Haviv Rettig Gur
In all the endless torrent of hot takes, this post is the first I’ve read that seriously challenges us. Hamas started the firefight. There’s a limit to how much I can expect our soldiers, as they move through alleyways under a hail of bullets, to be precise with their aim. I was in the infantry. I even found myself in a couple of urban engagements over the years. It’s hard to convey the sense of chaos and confusion. That’s actually the central challenge of this kind of warfare: maintaining focus and unit cohesion under this kind of fire. All the hand-wringing about civilian deaths is absolutely correct about the scale of the tragedy but completely ignores the battlefield realities that led to those deaths, and therefore cannot offer a serious moral argument against the operation. Hamas, not the IDF, forced a gunbattle in a civilian area specifically designed to produce civilian casualties. Hamas’s basic strategy is Palestinian civilian deaths. That’s hasn’t changed. But then there’s this. “However, Hamas’s operational security protocols likely ensured that most civilians in the immediate vicinity/proximity had no idea that hostages were being held there; this means there truly were innocent, uninvolved civilians near the hostages who, for no fault of their own, were eliminated by the IDF.” I agree. Hamas’s astonishingly competent compartmentalization – the very thing that made October 7 possible – is one major factor that robs us of the ability to lay the entirety of the bloodshed at Hamas’s feet. I’m not innovating here. If Hamas’s basic strategy is Palestinian civilian deaths, our basic strategy needs to be, and needed to have been from the start, to avoid those deaths. That’s a first principle, obviously. It’s morally necessary irrespective of good strategy. But it’s also a strategic necessity. And as far as I can tell, at the larger scale, that’s what happened. For many decent observers witnessing terrible images of suffering and death, that assertion can be hard to believe. But it’s true nonetheless. The basic Israeli war-fighting methods in Gaza - at least after the first battle of Gaza City, with its emphasis on the air war - meets this strategic and moral necessity at the broader scale. The death toll actually proves that, whatever our enemies, whether out of well-meaning ignorance or simple malice, may say. That’s especially true when you take into account that any Israeli strategy must be implemented in a battlefield specifically designed by Hamas to increase the death toll. But this brings me to my point: this larger scale isn’t enough. In countless small, tactical ways, we can do better. There are no hard dichotomies in war. Only the totally ignorant and inexperienced (many NGOs fall into this category) make absolutist moral claims about warfighting methods. In real life, war is a series of choices that lie on a spectrum from bad to worse. But from that seemingly exonerating truth flows another: It is always possible to move along that spectrum, to do better. It is always possible to tweak a tactic in a way that saves 2% of the lives that would otherwise have been lost, or sometimes 20%. The IDF has proven itself a profoundly successful learning organization in this regard. The battle of Rafah is two orders of magnitude less destructive for Palestinian civilians that the battle of Gaza City was. The IDF of June 2024 knows how to things in an urban battlefield - exacting higher costs from terrorists and lower costs from civilians - that the IDF of October 2023 didn’t know how to do. My IDF, the army of 25 years ago, couldn’t hold a candle to today’s army when it comes to these capabilities. The trend, in other words, is in the right direction. But it’s can always be improved. By definition. And if it can, it must. Hamas’s strategy demands of us a miracle: To filter out of a civilian population a military force bent on denying us that distinction. But this is the IDF. Our goal must be this miracle.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
Some thoughts, observations, and rants about yesterday's raid that freed four Israeli hostages from Gaza’s Nuseirat camp: 1. Right off the bat, it should go without saying at this point that we wouldn’t be here had it not been for Hamas’s criminality on October 7 and that these hostages should have never been taken or held this long. This entirely avoidable war was started by Hamas and the buck stops with them. 2. It’s been weird, strange, gross, revealing, and disappointing to see some “pro-Palestine” activists go into straight meltdown mode over the fact that Hamas no longer holds these hostages, NOT the death of numerous Palestinian civilians during the raid, but the idea that Hamas no longer has “Zionist prisoners” who have been consistently dismissed and dehumanized since October 7. 3. It’s been disgusting, upsetting, and, quite frankly, enraging to see the utter dehumanization of the Palestinian civilian losses and victims by some “pro-Israel” activists who have so little capacity for compassion and empathy that the hundreds who have been killed “are all terrorists” and that it’s somehow inconceivable for scores of uninvolved civilians to be killed by the massive firepower that the IDF deployed in Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah during the operation. 