Collective punishment is not simply a war crime. Collective punishment escalates violence and cycles of retribution by driving peace-seeking non combatants onto the side that received the punishment. This fact has been known since the Code of Hammurabi was written.
The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz has found that the percentage of civilian deaths to total deaths including enemy combatant deaths in the ongoing operation ‘Swords of Iron’ is far higher than previous operations against Hamas in Gaza. Earlier this year the aerial bombing campaign Operation Shield and Arrow had a civilian death rate of 33%. Aerial bombing in the previous decade from 2012 to 2022 had a civilian death rate of 40%. The civilian death rate from aerial bombing in the ongoing operation in Gaza is 60%, according to Haaretz. This death rate exceeds those of the major armed conflicts of the twentieth century.
Haaretz and other credible sources such as the Washington Post have provided evidence that the extreme civilian death rate in Operation Swords of Iron is the result of policy decisions made by Israel’s far right coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the Guardian:
The study confirms an investigation 10 days ago by two other Israeli news sites, +972 Magazine and Local Call, which found Israel was deliberately targeting residential blocks to cause mass civilian casualties in the hope people would turn on their Hamas rulers. The figures will make uneasy reading for the Biden administration, which is facing global criticism and isolation for vetoing a UN security council vote for a ceasefire on Friday.
The thoroughly documented 972 Magazine and Local Call investigation explains the policy decisions that the Israeli government made that have led to the extraordinarily high civilian death rate.
The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.
Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war — which Israel has named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).
The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.
This is collective punishment of Gazans, not Israeli self defense against Hamas. These are not legitimate military targets. Moreover, according to the 972 investigation, sources said that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) knew the likely number of civilian deaths ahead of the air strikes on these “power targets”. The high civilian death rate is intentional, not accidental, according to these sources.
An extensive Washington Post analysis found the IDF has a doctrine of disproportionate response.
The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummeled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The onslaught then took Hezbollah by surprise, whose senior leadership had not expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had planned for such a relentless bombardment. “I said that we shouldn’t exaggerate, that Israel will just retaliate a bit, bomb a couple of targets and that would be the end of it,” a Hezbollah operative told former Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in 2006.
The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”
Around the same time, former Israeli colonel Gabriel Siboni wrote a report under the aegis of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies that argued the necessary response to militant provocations from Lebanon, Syria or Gaza were “disproportionate” strikes that aim only secondarily to hit the enemy’s capacity to launch rockets or other attacks. Rather, the goal should be to inflict lasting damage, no matter the civilian consequences, as a future deterrent.
What may be the most galling about this alleged tactic to “create a shock” to “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas” is that the Netanyahu led Israeli government has propped up Hamas for over a decade. Netanyahu encouraged Qatar to give millions (over the decade over a billion) of dollars to Hamas up to this September, a month before Hamas’ savage terrorist attack on October 7.
According to a New York Times investigation:
Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.
For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.
During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials, according to several people familiar with the secret discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the payments to continue?
Mr. Netanyahu’s government had recently decided to continue the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha.
The Netanyahu government knew from Israeli intelligence sources for over a year that Hamas was planning a major attack on Israel, yet continued to encourage Qatari funding of Hamas despite warnings from Israeli intelligence that Qatari funds were making it possible for Hamas to build up its arsenal to be used to attack Israel. Again from the lengthy Times piece, cutting to the chase:
Shlomo Brom, a retired general and former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, said an empowered Hamas helped Mr. Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state.
“One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” he said in an interview. The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, Mr. Brom said, adding that he can say, “I have no partner.”
So the Netanyahu led Israeli government encouraged Qatar to take bags of cash to Hamas, which over a decade added up to billions of dollars, with the intent of making Hamas strong enough to control Gaza and now the citizens of Gaza are being punished collectively by massive Israeli bombing of civilian targets to “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” .
Netanyahu bears far more responsibility for propping up Hamas than the people of Gaza. He must be removed from office if there is ever to be a chance of peace in Israel and Palestine. Netanyahu cynically empowered the terrorists.
Yagil Levy, sociology professor at at the Open University of Israel stated (source the Guardian) :
“The broad conclusion is that extensive killing of civilians not only contributes nothing to Israel’s security, but that it also contains the foundations for further undermining it,” Levy concluded. “The Gazans who will emerge from the ruins of their homes and the loss of their families will seek revenge that no security arrangements will be able to withstand.”
The United States needs to support Israel in ways that further Israel’s security. We should not provide bombs to Israel to be used on civilian targets further undermining Israeli security.
![Fig. 6. Anomalies of upper 2000 m OHC from (a) 2003 to 2012 and (b) 2013 to 2022,
relative to a 1981–2010 baseline but with the global mean value removed for each map [data
updated from Cheng et al. (2017a)].](https://images.dailykos.com/images/1281440/large/Screenshot2024-03-13at6.05.57PM.png?1710368488 "Fig. 6. Anomalies of upper 2000 m OHC from (a) 2003 to 2012 and (b) 2013 to 2022,
relative to a 1981–2010 baseline but with the global mean value removed for each map [data
updated from Cheng et al. (2017a)].")
