Discussing the
war in Gaza (incited by the barbaric murdering, raping and kidnapping led by Hamas on October 7), numerous pundits have argued that it is not so much a war between Israel and Hamas as it is a proxy war between the American Empire and the Iranian leaders who desire to be one, or at least knock “ours” out. Qatar and Iran are known to be the major funders of Hamas and other “anti-Israel” terror groups. Israel has become, in this view of the conflict, a stand-in both for the more specific targeting of Jews, and for the more general targeting of the West, or those who would oppose an Iranian empire featuring restrictions on women’s reproductive and almost every other sort of personal freedom.
Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has pointed out that Israel is now fighting off attacks on seven “fronts”: (1) Hamas and other differently-affiliated terrorist groups in Gaza, (2) a similar array of sponsored terrorists in the West Bank, (3) Hezbollah in Lebanon, (4) Syria, (5) Iraq, (6) Yemenite Houthis who have been firing on shipping vessels “in solidarity with Gaza,” and, behind it all, (7) Iran, who for years has called Israel “the little Satan” and the USA “the big Satan.”
If all that isn’t concerning enough, the Alma Research and Education Center has determined that there are forty-five kilometers of tunnels underneath southern Lebanon, built originally with assistance from North Korea. There are three types: ones you can drive a truck through, ones people can move through from region to region, and small local attack portals. See www.timesofisrael.com/…
Thousands of residents of Northern Israel have been evacuated due to shelling by Hezbollah from Lebanon, shelling that recently caused several civilian and military casualties and fatalities on the Israeli side. While Israel has announced it is withdrawing some troops from Gaza, it looks like Lebanon may soon have occasion to feature on our front pages. Some had thought they would be deterred by their previous experience of the Dahiya doctrine which takes its name from the razing of a neighborhood of that name in Beirut in 2006. But their desire to pile on seems to be overtaking any desire for a peaceful existence.
Then there is an eighth front: the war of popular opinion. Platitudes exist to explain and justify Israel’s response, but they don’t have much emotional resonance: collateral damage, human shields, fog of war, friendly fire, revenge, deterrence, self-defense, Geneva Conventions, proportionality (a comparison of target to collateral damage, not a comparison of how many have died on each side, as Senator Sanders seems to think), distinction (between civilian and military targets), precaution (measures taken to avoid civilian casualties). And for all this ratiocination, in most cases it seems a personal bias or affiliation will overwhelm any amount of history, logic, or mutual empathy. While the Geneva Convention does forbid targeting civilians, if civilian infrastructure is used for military purposes, then such sites, formerly protected as “civilian,” lose that designation (distinction) and become valid military targets. This military understanding is pretty basic, but I have yet to see a single main stream media outlet contextualize a report that a mosque or school or hospital was used to launch missiles and so received incoming fire in its turn. Also rarely reported is that Israel has taken the precaution of making millions of calls and sending millions of texts warning people to move from area to area, and from block to block, and from building to building. Mistakes have been made and sometimes acknowledged. Apologies have issued on several occasions. Cold comfort or none, I am sure.
Al-Jazeera and much of western media do seem to be seeking to inflame by their one-sided coverage. As a Qatari business, Al-Jazeera’s bias is easy to understand. For the others, it seems to be the focus mainly for the clicks that extreme divisiveness increases, enabled by the typical shallow reportage of our contemporary defunded journalism. And so compassion for the current apparent underdog underscores antipathy for The Other. You choose—who is the current underdog? who is The Other?
Now, although at war, Israel is expected to continue to provide its enemy with food, water and electricity. And vaccines! Israel must search all the trucks or boats of humanitarian aid for guns and bombs and other weaponry before letting aid in, but to date Israel and the USA have not found a way to ensure that Hamas is not the primary beneficiary of the humanitarian aid. If Gazans start to die from hunger and thirst or disease, to whom would you apportion the blame in this context? To Hamas? To Iran? To Israel?
And who is to blame for the “collateral damage” when it is partly caused by Hamas hiding its rockets and guns in civilian areas and then refusing to allow people to evacuate? Surely only Hamas can be blamed when they themselves shoot at their fellow Gazans who are trying to escape the areas or buildings or houses that have been ordered to evacuate, as was often reported, earlier, when their “military discipline” was greater than it might be now. Perhaps these various situations account for the discrepancies in the body counts. Any dead are counted by Hamas as if they are civilians killed by Israel: at least this is how the figures are characterized in reporting such as “Israel pounds Gaza. 20,000 dead.” Israel claims their civilian to terrorist ratio is one for one, better than the USA ratio in Mosul fighting ISIS, and considers that in crowded urban fighting conditions, they have exercised considerable restraint and talent using precision targeting, with due diligence in the areas of precaution, distinction and proportionality. Perhaps military logic turns unevacuated but warned civilians into “terrorists” for “the count,” although I am not privy to any such accounting method.
IDF spokesmen and officers have indicated they expect the war to continue for about a year.