Even As An Ardent Zionist, I Have Hit My Limit on Israel's Conduct of the War in Gaza

Israel has the right to continue incapacitating Hamas, but it cannot continue to inflict so much misery on the civilian population of Gaza

With fighting paused as part of the agreement that is resulting in the release of hostages in Gaza, this is a good time to assess the state of the war Israel is conducting against Hamas in response to the terroristic massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7.

I support Israel resuming its war against Hamas when the temporary cease fire expires in a couple days. (As of this morning, reports suggest the cease-fire could be extended until Wednesday with the release of additional hostages). But I cannot condone the tactics Israel is using in this war because of the horrific impact they are having on the 2.2 million civilians living in Gaza. Not matter how justified Israel’s goals in this war are, Israel’s treatment of civilians has been inhumane, a violation of international law, and contrary to Jewish ethics. If the war resumes, Israel must dramatically change the way it is conducting this war. 

The starting point for my analysis begins with my Zionism. I use the term with some trepidation because it is so misunderstood and, for some, especially the younger generation, a much-tarnished concept. But for me, Zionism simply means that I believe the Jewish people deserve to have a homeland located in Judaism’s historic birthplace.  The case for a Jewish state rests with the consistent presence of Jews in the region for over three thousand years, the antisemitism that has led to the persecution of Jews around the globe no matter where they have tried to settle, and the compelling need to have a place of refuge for Jews after the mass genocide of the Holocaust. 

The modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the Zionist cause. Contrary to the false history that proliferates in modern discourse, Israel was not created through military conquest or colonialization, but rather by a vote on a partition plan by the United Nations General Assembly in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the single set of rules accepted by every nation-state on earth.  As a fully legitimate member of the community of nations, Israel has the right to be free from the use of force against its “territorial integrity” and the “inherent right…of self-defense” against an armed attack.

Hamas’ armed attack targeting Israeli civilians that killed over 1200 people and resulted in approximately 240 persons being taken hostage was an egregious violation of Israeli sovereignty that fully justified military action against Hamas. Israel is engaged, to my mind, in a just war with the reasonable and lawful objectives of removing Hamas from power and destroying its capacity to breach Israeli sovereignty as it did on October 7.

I disagree with those calling for a permanent cease fire. Israel’s war aims of removing Hamas from power and crippling its military capacity continue to be as legitimate now as they were in the immediate aftermath of the October 7. There is not a single nation on earth that would tolerate the existence of a hostile force on its border that had just demonstrated its ability to breach its sovereignty, indiscriminately shoot thousands of rockets toward its densely populated cities and kill about .01% of its population. If the war were to end with Hamas still in power and with the capacity to continue to threaten Israel militarily, Hamas’ atrocities of October 7 would be left unpunished, and Israel will have failed to establish deterrence against future attacks. Worse yet, the towns and kibbutzim near the border with Hamas that have now been evacuated would most likely continue to be too dangerous for repopulation. In effect, by making parts of Israel uninhabitable, Hamas would have achieved some of its ultimate ideological goal of erasing the Jewish state, piece by piece.

Calls by many for an immediate permanent cease-fire are both premature and one-sided. A cease-fire now would leave Hamas in power in Gaza, ready, willing, and able to attack Israel yet again. It is both telling and deeply disappointing, as Brett Stephens has pointed out, that those insisting Israel stop attacking Hamas are not calling for any actions against Hamas to meet Israel’s post-October 7 security imperatives. Any cessation of hostilities should be contingent on Hamas’ release of all the hostages, a decommissioning of Hamas’ military capacity, and development of a U.N. brokered plan to create a non-Hamas led government in Gaza after the war.

My view that Israel is fully justified in continuing to use force to incapacitate Hamas and remove it from power does not mean that I approve of the way Israel has used force in pursuit of these objectives to date or that I would condone a continuation of these tactics.

A just war must be pursued justly.

Despite my sympathy for the difficulty of the challenges Israel faces in conducting its military action against Hamas, Israel should not continue to inflict excessive suffering on the civilian population as it has in the first seven weeks of this conflict.

This conclusion is also informed by my Zionism. In my view, the case for creating a Jewish state in 1948 was not just to provide a place of refuge for the 11 million Jews populating the globe at that time. It was also about creating a good, decent, and stable state in a region that has deep meaning for people around the world but that for centuries had experienced nothing but conquest, conflict, and violence. Israel’s declaration of independence makes this goal unmistakably clear, announcing that:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

It was this audacious project – for Jews to create an entity based on universal liberal values in the heart of the Middle East -- that attracted me when I first traveled to Israel as a teenager and have continued to visit, learn about, and vigorously root for throughout my life. My Zionism has not just been about preserving a secure place for the Jewish people, but for that place to be one Jews could be proud of because its national values reflected Jewish values and represented the Jewish commitment to freedom, justice, equality and peace. 

I fully understand that Israel’s ability to conform to my idealistic framework was tempered from the first seconds of its existence by the demands of survival and security. I also recognize that throughout its 75-year history, Israel has experienced constant tension between the demands of security and its commitment to democracy, equality, and humanity. I do not approve of everything that Israel has done in the name of security, but I also celebrate the pluralistic, economically vibrant, democratic society that Israel has created within its borders. It has done so against all odds, surrounded by hostile nations and violent resistance movements for the entirety of its history. As a Zionist, I find myself often defending Israel against those who disregard the threat Israel faces on a daily basis, but also criticizing Israel for failing to live up to the values expressed in its own founding documents.

Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is one of these moments where I cannot justify Israel’s tactics on moral grounds, even after the monumental security breach the country experienced on October 7. In reaching this conclusion, I realize that there is a great deal that neither I nor most observers know about the military situation, the location and size of Hamas’ infrastructure, and the types of tactics that Hamas is using to defend against the Israeli incursion. With full information, I might feel differently. But based on what is known from public sources, I cannot continue to justify the tactics Israel is using in this war.

There are two overarching principles that govern the conduct of war.

The first is that civilians may not be intentionally targeted.

The second is the rule of proportionality.

This second principle is often misunderstood. It does not mean that since Hamas killed 1200 civilians that Israel may only kill 1200 civilians in its defensive action. As I noted above, Israel is engaged in a just war. International humanitarian law presumes that civilian casualties will occur during warfare. But international law requires that for every military action that occurs, the incidental harm suffered by the civilian population “may not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct value of the military advantage anticipated.” Judgments about proportionality are inherently subjective and depend on imprecise estimates of both the value of the military target and how much civilian damage the military strike will cause.

Nonetheless, this is the standard to which Israel must be held.

If we look at the totality of the war effort thus far, it is hard to argue that this standard has been met.  Israel has claimed to have killed 2,000 of Hamas’ 40,000 fighters. If you accept the data of the Hamas-run health ministry that 14,000 people have been killed, this is a staggering civilian toll for the elimination of only 5% of Hamas’ military capacity.  (In comparison, it is estimated by the Cost of War Project at Brown University that 12,400 civilians were directly killed by the United States during 20 years of war in Afghanistan). And this calculation of the humanitarian toll does not begin to capture the amount of damage that is being caused to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents – tens of thousands of non-fatal casualties, the displacement of people from their homes, hunger, spread of disease, the psychological trauma of daily bombings, dehydration from the lack of water, suffering from lack of medicine, and countless other factors. Half of Gaza’s population is under 18 and 70% are under 30, so the physical and mental health, economic, and educational impacts of this war are going to be impacting children and young people for many decades to come. Furthermore, if you consider that the pause in fighting will allow many Hamas fighters to blend back into the civilian population where they will be difficult if not impossible to find, it is going to be harder and take longer for Israel to continue eliminating Hamas’ military capacity going forward than during the first phase of the war.  Continuing the war until, in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, “the elimination of Hamas” occurs, will compound this devastation to the civilian population many times over. It is extremely difficult to conclude that the totality of the civilian harm is not excessive in relation to the military advantage that has been gained in the war thus far or that the calculus will get anything but worse going forward. 

There are many other problems with the way Israel is conducting this war, but I will single out two in particular. 

Most fundamentally, I do not understand why the military operation against Hamas required a total siege of Gaza blocking all food, medicine, and water to the civilian population. While I am sure that Hamas would hoard food and water for itself and prioritize medical care of its fighters, these are hardly military advantages that could possibly justify deprivation of life-sustaining essentials to over 2 million civilians. Depriving food and water to children, the elderly, the sick, and the hospitalized is cruel and inhumane on any ethical scale. This has to end.

Second, the use of huge bombs that reduce large apartment buildings to rubble and cause devastation to densely populated areas is also extremely troubling. It has been reported that Israel is making widespread use of 2,000 pound bombs in Gaza, even though the United States considered 500-pound bombs to be excessive for most military targets in Mosul during the assault against ISIS. It is hard to conclude based on this factor alone that Israel is fulfilling its duty to mitigate harm against civilians. Some may argue that Israel is using these heavy bombs to reach underground bunkers that Hamas has built under these targets. But to justify these attacks based on that threat, Israel would need to have intelligence that important military targets were located in these tunnels when they were being bombed, not just that underground bunkers existed. Even with respect to the much-touted Hamas underground infrastructure at the Al Shifa hospital, Israel has provided precious little information demonstrating how this infrastructure was being used for military purposes by Hamas. I would need to see far more evidence than has been produced thus far to be convinced that the totality of Israel’s aerial bombardment (amounting to 15,000 bombs dropped thus far – that is about 350 bombs per day) is consistent with international law.

I am not enough of an expert on military operations or humanitarian assistance to provide a complete framework for how Israel should pursue its legitimate war aims while meeting the humanitarian standards for Gazan civilians. 

But at a minimum, I suggest that Israel:

• Restore water service to all of Gaza immediately;

• Stop the restrictions on food and other humanitarian aid entering Gaza at the Rafah crossing (accepting that some illicit materials will enter);

• Identify hospitals that will not be targeted unless a rocket is launched directly from the facility;

• Restore energy to all hospitals and allow another humanitarian pause to restock all hospitals of medicines and critical supplies; and

• Start relying far more on commando raids of known Hamas facilities than aerial bombings, even if they present greater risk to troops.

Hamas began this horrific conflict. Israel had no choice but to respond.

But going forward, Israel needs to pursue its war aims in accordance with international law and its national values, which it has clearly failed to do in first phase of this war.