Israel and the al-Shifa Hospital
It's likely legal and almost certainly won't matter.
I traveling when the news broke of Israel’s takeover of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital. In his weekly email newsletter, Economist defence editor Shashank Joshi offers a strong analysis of the events since.
It has been five days since the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) entered the al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza city. They have come under mounting criticism for attacking the hospital, which they claim housed a Hamas headquarters and arms depot. In recent days the IDF has pointed to weapons, computers and intelligence equipment found in the hospital’s MRI centre; a tunnel shaft with a blast-proof door and firing hole; and CCTV footage showing that Israeli hostages, some of them with no apparent injuries, were taken to al-Shifa after their abduction by Hamas on October 7th.
My colleagues and I have written on the al-Shifa saga in detail. We explained that Hamas is unlikely to have a single “command and control centre”, as Israel put it. Some Israeli intelligence officers say that the group’s leadership may have escaped to Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that lies outside the current area of Israeli military operations.
My view is this: Israel unwisely raised expectations by publishing dramatic videos of Bond-villain lairs underneath the hospital. But it is increasingly clear that Hamas was abusing the site. And it would be foolish to jump to conclusions when the IDF has yet to explore much of the hospital complex or its tunnels—on which note, check out our latest Babbage podcast on tunnel warfare.
Let’s step back a moment. There is a great deal of misunderstanding around the legality of attacks on hospitals, so I want to clear a few things up. Yes, hospitals have special protection under the laws of war. But no, it is not absolute. If they are used to commit “harmful” acts then they can lose that protection. Treating wounded combatants does not qualify. But using al-Shifa to store weapons or direct rocket fire would cross the line.
Then it gets more complicated. Even if a hospital loses its protection, attackers still have to give a warning and allow for a reasonable amount of time to comply. Only if that is unheeded may the attack go ahead. Some NGOs, like Human Rights Watch, have argued that Israel’s earlier evacuation order for 22 hospitals in northern Gaza was “not an effective warning” because it did not provide for the safety of patients and doctors amid a humanitarian crisis. However, my colleague Anshel Pfeffer notes that an offer by Israeli doctors to evacuate premature babies was rejected.
Once an attack proceeds, as it did on November 15th, any attack on a hospital must still abide by principles such as discrimination (don’t target civilians) and proportionality (incidental harm to civilians must be proportionate to the anticipated military advantage). Geoffrey Corn, a former senior expert adviser on the law of war to the US Army, tells me that the IDF would have had to consider feasible alternative options that might have neutralised a Hamas command post with no greater risk to the IDF—such as flooding tunnels or a cyber-attack.
Whether those alternatives would have achieved the military objectives at hand—or, indeed, whether the kinetic operation underway now will do so—is unanswerable given current information. Beyond that, I simply don’t know what Israel knew or thought they knew about the nature of the Hamas command center. Without that information, military necessity and proportionality are impossible to assess.
The 18 November report “Was Israel’s attack on al-Shifa hospital justified?” raises some doubts, though:
Israel has long claimed that al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, serves as a key command centre for Hamas, the group which killed or took hostage around 1,400 people in Israel on October 7th. In the early hours of November 15th, after a tense six-day stand-off, members of Shaldag, an elite Israeli air-force commando unit, entered one wing of the hospital.
So far there is little evidence of its being a major military facility. Only the coming days will determine whether Israel has in fact rooted out a Hamas headquarters. Whether good evidence turns up matters to both sides. For Israel, the hospital is a prime example of how Hamas hides behind innocent civilians inside targets that are calculated to provoke outrage if they are attacked. For the Palestinians, targeting a hospital is emblematic of how cheaply Israel values Palestinian suffering. If Israel fails to justify its charges against al-Shifa, its operation in Gaza will be undermined.
Start with the public claims. On October 27th the Israel Defence Forces (idf) said that al-Shifa, which is in the centre of Gaza city, was the “focus” of Hamas’s activity in the Gaza Strip. It said the site had “several underground complexes” used by leaders, including a “control centre” for Hamas’s internal-security unit and a “headquarters” to direct rocket fire, command forces and store weapons. A slick “intelligence-based” video published by the idf the same day showed a 3D model of the hospital with a Bond-villain lair beneath, including labyrinthine corridors, large meeting rooms and rows of laptops.
Israeli officials have said that Hamas had begun creating the facility by 2007, enlarging basements originally dug by Israel when it expanded the hospital in the 1980s. They have also said it had several floors and space for several hundred people. Amnesty International, a human-rights organisation, has said that Hamas had used parts of al-Shifa “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects” in 2014. Hamas’s leadership is thought to have holed up below the hospital during wars in 2009 and 2014. Israeli officials say it has been used to treat the 240 hostages captured on October 7th, some of whom were wounded or had pre-existing conditions.
