It didn’t take long at all for a large number of people to take to speak their piece in condemnation of Israel’s first wave of retaliatory action against Hamas after the pogrom Hamas operatives committed in Israel on October 7th. Politicians, pundits, every day people on Twitter, hell, even the Pope is asking for “proportionality” from Israel in their response. What very few of these critics are doing is offering a rational alternative, and that is simply because there isn’t one.
After fifteen hundred Hamas fighters streamed into Israel and began murdering everyone in sight, whether an IDF soldier or merely an old person waiting for a bus, until their carnage left thirteen hundred people dead and many more wounded, it was obvious that the Israeli state was going to respond. Justice demands it. Common sense demands it. Doesn’t it?
The way people critique Israel, already calling their airstrikes in Gaza an overreaction or collective punishment, you’d think there was a perfectly good, perfectly effective alternative that Israel was intentionally not choosing. From the tone used by those who condemn Israel, you would think Israel had an easily solvable problem but was choosing not to employ it because they prefer cruelty. But what are the actual choices they have before them? The way I see it, there are only three.
Do nothing.
Send soldiers into Gaza and go door to door searching for Hamas members.
Use superior technology to shape the battlefield before sending in soldiers to attack Hamas.
No doubt there are people who think that choice #1 is viable. These people are some variant of fool or an antisemite. Not only does justice demand finding the parties guilty for planning and ordering the attack on Israel, but good sense does too. By doing nothing, Hamas and its partners and funders across the Islamic world will sense weakness and only attack further. Everyone out there who - even if from a genuinely good place in their heart - believes that what will stop the attacks against the Israeli population is if Israel refuses to use violence and instead, ends the blockade of Gaza, flooding the region with resources, and money, and love, is missing the point that Hamas and those who support them are Jihadists. They weren’t made in 2007 when the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt began (a blockade that went up in response to Hamas taking power and that would be ended if Hamas made peace with Israel). Hamas is not some benevolent political party concerned with fair governance and providing for the people under their charge. Here is a video of senior Hamas official Ali Baraka proudly telling an interviewer on RT how Hamas spent two and half years pretending to be concerned with governing Gaza, when in reality they were planning this attack. Those who argue that its Israel’s policies that create terrorists, that poverty and violence are what inspire people to jihad, are forgetting that people like Osama Bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Ramzi bin al Shibh, Salman Abedi, and so many other Jihadists responsible for acts of terrorism around the world were not poor, oppressed individuals, throwing away their lives because Israel or the US had immiserated them first. In fact, they had lives that were middle class or even privileged. Pure and simple, they were motivated to kill by ideology - the same ideology held by members of Hamas. For Israel turning the other cheek will just result in that cheek getting cut to pieces too.
As to option #2, I have seen this called for online by random commenters and even people who should know better, like the Secretary General of NATO. Summed up, the idea is that Israel has the right to respond to the attacks on their citizens, but they want that response to be “proportional,” meaning they want fewer Palestinian civilians to die. This is a fair enough desire. War is awful and when civilians die, particularly children, it’s heartbreaking (to those of us who have hearts, anyway). Hamas though, intentionally hides its organization and its weapons among the civilian population. Hamas doesn’t care when Palestinian people die. It writes each one of them off as a martyr in a holy war which they believe to be an honorable short cut to heaven. Again, watch Ali Baraka say as much. Not only do Hamas fighters hide in the homes, hospitals, and schools of Gaza, but they have an extensive tunnel network beneath the ground. The suggestion that Israeli forces should navigate this terrain basically on foot, facing the booby traps, snipers, suicide bombers, and conventional fighters they are sure to be met with, all in service of trying to spare Palestinian civilians, is to suggest that the Israeli government is obligated to care more about Palestinians than their own troops, and also to care more about Palestinian people than Hamas does! It’s an outrageous request, and it would be totally irrational for the Israeli government to choose it. Not only is it asking a government to deprioritize its own people because the government it is at war with is using its civilians as human shields, but the greater loss of life it would cause for Israeli forces would mean a weakened military overall and a greater probability of failure in the field. Both of these factors would then increase the likelihood of future attacks on Israel.
Then there is option #3. Use superior military technology to shape the terrain. Bomb known weapons caches and known Hamas fortifications - yes, even those Hamas purposefully put in apartment buildings, schools, mosques and hospitals. Give themselves an edge from a distance (like every military ever has tried to do since the invention of the bow and arrow) before having to send in a ground force to do the house to house work and - shudder - tunnel clearing. Yes, this will result in lopsided numbers where Palestinian dead will outnumber Israeli dead, and many of those people will be civilians. And that’s sad. War sucks. Innocent people dying in war is always a tragedy. But again, what are the alternatives? Doing nothing will be read as weakness and result in more attacks coming their way while going in on foot with no shaping operations first would make Israel more likely to fail at its objective and weaken their military unnecessarily, thus also making them ripe for further attack by not only Hamas but the other groups who target them for destruction, like Hezbollah.
Israel has three choices, none of them good, none of them pleasant, but only one of them rational. If you don’t like it, I suggest you take it up with Hamas.