The Grim Logic of Israel’s War.
If the best course of action is to avoid war, then the second-best course, with war already raging, is to end it.
THE LOGIC OF WAR is pitiless and relentless. Once embarked upon, warfare creates needs and imposes priorities that cannot be ignored without imposing unsustainable costs on one’s own military forces and civilian population. It is precisely war’s ability to wrench control from civilian hands: to commandeer all of a nation’s political, economic and moral resources; that should persuade politicians to do everything in their power to avoid it. War wears away, weakens, and ultimately dissolves the core values and institutions of all the combatants – even those on the winning side. Leaders who takes their nations to war for reasons other than the defence of their people, are the enemies of all humankind.
By the same token, all those who condemn war and are outraged by the means used to wage it, must also prepare to be made the prisoners of its logic. If the best course of action is always to avoid war, then the second-best course, when a war is raging, is to bring it to an end. For those engaged in the fighting, that means winning. For those trying to stop it, that means offering the combatants a peace which all sides can live with – which means making sure there are no losers – only winners.
Unsurprisingly, it is, generally-speaking, easier to win a war, than it is to negotiate a lasting peace.
The war currently raging in Gaza was started by Hamas. In a perfect world, the Israeli state would not have retaliated. The country’s political and military leaders would have understood that massive and unrelenting retribution is exactly what Hamas required to win the war it had started.
The strategy of the Hamas terrorists is to increase the global condemnation and diplomatic isolation of the Israeli state. Their tactics consist of engaging the “Zionist Enemy” in such a way that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is forced to inflict the maximum possible destruction, suffering, and death upon Gaza and its civilian population.
Sadly, this is not a perfect world. There was simply no way the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could decline to avenge the 1,200 Israeli citizens butchered, or free the 250 hostages abducted by Hamas in the course of their bloody pogrom of 7 October 2023.
Since war could not be avoided, and since every engagement with Hamas fighters in densely populated Gaza was bound to entail massive “collateral damage” to civilian life and property, Israel’s strategy was to make sure that Hamas and its military infrastructure suffered a level of destruction from which there could be no coming back. The Israelis were determined that, for the terrorist organisation, this would be a war of annihilation.
Which meant, of course, that Hamas’s best hope of surviving Israel’s assault was to make sure that the rest of the world saw, and was horrified by, the unprecedented scale of civilian death and destruction. As was the case in the USA’s war against the Vietnamese, the struggle became a contest to see who capitulated first: the American soldiers required to fight it, or the American civilians required to watch it on the six o’clock news.
In the case of Vietnam, that contest was pretty much a dead heat. Except, being beaten in Vietnam only caused the USA to lose face. But, Israel losing to Hamas – and anything short of its complete destruction will be counted as a win by Hamas – would signify the loss of Israel’s ability to control events. The moment that happens, the Jewish state is doomed.
Meaning that, no matter how loudly the world’s protests echo in Israeli ears; no matter how seriously the accusations of “genocide” are taken by the International Court of Justice; the State of Israel cannot afford to flinch. Indeed, the louder the international clamour against Israel grows, the more urgent it becomes that the conflict in Gaza be brought to an end.
What does this mean on the ground? It means that where the IDF once applied a strict limit to the predicted number of civilian casualties resulting from its operations, it now confines itself to issuing warnings (where it can) to Gazan civilians living in targeted neighbourhoods. Since 7 October 2023, the quantum of likely collateral damage inflicted by any given military operation is no longer a limiting factor. Short term, this works in Hamas’s favour. Long term, not so much.
Supporters of the Palestinian cause express outrage at Israel’s indifference to the impact of its operations on the civilian population of Gaza. Few, if any, realise that their parents and grandparents operated in a very similar moral enviroment 80 years ago during the Second World War. At the start of the war great care was taken by the Allies to spare the enemy’s civilian population. By the end of the war, however, little if any distinction was made between military and civilian targets. The Allied leaders wanted to end hostilities as speedily as possible. If German civilians got in the way – too bad.
In the words of Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Chief of Bomber Command:
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind.”
The same Palestinian supporters, along with the United Nations and humanitarian aid workers, have expressed even greater outrage at the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Clearly, they are unaware of the British blockade of Germany which lasted from 1914 until 1919. The Royal Navy prevented anything and everything from getting through to the German people: raw materials, machinery, medicines, and yes, even food. It is estimated that between 500,000 and three-quarters-of-a-million civilians, most of them elderly, mothers, and very young children, died of hunger, or diseases related to hunger, as a result of the British blockade.
Few people expressed outrage. Germany’s enemies were of the view that the German people had it coming.
Was it “genocide”? No, it was war.
For a while, it looked as though Hamas’s strategy was working. International pressure against Israel grew. Across the West, the streets filled with young people wearing the keffiyeh and waving the Palestinian flag. Israel, however, remained unmoved. Indeed, it decided to eliminate not just Hamas, but the Gazan terrorists’ regional ally, Hezbollah. Then, Israel’s political and military leaders asked themselves a question: “Why destroy the puppets, but leave the puppet-master unscathed?”
The relentless and unpitying logic of Israel’s war rumbles on – across Iran.
It is a very rare thing to hear a political commentator from the Left who understands and admits publicly that the current round of conflict was forced by Hamas, and that the Israeli response was not only the inevitable result of the spree of ethnic violence, rape and kidnapping, but exactly the intended purpose of this violence and hostage taking. Hamas wanted this result. It's not a strategy that makes much sense to anyone who is not a radical Islamist, but it achieved the desired response. The only attempted genocide was from Hamas, although no doubt some of the Extremist Jewish leaders would be happy to implement one too.
Thanks Chris, you're a rare relic from the days when Leftist politics still made some sense for social cohesion and was not entirely focused on separating people on identity grounds.
The human race is a warring species. It has always been that way but strangely only a very small number of humans promote it. The rest are happy to live together and get on with their lives.The other small group of people live by their beliefs and to make those beliefs a reality use power and influence. They make their way to the top of the pile and once in control initiate their agendas to accomplish their own righteous view of the world while the rest of us bobble around in their wake, and sometimes loose our lives because of it. Isolated countries like our own seem to to have more passive leaders but if NewZealand was situated near Gaza or the Ukraine or Iran would we be so passive. I doubt it.
There are differences in the morality of these war mongers. I still make the distinction of whether a missile is aimed directly at an apartment building full of civilians, or whether it is aimed at industrial or military targets that happen to have civilians in the area. IMO Putin ticks the box for the lowest form of life with his war strategy of sending missiles directly into cities. Netanyahu is also guilty, but at least there are military targets among the thousands of civilians killed. I listened to Hipkins speak this morning on how we should be taking the moral high ground, and should tell the US how disappointed we are in their behaviour. IMO they are hollow words from a hollow person. I might not have had the courage to make the decision to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran whether it be morally acceptable or not . But now its done I’m glad that at least one threat to world peace is gone even if it has been replaced by another.
Thanks for the thought provoking essay Chris.