America has endorsed many of these claims. On November 14th John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House, said that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller group, operated a “command-and-control node” from al-Shifa. On November 16th, after the idf had entered the site, Mr Kirby said America was “still convinced of the soundness of [its] intelligence”.
Hamas denies the allegations, and medical personnel at al-Shifa say they have seen no evidence of them. The proof Israel has produced so far has been underwhelming. The idf says it has found “intelligence materials, military technologies and equipment, command-and-control centres, and communications equipment” at al-Shifa. It has published photographs showing guns, ammunition and Iranian-made anti-tank rockets it says were found in the mri department, as well as the entrance to an unexplored tunnel shaft. Separately, the idf has found the bodies of two hostages near the hospital. It has also taken some unidentified bodies back to Israel.
It is, of course, too soon to assess the reality of the situation.
Troops are also moving slowly for fear of booby traps. They are under strict orders not to enter tunnels and have used robots and sniffer-dogs to explore them. Israeli officials insist that “there is much more terror infrastructure in the area of the complex that is well hidden.” What’s more, they say, Hamas has had weeks to cover its tracks since it became clear that Israel’s ground offensive would be far larger than in the past.
And, even if it turns out that there’s not much in the way of a command center under the hospital, it’s plausible that Israel had good reason to believe otherwise. That’s the sort of thing that, if it ever plays out, will be done years from now in a courtroom.
Moreover, the law and the optics here are entirely different things.
Even if Israel does find evidence, it may not meet the expectations of the watching world. In legal terms, the discovery of a weapons cache could be enough to cause a hospital to lose its protection. However, the Geneva conventions specify that the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from wounded combatants is not enough to qualify. And whatever the letter of the law, finding a clutch of Kalashnikovs and grenades would not be seen by many to justify taking over Gaza’s largest hospital. As a further complication, a command-and-control “node” or “headquarters” is unlikely to resemble the operations room of a conventional army or the idf video. One tell-tale sign might be communications infrastructure: Hamas is thought to have planned the October 7th attack using hardwired telephone lines, rather than mobile-phone and internet networks monitored by Israel.
Israel itself is largely responsible for the high expectations. Many Israeli defence personnel are privately critical of the idf Spokesperson’s Unit for building up an unrealistic picture of what might be found underneath al-Shifa and exaggerating its centrality to Hamas. Even Israeli intelligence officials do not believe that the group currently has its main headquarters—to the extent that such a thing exists—below the hospital. These, they say, have probably moved to Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that lies beyond Israel’s current zone of operations. On November 15th the idf dropped leaflets on the city warning residents of certain neighbourhoods to leave.
In practice, Hamas’s command-and-control structure is fluid. The group’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, does not have a single official headquarters or permanent bases. That has presented the idf with two challenges. One is the intelligence problem of finding commanders. In recent years, the idf’s military-intelligence branch has attempted to refresh its pre-war “target bank” by using artificial intelligence to analyse data collected from satellites and aerial surveillance. That process is opaque.
This is the nature of the enemy Israel is fighting. Hamas is deliberately trying to entice Israel into killing civilians and/or using Israel’s comparative concern for doing so to military advantage.
Israeli propaganda efforts have been pitiful. But I doubt that it matters much. The BDS crowd of lefties will attack them no matter what they do. The MAGAts will be split between the evangelicals who want Israel to bring on Armageddon and will be 100% supportive, and the Nazis for whom any dead Jew is a good Jew. The Arab governments will continue to pray they destroy Hamas, while publicly pandering just enough to the mob. Iran’s gonna Iran. Biden’s going to go on supporting Israel while trying to keep the lid on.
Soft power matters, and international support or at least indifference is helpful. But what really matters in this conflict or any other, is power. Israel has the power, and it’s using it to kill Hamas. Everything else is noise.
Given that no one is going to be hauled to the Hague, I’m not sure I see the point to parsing the laws of armed conflict. I’m also not sure Israel isn’t pursuing an unannounced policy of Dahiya, disproportionate retaliation. My question isn’t whether either party’s actions are legal, but whether they will lead to anything except a return to the status quo ante or worse. We plunged into Afghanistan with little evidence of a long term goal or plan. I would hope the Israeli’s would learn from our example.
“This is the nature of the enemy Israel is fighting. Hamas is deliberately trying to entice Israel into killing civilians and/or using Israel’s comparative concern for doing so to military advantage.”
So, when Hamas does something wrong, Hamas is to blame. And when Israel does something wrong, Hamas is to blame. Got it.
Just a few general points:
– Israel went in on the ground, as expected. That’s the only way to avoid destroying the complex or inflicting mass casualties.
