great-grandmother had been killed by a bomb hitting her home, and my mother often recounted being thrown to the ground by the whoosh of a nearby V2 bomber in the last phase of the war.
I didn’t appreciate the full fiery, deafening vortex of human incineration until I saw the documentary. Searing in every sense of the word. But even in that circle of hell, one moment stood out. On January 20, 1943, in the middle of lunch-hour, a Nazi bomber dropped a 1,000-lb bomb on a school in southeast London. Air raid sirens had not sounded. Thirty-two children were killed instantly, and six died later. The country all but stopped for a moment and took its breath. Even after three years of horror, the mass murder of children took the Brits to the edge of unendurable grief. Seven thousand people turned out for the mass burial. A memorial is there till this day.
All war is hell; but war against children is a special kind of hell. And if we ever forget that, or reduce it to a “to be sure” throat-clearing, our souls have been irreparably broken. Yes, the Allies also killed countless children in the devastating raids on German cities in response, prompting even Churchill to ask himself: “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?” But both Brits and Germans did what they could to evacuate as many children as they could to towns and villages in the countryside.
I mention this because what we have been witnessing in Gaza these past 614 grisly days is this very atrocity: the mass killing of defenseless children. A video last week of an IDF bombing of, yes, a former school, shows the silhouette of a toddler lost in a fireball, trying to find her way out of the burning building. She had just seen her parents and older sister burned and buried alive—although when the New York Times found her later, she was still calling for her mom and dad in the hospital where she lay.
The responsibility for this is shared. There are countless miles of deep tunnels where civilians could have been protected from the IDF onslaught from the skies—but Hamas chose to sacrifice its women and children as a horrifying weapon in their asymmetrical warfare. It takes an extreme sociopathology to do that kind of evil—and we saw how sick they are on October 7. But as Hamas put its children at intolerable risk, the IDF also went ahead and killed them anyway.
It will be said that Hamas started this war, could still end it by disarming and surrendering the hostages, and cannot now complain that Israel is intent on finishing it off. All true. But if the gap between Hamas’ military capacities and Israel’s was huge but not impregnable on October 7, 2023, it is now overwhelming. The ability of Hamas, or any of its guerrilla allies, to threaten Israel’s security right now is close to non-existent. And in a battle already largely won, against an enemy on its last legs, the moral justification for continuing on this scale becomes harder and harder to discern.
What, after all, is Israel attempting to accomplish by escalating the war in Gaza now? Defeating the remnants of Hamas? When, one wonders, would the last remnants actually cease to exist? How would we know?
The attempt by the IDF to leverage collective civilian hunger to put pressure on what’s left of Hamas is another war crime—and Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, agrees. The deadly and chaotic new attempt to provide food by U.S. and Israeli entities shows how hard it will be for Israel to govern Gaza going forward. Yes, we can question whether this is or is not a “famine” strictly speaking; or blame Hamas for stealing food. In fact, we should. But what we cannot deny is that Israel is using the malnutrition of children as a weapon of war. Because after 614 days, despite a massive firepower advantage over Hamas, in an area of a mere 141 square miles, Israel still insists it isn’t in control and still hasn’t won.
Really? Look at how Israel’s security has grown in these 614 days. Writes John Spencer:
Hamas had 5 brigades, 24 battalions, 30-40k trained fighters, 20,000 rockets, held terrain, could conduct coordinated attacks and defenses. Today, it has none of that. Hamas does not have a military capable of organized operations, it has a guerrilla force made up of untrained, inexperienced, radicalized mostly youths (average age of a Hamas replacement soldier is in the teens) with limited military equipment continuing to use civilians as human shields and human sacrifice. Hamas is losing political control.
What actual threat from a ragtag group of “untrained, inexperienced, radicalized” teenagers can justify the continuing mass civilian carnage? No, it is not genocide, and it is ugly and hideously insensitive to call it that; but it is a military campaign inflicting civilian casualties far beyond the exigencies of Israeli security.
