The Moral Chasm
Between Israel and Hamas
By James T. Conway in
the Wall Street Journal
Americans are
understandably concerned when they hear that the majority of Palestinian
casualties in the fighting between Israel and Hamas have been civilians and
when they see images of houses in Gaza reduced to rubble and women wailing.
Given the lack of corresponding Israeli civilian casualties to date, this
creates the impression of an unequal—and hence immoral—fight between Israel and
Hamas.
Although American
empathy for noncombatants is a critical component of who we are as a people, it
should not blind us to reality: Israel's military exists to protect its
civilian population and seeks to avoid harming noncombatants, while its
adversary cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields while
deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.
I recently had the
opportunity to see for myself the moral chasm between how the Israeli Defense
Forces and Hamas treat civilians during military operations. In May I joined a
dozen other retired U.S. generals and admirals on a trip to Israel with the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Just outside
Hamas-ruled Gaza, we toured a tunnel discovered less than one kilometer from an
Israeli kindergarten. Unlike tunnels that I had seen during the Iraq war that
were designed for smuggling, this Hamas tunnel was designed for launching
murder and kidnapping raids. The 3-mile-long tunnel was reinforced with
concrete, lined with telephone wires, and included cabins unnecessary for
infiltration operations but useful for holding hostages.
Israel, fearing just
such tunnel-building, has long tried to limit imports of concrete to Gaza for
anything but humanitarian projects, yet somehow thousands of tons of the
material have been diverted for terror use rather than building hospitals or
housing for Palestinians. Since the beginning of ground operations into Gaza,
the IDF has uncovered approximately 30 similar tunnels leading into Israel, in
addition to the more than two dozen discovered prior to Operation Protective
Edge. Hamas operatives have been intercepted emerging from such tunnels in
Israel carrying tranquilizers and handcuffs, apparently hoping to replicate the
successful 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, for whom Israel
exchanged 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.
Beyond targeting
Israeli civilians with kidnappings and with the indiscriminate firing of
rockets, Hamas shows a callous disregard for the lives of the Palestinians it
ostensibly represents. Earlier this month Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri
appeared on Al-Aqsa TV and encouraged Gaza residents to act as human shields.
They appear to have heeded the call: Israeli Defense Forces combat video has
shown Palestinians rushing to rooftops after receiving warnings from Israel—via
phone calls, text messages, and unarmed "knock-knock" small
projectiles striking a targeted building—that a missile attack is imminent.
Nor is Hamas the only
potential adversary of Israel that believes its civilians' propaganda value is
worth more than their lives. From an IDF outpost overlooking the border, I saw
housing tracts in Lebanon built with Iranian money after Israel's 2006 war with
Hezbollah. The IDF has determined that the housing masks the launch sites for
some of the more than 100,000 rockets that Hezbollah holds in reserve for
attacking Israel and its citizens. As we have seen in images from Gaza, the
occupants of these dwellings either will serve as human shields to deter
Israeli pre-emptive strikes, or in the event of another war they will be
valuable "collateral damage"—dying in the service of Hezbollah's
propaganda mill.
This cynical
inducement of civilian suffering for propaganda is in marked contrast to the
IDF's treatment of noncombatants. While Hamas is encouraging the sacrifice of
its civilian population—and its cowardly leadership is ensconced in underground
bomb shelters—the IDF reports that in the conflict's first week it provided
more than 4,400 tons of food to Palestinians in Gaza, about 900 tons of natural
gas and about 3.2 million liters of diesel fuel. All this despite 1,700 Hamas
rockets fired at Israel.
Meanwhile, the
Rutenberg power plant outside Ashdod in Israel supplies Gaza with electricity,
though the Palestinian Authority's payments are badly in arrears. This supply
only stopped when a Hamas rocket destroyed the power lines to Gaza on July 13,
plunging 70,000 Palestinian households into darkness. Despite the rocket fire,
Israel repaired the transmission lines, restoring electricity to Gaza.
I do not relate these
experiences to argue for an Israeli moral perfection that does not exist, or to
suggest that the IDF should be immune from criticism even if it commits genuine
abuses. The tragic reality is that no matter how much the IDF tries to avoid
collateral damage, its operations will kill some number of civilians. That
won't be close to the carnage of noncombatants in the Syrian civil war, but it
won't matter. As one Israeli commander told me, "The world judges Israel
differently," regardless of its efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
I suspect that he may
be right. If so, it is essential for the IDF to be as vigilant in shaping the
information environment as it is in intercepting rockets from Gaza.
Gen. Conway, who
retired in 2010, was the 34th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.
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