– Hamas is the government of Gaza, so it should not be surprising there is evidence of Hamas activity at the site, including video of Hamas fighters in the hospital.
– I don’t think it’s surprising that there isn’t much above ground in terms of military equipment. It’s also not surprising that there isn’t an elevator that conveniently goes to an underground complex like a Bond villain’s lair.
– As Hamas leadership openly says, it keeps its fighters and war material underground to avoid airstrikes. Hamas is also very open about placing its military capabilities in locations where Israel is reluctant to strike them because of collateral damage to include schools, hospitals, and religious buildings. This is a major factor driving Israeli ground operations.
– The circumstantial evidence that there is significant Hamas military infrastructure underneath the hospital complex is extensive and includes claims from Hamas fighters directly as well as other information going back more than a decade.
– However, strong circumstantial evidence is not proof. And it looks like now that Israel controls the site and surrounding area, it is working on finding and destroying the tunnel systems – whatever their extent and nature – which is one of its principal war aims.
One point that is apparent: when UNWRA and related agencies stated outright that Hamas had no presence in the hospital, and hostages were located there, they were almost certainly lying through their teeth.
Because several non-Israeli journalists have stated that Hamas was making use of the hospital premises, and everyone knew it, and nobody (for various reasons) wanted to admit it.
This does not do the credibility of those agencies as neutral parties any good. Or reflect very well on those journalists who simply relayed their statements, for that matter.
I can’t imagine why.
@Michael Reynolds:
So it turns out the nutty fringe left has much in common with those who will defend, excuse, and rationalize Israel’s actions, no matter what they do.
Meet the new bosses, same as the old bosses.
@Gromitt Gunn:
Hardly relevant; that was a scandal from the 1950’s about Yemeni Jewish children.
It’s illuminating mainly about the continuing legacy of grievances of the Israeli Mizrahim.
One reason why they are the voter base of Likud, and tended to be antagonistic to the Ashkenazi-sabra Labor elite
We have 0.5% of Gaza’s population dead*. Huge numbers injured and homeless.
Has this made Israel safer 5-10 years from now? Or has this all been for nothing? That seems like a more important first question than “was this technically a violation of war crimes laws or not?”. Just because something may be legal doesn’t mean it is either right or smart.
The ”is it war crimes” question has a fair bit of “is he a pedophile or an ephebophile?” ring to it, skipping past the rape of children.
——
*: Based on numbers a week or two old.
@JohnSF:
You may remember something similar near the beginning of the war, where Hamas or PIJ raided the UN relief depot near Rafah and took away most or all of the supplies. UN officials wouldn’t say who exactly was doing this, even though it was pretty obvious. Not a profile in courage.
And yeah, I agree that UNWRA was lying about Hamas and the hospital.
All that said, I do empathize somewhat with their situation. Hamas is/was the government in Gaza, and the unfortunate reality is that any international agency or group that operates there has to at least somewhat play by Hamas’ rules. If their choice is to not be in Gaza at all and help no one vs being in Gaza and helping people but having to lie about Hamas, I can at least understand making that kind of deal with the devil. And there may be some Stockholm syndrome going on here as well.
But the press needs to be smart and honest enough to report what is actually going on and not ignore the fact that relief agencies have to make some concessions to the reality on the ground. And such concessions aren’t unique to Gaza, but are a factor everywhere there is an active war or despotic regime in charge.
@Michael Reynolds:
You buy their propaganda hook, line and sinker. At least enough to use it to justify your support for a brutal war with massive consequences for a civilian population.
Seems like their propaganda is “good enough”.
If Netanyahu’s government was concerned about not killing civilians, it would have long ago heeded US and European calls to end Israeli settler terrorism in the West Bank. Instead, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister continues to pursue a policy of violence, ignoring Biden’s wise pleas to stop stoking hostilies and undermining peaceful solutions.
The Israeli goverment did not care about protecting Israeli civilians from Hamas — the barbarians Netanyahu deliberately boosted to kneecap Palestinian secularists and moderates –because he was otherwise preoccupied trying to save his corrupt butt and trying to illegally and amorally cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians. Neither Israel’s government nor Hamas cares about Palestinian civilians.
Why Biden — who is normally quite shrewd — would tie his reputation to Likud’s corrupt, incompetent, anti-democratic thugs and deadly intelligence failures is beyond me. But maybe he’s just following Woodrow Wilson and LBJ in becoming the next Democratic president to let someone else’s unfocused, ultimately pointless war eat away at his credibility and approval.
On top of the last year’s ongoing political disaster, Oct. 7 proved again this Israeli government does not have a clue and will not keep Israel safe. Nothing since inspires additional confidence.
