Annihilation in Gaza
One word, two meanings
Earlier this year, two articles published in Tablet caught my eye. The first, the work an author I have followed for four decades, claimed that Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza took great pains to distinguish between combatants and civilians. The second, written by a writer new to me, argued that support for Hamas among the people of Gaza was so great that such a distinction made no sense.
In “Why Israel is Winning in Gaza,” Edward Luttwak lamented that American restrictions prevented the Israelis from making full use of their capabilities, whether in the form of aircraft or 160mm mortars. Nonetheless, in the course of making this point, Dr. Luttwak based his argument on the assumption that the operations of the Israeli Defense Forces served no aim other than the destruction of a warfighting organization and the consequent overthrow of the regime it serves.
In “They Are All Hamas,” Deborah Dannan characterized the events of 7 October 2023 as a pogrom. That is, rather than being an operation conducted by one army against another, it was an attack carried out by all members of one community against all members of another. Having done this, she concluded her piece by quoting Israeli politicians who had argued that the failure of the people of Gaza to rise up against Hamas made them complicit in the actions of that government.
Miss Dannan declined to make plain the obvious implication of her argument: if both the general population of Gaza and the partisans of Hamas bear equal responsibility for the attack that took place last fall, then they deserve the same treatment. In other words, many readers will find it hard to avoid the conclusion that “They Are All Hamas” lays a solid rhetorical foundation for a program of actions ranging from de-housing and decimation to full-bore ethnic cleansing.
To borrow a term from German military history, the operations described by Luttwak constitute a Vernichtungs-Schlacht, a “battle of annihilation” in which one army attempt to deprive an opponent of its ability to fight. Similarly, the struggle foreshadowed by Dannan falls into the category of Vernichtungs-Krieg, a “war of annihilation” fought to punish, evict, or exterminate members of a particular population.
In publishing these two very different points of view, the editors of Tablet may have sought to do nothing more than cast a wide net. At the same time, the co-existence of “Why Israel is Winning in Gaza” and “They Are All Hamas” may reflect a desire to appeal to two constituencies among the supporters of Israel: those who want their forces to fight a Vernichtungs-Schlacht and the advocates of Vernichtungs-Krieg. (If I am not too badly mistaken, enthusiasm for the later increases with distance from the battlefield.)
In more cynical moments, I imagine a third possibility. “Why Israel is Winning in Gaza” article may be nothing more than an attempt to prevent, or, at the very least, delay the disaffection of people like myself, long-term admirers of the Israeli Defense Forces who have come to the conclusion that Israeli operations in Gaza have exceeded, by miles, the bounds of proportionality.
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The proof of the pudding is in the eating. So too, here, one looks to the results of the IDF campaign rather than the statements of politicians who have no say in the actual conduct of the war. It’s a near equivalent of quoting Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and then pretending she represents the U.S.
Given the complexities of the urban battlefield which Hamas has spent over a decade fortifying and complicating, given its strategy to increase as best it can the number of civilian casualties and given the various explanations advanced to justify not even allowing Gaza’s women, children, elderly and infirm to seek refuge in Egypt, the IDF innovative tactics will be studied by all Western militaries - just as they have done after every previous conflict with Hamas.
The casualty numbers, without knowing how many Gazans died as a result of the 15-20% misfired Hamas/PIJ missiles, yields a combatant to civilian ratio that is better than ours in Mosul, the nearest comparator. That operation took some 9 months to complete and there was no tunnel complex to deal with nor were there hostages.
And speaking of whom, that is as clear cut a war crime and violation of humanitarian law as can be imagined, yet the world seems fine with allowing Hamas to barter for their lives. And, of course, no country is calling for Hamas’ surrender.
The focus is on Israel, what it’s doing, how it could do things better and all the rest. It’s almost as if no one expects anything from the Palestinians at all and then imagine their future state will turn out to be the exact opposite of their first attempt in Gaza.
Perhaps the only group that sees things clearly are the Sunni Arab states not beholden to Iran. They see Hamas for what it is and what it represents to the region which is why they have quietly given Israel the go ahead.
The only area in which Hamas’ strategy has worked to perfection is in the media whose misreporting has helped it immensely. If one buys the framing of the concept, I guess our prosecution of WWII against Germany was just a product of our range and vengeance, albeit misdirected as we were attacked by Japan.
But national interests being what they are, and the West not being altogether fine with the idea of Iran hegemony in the region, Israel will be allowed to complete its task while we maintain our moral purity by tut-tutting from the sidelines.
“Prortionality”. How does one treat it? To plagiarize from Douglas Murray, where do we start with October 7, 2023? Do we find the same number of Hamas or Palestinian children of the same ages that were murdered in cold blood? Etc., etc., grandmothers to Hamas terror fighters for the IDF killed? Line them all up and shoot them? A burning for a burning? A shot in the head for shot in the head? Equally if the Arab Nations in the region felt the efforts in Gaza were truly too extreme than one would think they would step up and at the very least offer some form of truce terms, enough to handle the humanitarian crisis on the ground. But, they have not, have they? No one likes this mess, where again to start? Sykes-Picot? Further demarcations post WWII? Several territorial wars hence? American neocon diplomats tell us that we need to never cede our position in the “Middle East” to “Russia” or “China”, one could ask, why not? Let their colonial ambitions have a go. Perhaps TE Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” ought be required reading for anyone planning on dipping their toes into the current region known as the Middle East. History will determine if Isreal has gone too far. However, if the tea leaves mean anything, this conflict will not be concluded until isreal has satisfied itself (not the world, or Ivy League students who couldn’t find the Jordan River on a map) that they have ended the possibility of any future attacks by Hamas, as Hamas will have ceased to exists as a political and military entity. Hezbollah and other “independent” factions ought take note.