This blog reflects a thought experiment, an attempt to write from what I think is an Israeli perspective, whether civilian or official, about the Israeli-Hamas conflict. It is not an easy task. I have never supported Israel’s peacetime or wartime policy or conduct vis-à-vis Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the Six Day War in June 1967 (or its policies and practices affecting Israeli Arabs). I would support a boycott-divestment-sanction policy intended solely to force Israel to withdraw to its pre-war boundaries.
My reactions to current hostilities between Israel and Hamas are conflicted. On the one hand, I deplore the loss of civilian lives on both sides of the conflict. Although I am aware of the disproportionate numbers of casualties and the degrees of sufferings, I am stymied in any calculations about what is right or wrong in the circumstances. My tolerance of the disproportion in no way reflects a belief that an Israeli life is worth more than some number of Gazan lives; such ratios are immoral and obscene. On the other, I honor Israel’s right as a recognized state under international law to defend itself against its enemies and to do so as others have done before it. So I base my thinking about the current hostilities on America’s recent history of waging war in its defense. I compare Israel’s perceptions of threat from Hamas with America’s perceptions of threat from Japan.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed about 2500 military personnel and did a great deal of damage to military facilities. America declared war on Japan, expelled many Japanese-American citizens from West Coast cities, incarcerated many of them in “internment camps,” announced unconditional surrender as its wartime policy, fire-bombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three cities with large civilian populations, and thereby killed hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children. America feared the Japanese and adopted policies and tactics which reflected its fears, though they were unrealistic. For the West Coast was over 5000 miles from Japan, a distance which could not be easily or quickly overcome by significant military forces with the military technologies then known. Moreover, America was stronger than Japan, as Japan well knew.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel and killed 1400 civilians deliberately and barbarically. It attacked no military targets. It planned to launch a second attack of the same kind in hopes of initiating a broader anti-Israel war supported by other Arab forces. Israel has responded with a military invasion of Gaza which has killed thousands of Gazans and presumably hundreds of Hamas fighters. Israel’s policy of trying to spare or reduce civilian casualties is well known but hard to implement in this conflict because Hamas co-locates many of its personnel, facilities, equipment, and munitions in, under, or close to civilian facilities (hospitals, mosques, schools, residential areas). Israel fears Hamas, whose forces are at its borders and possess weapons capable of hitting many targets, with a preference for civilian targets, in much of Israel. Under these circumstances, Israel may have decided upon a policy of unconditional surrender or total elimination of Hamas.
As thus described, Israel has better grounds for total war against Hamas than America had against Japan. Yet, whereas no one called for America to fight less than an all-out war against Japan, many are calling for Israel to cease fighting before the threat to it has been neutralized or eliminated. Israel is aware of this double standard and distrusts the calls for a cease-fire or peace. It suspects them because none offers a proposal which, if implemented, would protect it from future and perhaps more destructive attacks. Given nothing concrete to mitigate its justifiable fears, Israel would be irresponsible to cease its military operations against Hamas for the mere promise of a hoped-for, undefined political solution by diplomats who have a record of negotiating infeasible and unenforceable arrangements in the region. Israel refuses to risk its survival because outsiders sympathize with Gazans who have supported Hamas and now suffer or die.
Israel views America as its great protector but notes that America does not realize the depth of Israel’s existential danger, in the present, great, in the future, greater. Israel notes that America has not pledged that it will regard an attack on Israel as an attack on the United States, as it has declared about an attack on a NATO ally. Unable to entirely rely on America, Israel must be self-reliant in its defense. Although Israeli deterrence has failed, Israeli counterattacks can prevail in defeating Hamas. For Israel to fully trust America, it must know that America understands that Israel cannot protect itself from an existential threat if it turns its self-defense and safety over to others. Still, Israel would be comforted if America made such a NATO-like pledge. Israel might see it as the added deterrence not only needed in the future, when the current hostilities cease on Israel’s terms, but also enabling interested parties in and out of the region to devise and deploy an effective resolution of the long-standing antagonism between Israelis and Palestinians.
A note on American tactics in Vietnam. Even though national security was not imperiled and the country was not fearful, American forces used many of the tactics since adopted, with significant differences, by the Israel Defense Forces. American troops relocated entire villages into compounds called “Strategic Hamlets,” killed mostly old men, women, and children in attacks on villages suspected of harboring Viet Cong guerillas, killed any Vietnamese in “free fire zones,” and conducted devastating B-52 bombing raids on Viet Cong strongholds, often near villages. The massacre at My Lai was an aberration only in its magnitude. Elsewhere, U.S. forces showed a reckless disregard of Vietnamese civilians’ lives.
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