The horror show in Gaza continues...
Huge proportion of civilian deaths in Israel's war in Gaza
Given the American political situation, I suppose I should preface messages like this with a standard warning that Trump’s policies on Israel and the Palestinians will be much worse than Biden’s. Not least because Trump can’t really be much more than the proverbial bull in a china shop when it comes to foreign policy. Unless maybe the policies include payments to himself or other members of his family like Jared Kushner.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is still criticizing Israel’s current attacks on the Gaza Strip, but is not yet calling for a general ceasefire, which is the Biden Administration’s position (i.e., opposing it), though Sanders does take a different position on the UN Security Council call for a new temporary ceasefire that the US just vetoed this past week.1 Still, Sanders is caustic in his criticism of the current war on civilians in Gaza:
John Mearsheimer has a new summary of the situation in what is still known as the Israel-Gaza War.2 As a leading advocate of the “realist” school of foreign-policy thought, Mearsheimer’s basic perspective is that states generally act heavily according to the pressure of the nation-state system itself. But he also knows as an advocate for liberal democracy and as a citizen of a still-liberal-democratic country, that foreign policy choices are made by people. And people sometimes do bad, unnecessary, and even vicious things. He looks at the truly grim situation in Israel and summaries in good professorial style several key points:
“Israel is purposely massacring huge number of civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women.”
“Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza.”
“Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians.”
“Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. … [I]t is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as ‘human animals’, ‘human beasts,’ and ‘horrible inhuman animals’.”
“Israel is not just killing, wounding, and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure …”
“Israel is not just terrorizing and killing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches.”
“[A]lthough the Israelis are doing the slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s support.”
“[W]hile most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land.”
Whatever practical national interest the US has in supporting Israel, the current Israeli policy is genuinely brutal and destructive. And at the moment its targets are mainly civilian noncombatants. It may be in line with what the Biden Administration calls the “rules-based international order.” But only if that phrase has nothing to do with international humanitarian law and the laws of war.
And it illustrates the largely self-imposed limits of the current US political environment. The Democratic Party under Biden is still operating on a Cold War mentality that reflexively opposes Russia and even more reflexively supports whatever government is in power in Israel, even one so irresponsible as Bibi Netanyahu’s. And all the while trying to make containment of China and preparations for new wars in opposition to China the central focus of its foreign policy.
The Republican Party is in thrall to a badly-disturbed orange demagogue and wannabe dictator, whose Israel policy is to do whatever the antisemitic and generally bizarre Christian Zionists want.
The Guardian reports on a story in Haaretz that shows the dramatically high rate of civilian casualties in Netanyahu’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza.3
The Haaretz report by Yagil Levy shows the tabular comparison of the current operation, officially called “Swords of Iron,” with the previous four operations of air strikes against Gaza4:
(Not shown above is a Guardian subhead that the Swords of Iron proportion of casualties in “higher than the average in all world conflicts in 20th century, data suggests,” something not mentioned in either the Guardian article itself or in Levy's article. It may have been meant to refer to the 21st century, and other reporting has made that comparison.)
He begins by noting that in November, the New York Times had “published the findings of a comprehensive investigation in which it maintained that the rate at which civilians were being killed in Gaza is higher than it was in the controversial offensives of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.”
Levy describes the military principle of proportionality:
It holds that such an attack is lawful if the incidental loss of civilian life ("collateral damage") it may incur is not excessive, in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
It follows that with a high proportion of noncombatants among the total number of those killed, we can conclude that the principle of discrimination was not adhered to, and an unusually high rate will reflect either a departure from the principle of proportionality or a highly flexible interpretation of it. …
In light of such a high proportion of noncombatants among those killed in Swords of Iron, we may suspect that the principle of discrimination was not upheld or perhaps that the principle of proportionality was subject to a highly flexible interpretation. Thus, rather than this being a case of "collateral damage," it was the reverse: Because most of those harmed are civilians, what was produced is "collateral benefit," in the form of a low number of Gazan combatants killed. [my emphasis]
Levy cites a November article by Yural Avraham that “shows that the army lowered the level of (already limited) caution that characterized it in the past.”5
At the very end, Levy reminds Israeli pilots that they are obligated to disobey illegal orders:
And it's also possible that the pilots – those who opposed the government's attempted judicial coup for fear that the overhaul of the legal regime would give rise to an unlawful combat policy that could make them vulnerable to risk of international prosecution – need to exercise their own judgment over the nature of the orders they receive, considering the conclusions that are presented here.
But the White House and the State Department will no doubt continue to put out mild expressions of concern over the civilian deaths and suggest to friendly reporters that they are working hard behind the scenes to get Netanyahu’s government not to kill so many civilians.
Meanwhile, Paul Pillar writes:
Even if one were to take at face value Israel’s declarations that its assault on the Gaza Strip and its two million residents is all about “destroying Hamas,” the Israeli operation is too misguided for the United States or any other power to support or condone it. …
But the Israeli declarations should not be taken at face value in any event. Other motivations are also likely behind the Israeli assault. Almost two months into the Israeli offensive, the evidence is increasingly suggesting that Israel is engaged in nothing less than ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who live in the Strip.
… it is increasingly looking like Israel is trying to remove the Palestinians themselves from the equation through death and displacement. Israel’s apparent strategy is no more likely to bring peace to Israelis or anyone else than its earlier gambits, as long as there are dissatisfied exiles. For just one example, think of how Israel went after the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization beginning in the 1980s and how it led to multiple wars, the rise of Lebanese Hezbollah, and the loss of almost any hope for stability in Lebanon.6 [my emphasis]
"Israel is losing the war in terms" of how the conflict is perceived, Sen. Bernie Sanders says. Face the Nation 12/10/2023. (Accessed: 2023-10-12).
Mearsheimer, John (2023): Death and Destruction in Gaza. John's Substack 12/12/2023. (Accessed: 2023-12-12).
Borger, Julian (2023): Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds. The Guardian 12/09/2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/09/civilian-toll-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-unprecedented-killing-study> (Accessed: 2023-09-12).
Levy, Yagil )2023): The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing. Haaretz 12/09/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-10/ty-article/.premium/by-trying-to-humiliate-gaza-to-its-core-israel-is-the-one-being-humiliated/0000018c-5001-df2f-adac-fe2d3d640000> (Accessed: 2023-10-12).
The article referenced is: Abraham, Yuval (2023): ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza. +972 Magazine 11/30/2023. <https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/> (Accessed: 2023-10-12).
Pillar, Paul (2023): Evidence of ethnic cleansing growing in West Bank and Gaza. Responsible Statecraft 12/08/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ethnic-cleansing-gaza/> (Accessed: 2023-10-12).