During World War II, far, far more German and Japanese civilians were killed than American and British civilians.
More than 300,000 German civilians and more than 200,000 Japanese civilians were killed by allied strategic bombing alone, leaving the starvation, disease, forced mass displacement, and general hellish suffering and deprivation that come with war.
The wisdom and morality of the allied bombing campaigns has been rightly questioned. Still, today, no one questions the basic rightness of the allied cause. And no one would be so foolish as to suggest that the higher Axis body count made them the victims in the war and the Allies the aggressors.
This is because, on an intuitive level, the moral mind understands that suffering per se is not a moral category. Suffering more does not make you a more ethical person – while suffering less does not make you an oppressor. It is true that often, throughout history, aggressors have profited from the oppression of suffering victims.
We need not look further than the era of colonialism or thousands of years of institutionalized slavery to see plentiful examples of such injustice. But sometimes, conversely, justice is done, and then it is the aggressor who ends up suffering more. The aggressor’s suffering does not indemnify them, and the victory of the defenders against aggression does not compromise the justness of their fight.
All this makes sense to most of the world most of the time.
What is Israel doing to the Palestinians?
It certainly should make sense to the horde of smug media commentators fighting relentlessly to keep the focus of the international community on the horrific humanitarian situation in Gaza. But now, of course, there are Jews involved, and when it comes to the Jews the rules change.
It is true, they say, that Hamas violated every rule of war and humanitarian norm imaginable on October 7, and it might be true that they continue to do so by fighting disguised as civilians and using hospitals and schools as military bases, but (always look after the “but”) that is not “the story.” The story is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, because the Palestinians are suffering more.
What is Israel doing to the Palestinians? To date, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced. (We might say “made refugees” but most were already – or at least saw themselves as such.) Sixty percent of built-up areas have been demolished, so most refugees will have no homes to return to. More than 20,000 people have been killed, if we are to believe the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not trouble itself to distinguish in these statistics between combatants and civilians – so let us put the number of civilian deaths at “many.”
The destitute masses of humanity crowded into UN schools and camps in southern Gaza have completely inadequate housing, food, and medical care. Some are starving; many are dying in agony of diseases that cannot be treated for want of medicine. All are cold. Can such a state of suffering and misery possibly be justified, under any circumstances?
Yes, as a matter of fact.
The principle of distinction makes demands on both sides
The laws of war mandate that all belligerent powers do their utmost to distance fighting from civilians in order to protect them. Noncombatants cannot be a target of hostilities. In International Humanitarian Law (IHL) this is called the “principle of distinction.” But the law also recognizes that if one side flouts these rules by fighting from civilian areas, that cannot tie the hands of the law-abiding side. To do so would be unjust. And so, if a hospital or school – which is a protected area under international law – is used to store weapons or fighters, it becomes a legitimate military target, provided two conditions are met.
First, the attack against the target must do its best to minimize civilian casualties, for example by using a smaller bomb to destroy only the room or apartment in question, or by dropping leaflets warning civilians to flee. (This is the “principle of precaution.”) Second, it must weigh the military advantage gained from the strike against the civilian loss of life that would ensue, to ensure that it is not, say, killing 100 innocent children just to get to one lone fighter. (This is the “principle of proportionality.”)
As long as the fighting force adheres to these three principles (distinction, precaution, proportionality), its attacks are lawful. And while the IDF makes mistakes, and while individual soldiers or commanders can make bad or even reprehensible decisions, the army as a whole devotes enormous resources – including large offices of military lawyers whose entire job is this – to ensure that its strikes follow these principles.
This is what makes the IDF a law-abiding, moral army, and that is what makes its strikes just, even when they inevitably kill Palestinian (or, for that matter, Israeli) civilians and destroy their property because terrorist armies cannot be allowed to make themselves invulnerable by hiding among noncombatants.
The loss of civilian life, their homes, and livelihoods is a tragedy, a disaster. It is even a crime – but one for which the liability must be laid solely at the doorstep of Hamas, the terrorist army that chooses to use its own people as human shields.
History will judge people's moral clarity- or lack thereof- on Gaza
THIS IS the moral lynchpin of the Gaza war and, more generally, all of Israel’s asymmetric conflicts with the Palestinians. One hundred years from now, when we have all moved on, the moral integrity of analysts and statesmen in assessing this conflict will be judged on this question: Did you understand that – to the extent that the IDF obeyed the laws of war – the inevitable horrific suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza was the fault of Hamas? If you are able to say this, you will be vindicated by history. If not, you will be damned.
All those whose moral judgment is not clouded by the fashionable sophisms of the modern West see that there is a right side and a wrong side to this war, a side that systematically follows humanitarian law and norms and a side that systematically breaks them.
Yes, that makes this a war between good and evil. We must not be afraid to say it: Those who target the innocent for murder, torture, and rape are evil. Their supporters are evil, their apologists are evil, and those who knowingly cooperate with their twisted propaganda war are evil. As for those on the sidelines who stubbornly refuse to see the simple truth that you are moral not when you suffer, but when you act morally – they are at the very least sorry rubes in a moral tragedy that is unfolding on a global scale.
World pressure continues to mount on the State of Israel to relent in its pursuit of Hamas, agreeing to a long-term ceasefire that leaves its murderous leadership in place to continue its unceasing total war against Israel. It goes without saying that to do so would be a double evil, accomplishing all this terrible hurt to Palestinian life without achieving safety and justice for the Israeli people. It would be a defeat not only for Israel, but for all that is decent and right.
And so, it falls to us Israelis, in the face of such pressure, not to flinch, but to remain adamant.
A world in which murderers can massacre with impunity by hiding behind innocents is neither just nor safe. And the hypocrites who would have us, of all the peoples on Earth, sacrifice generations of our own children at the altar of their moral perversity will live in infamy forever.
The writer is program rabbi at the Hartman Institute’s gap-year program, Hevruta, as well as a senior editor at Koren Publishers Jerusalem.