The only truly dangerous threat to Israel is Iran’s nuclear program; and the Gaza carnage has isolated Israel from the allies and powers, including the United States, it needs on its side. Netanyahu has finally lost the support of the British, French, German, Italian, and Canadian governments over the Gaza “surge.” Global opinion of Israel is at historic lows, with a European favorability rating of just 29 percent, compared with 62 percent unfavorable. The younger generations in the wealthy West—less attuned to the history of the Jewish people—are anti-Israel by huge margins.
The Germans—long the staunchest defenders of the Jewish state—are in agony. Here’s Chancellor Merz: “What the Israeli Army is doing in the Gaza Strip right now—I honestly don’t understand what the goal is in causing such suffering to the civilian population.” The U.S. president, no neocon, went on a tour of the Middle East and smartly skipped Israel. The UAE, critical to the Abraham Accords, can’t stomach the ever-more provocative government anymore. Of the 15 members of the UN Security Council, 14 just called for an immediate ceasefire.
And what does “total victory” actually mean? A while back, I supported Israel’s attempt to enter Rafah as the last redoubt of Hamas. But today we’re told everywhere in Gaza is now the last redoubt of Hamas, and so the end of the war has become like an Irish goodbye, or one of those symphonies that seems to end—and then doesn’t, and doesn’t, and doesn’t. There is something manic and desperate about the IDF’s actions in Gaza right now. They know they’ve lost their way but have no idea how to extricate themselves. And the thing about knowing you have killed so many children is that it will require you to suppress a sense of their humanity in order to maintain sanity and carry on. The cost of that moral coarsening is huge.
And the day after, if there ever is one? That essential question remains unanswered. The Netanyahu government doesn’t want an Arab/European military or administrative presence to stabilize the place, which is the only viable way forward. So a permanent Israeli police and military force on every block? Or settlements in a wasteland inhabited by people who now hate Israel with ever deeper passion? Seriously?
Parts of the Netanyahu government, of course, have already told us their preferred end-game. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described it as “no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages... Once we stay in Gaza, we can talk about [declaring] sovereignty.” When you observe the parallel settler activities on the West Bank, and their murderous eliminationism, the logic is unavoidable.
Now that revenge has been slaked, and Gaza turned into smoking ruins, and the smoking ruins have been bombed again, the only conceivable rationale for this further intensification is eventual Israeli sovereignty over all the land in Israel/Palestine, along with a possible population transfer that would make 1948 seem mild.
That, it appears, is where we’re headed if something or someone doesn’t intervene to drag Israel back to normalcy and perspective. But how many more children must die, I wonder, before we get there?
Andrew Sullivan writes “The Weekly Dish,” where a version of this piece was originally published. Click here to subscribe.
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"What, after all, is Israel attempting to accomplish by escalating the war in Gaza now?"
To completely eradicate Hamas.
"Defeating the remnants of Hamas?"
Yes
"When, one wonders, would the last remnants actually cease to exist? How would we know?"
When all of Hamas is dead or imprisoned. When Iran's proxy is wiped off the face of the earth and the people of Israel are made safer because of it. So that we never experience another terrorist atrocity like Oct 7. When we make one more step toward eliminating all Islamic terrorism threats from the world.
The Isarel-hating, Palestinian sympathizers are themselves the most responsible for all the death of innocents in Palestine, because if they instead had previously supported Israel's right to exist, and condemned all terrorism against Israel, organizations like Hamas would never have been given the support they needed to continue their murderous agenda. Oct 7 would have never occurred, and Israel would have never gone to war in Gaza.
"It will be said that Hamas started this war, could still end it by disarming and surrendering the hostages, and cannot now complain that Israel is intent on finishing it off. All true. But if the gap between Hamas’ military capacities and Israel’s was huge but not impregnable on October 7, 2023, it is now overwhelming."
Do you understand what you just said? The odds are overwhelming, innocents are dying and yet they continue to fight? What does that say about Hamas? They don't give a shit about their own people. And remember that when this started they did not attack the military, they attacked innocent people and slaughtered them horrendously, on purpose. And they continue to hide in tunnels and under civilian structures. Bunch of asshole cowards.