4. Numerous Palestinians in Gaza, on social media in Arabic, are fuming over the fact that Hamas placed hostages in dense civilian areas, endangering their lives and exposing them to the wrath of Israel’s ferocious war machines. “Where are the vaunted tunnels that you built using our resources and safety?” yelled a furious man in Nuseirat. 5. What Hamas has and continues to do through its use of civilian homes, areas, and infrastructure bolsters the “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza” propagandists who are eager to disregard the safety and proportionality principles in pursuit of the destruction of Hamas. Instead of separating the terror group from Gaza’s civilians, Hamas, and its supporters and allies continue the horrendous narrative of “we are the people’s resistance army” that has a right to do whatever it wants regardless of the consequences. 6. On the one hand, Israel, like any other nation, would conduct an operation to free its citizens from captivity, and what happened yesterday isn’t surprising in that regard. On the other hand, the apparent disregard for “collateral damage” or Palestinian civilian casualties is inconsistent with the Just War Doctrine or principles of counterinsurgency. When the US raided Bin Laden’s compound, care was taken to separate his family and uninvolved civilians from the combatants; this is true when attacking hijacked airplanes, seized banks, or other targets with militants, hostages, and civilians. 7. Some of the testimonies and accounts that I’ve encountered have confirmed a disturbing trend: IDF soldiers were shooting/killing upon contact with any unknown subjects. In other words, there was little to no effort to discriminate targets based on their gender, proximity to the hostages’ locations, or their possession of firearms. Yes, Hamas had those hostages in peoples’ homes, Gazans who are connected to the Islamist group. However, Hamas’s operational security protocols likely ensured that most civilians in the immediate vicinity/proximity had no idea that hostages were being held there; this means there truly were innocent, uninvolved civilians near the hostages who, for no fault of their own, were eliminated by the IDF. 8. There’s absolutely no real and substantive evidence, beyond Aljazeera’s ridiculous innuendo, that the US humanitarian pier was used to bring in Israeli troops to stage the operation or that the pier facilitated the movement of vehicles. The IDF has the Netzarim Corridor that it could use to bring all sorts of equipment, decoys, and materials. The use of the flat area adjacent to the pier for the evacuation helicopter’s takeoff is not evidence that the pier itself was used for the operation. It goes without saying that the US and Israel have extensive intelligence cooperation (just like many Arab countries and Israel have), and I wouldn’t be surprised if some surveillance assets were part of the reconnaissance that preceded the operation. 9. Those who did not call on Hamas to release the hostages; who dehumanized Israeli hostages and captives, calling them “prisoners of war” and thinking that they’re legitimate spoils of war; those who celebrated October 7 as resistance and cheered on Hamas; those who championed the armed resistance narrative: you own part of this! This is partly on you! Yes, your ignorance, arrogance, short-sidedness, inhumanity, and grift got us here. Imagine if the entirety of the pro-Palestine movement, in unison, called for the release of Israeli hostages, or at the very least, the women, children, elderly, and the dead. Imagine if Hamas faced this popular/public/moral pressure and realized that its actions are profoundly unpopular and despised and that it had to concede to protect its people and not lose the narrative. But no, you went along with the disaster, and now you’re upset that your beloved terror group is continuing to get the Palestinians annihilated. 10. Those who did not push for a ceasefire/hostage deal, who dehumanized the people of Gaza, and who are blinded by rage, hate, and a desire for revenge; those who do not view the Palestinians as people worthy of life or basic liberty and are unwilling to register Israel’s role in the unfolding catastrophe, including by supporting Hamas for years and letting its rule fester: you own this and are part of this catastrophe! And not only that, but you are despicably and inhumanly mocking hundreds of deaths and saying they’re all Hamas, they’re all this or that, without the slightest ability to have empathy. I’m not saying don’t rejoice in the freeing of the hostages, but to completely dismiss the horrific and unbelievably high cost involved in liberating them reeks of prejudice, inhumanity, and heartlessness. I really am glad that Noa Argamani can see her dying mother, Liora, one last time. I hope for the immediate and expedient release of all Israeli hostages. But at what cost? Palestinian lives matter too – they really do.