@Kazzy: In the other direction, it goes when Israel does something wrong it’s because they’re lawless thugs taking other people’s land and when Hamas does something wrong it’s because lawless Israeli thugs forced them into it, but yeah. After that, it’s all in whose spin doctors prevail.
@Andy:
Indeed, I can understand their people on the ground being unwilling to answer questions. But they could at least have declined to comment.
And the comments of UNWRA spokesmen outside Gaza of emphatic denial were ill-advised. Again, they could at least have refused to comment, on a number of grounds, rather than cry “no wolf!”
But what really irritates are the professional journalists reporting these statements uncaveated and unchallenged (thinking of an interview with an UNWRA official on BBC Radio “Today” news programme in particular) when a little asking around ME journalists would indicate what everyone knew.
@Gustopher:
No, it’s based on whether the level of violence applied is sufficient to break the back of Hamas military grip on Gaza, and not disproportionately higher than that required to do so
Because while Hamas rules in Gaza there will be no peace settlement, or even prolonged negotiations.
@Gustopher:
That’s not a question that can be answered, given the future is difficult to predict.
The same question was asked in 2001, and the answer then was also unknowable. Even in hindsight, it can be hard to know if an alternative to what we did would have been better.
Ultimately, these kinds of wars are fought to eliminate or greatly diminish a specific threat. For an entire decade, many people were arguing that us attacking AQ around the world would do nothing but create more terrorists – and that wasn’t necessarily a bad argument. But two decades later, that doesn’t seem to have happened – at least not yet. We’ll have to see what the Taliban decides to do in the future.
Similarly, no one knew in December 1941 what the post-war world would be, but most everyone agreed that the threat of Japanese militarism and imperialism had to be destroyed. That’s the stage this conflict is in.
@Andy:
Quite so.
I would add this was terrible PR strategy on the part of the IDF. Could’ve said the best (indeed only) way to get that hospital well supplied and fully operating is to take control of it, which is indisputably true. There was no need to shape this as they did, as necessary for a military reason.
@JohnSF:
I agree that “no comment” would have been better and I totally agree about the poor coverage.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Well, sure. But I’m responding to the spin I’m seeing here. Would you rather I respond to spin happening elsewhere?
I had a Palestinian boyfriend (Christian Arab) at one point, who told me that if you go way way far back, the Palestinians are descended from the people the Romans brought into the area after they had done their own version of throwing-out-the-Jewish-locals.
In other words, this has been going on for at least 2000 years.
(Boyfriend’s comment on the whole affair is: “everyone in the Mideast is nuts.” His family picked up roots in the 1980s and vamoosed to the U.S., deciding that they had had enough.)
@dazedandconfused: Ultimately, it was a calculated risk, but not much of a risk. They have the backstop of the US being in the tank for Israel for decades. We oppos settlements but don’t do obvious things like tie our almost $4 billion in aid to settlements, as in we stop the aid if you expand settlements. Period, end of argument. US aid is more than 3% of Israel’s annual budget. We pay for those settlements.
It doesn’t matter, as long as you have a sizable number of people who will side with Israel 100% no matter what, there is no reason for Israel to stop settlements. After all, even people in this blog openly advocated for genocide after Oct. 7th (they can say they didn’t really mean it but that is true bullshit).
@Gustopher:
That was a stupid remark. I’ve bought nothing. I see the situation, I see the likely outcomes, the possible and the impossible outcomes, and I reach a conclusion based on that. You’re the one who has the narrow slit-view: innocents dying, heart bleeds, demands however pointless issue forth, you feel warm and toasty and virtuous because you said the right things while doing your level best to set up the next Hamas war, so we can just keep doing this again and again.
Soon this will fall off the front page, and if Hamas does it again you’ll tut-tut, but you won’t really give a rat’s ass because you’ll have virtue signaled like a good boy.
@Gustopher, 1945: the Red Army is raping its way to Berlin, Hitler’s in the bunker, and you’re calling for a ceasefire so Hitler can escape to start it all up again. But you will have done the virtuous thing. Don’t like that analogy, try this one: the Union Army surrounding Petersburg/Richmond, Confederate women and children being killed daily, so, wah, call for a ceasefire and maybe we can keep the war going for another year. Allies on D-Day. Or Okinawa. Or let’s play the other side: Mehmet 2 at the walls of Byzantium, women and children starving, the Byzantine empire is screwed, call for a ceasefire so the emperor can escape to keep it all going?
Iran and its proxies are determined not to allow any sort of Middle Eastern peace. And you’re trying to help them. Foreign policy is not about tender feelings, it’s about power, who has it, and what it means for the future.
Simple question to test your sincerity. Israel agrees to a ceasefire. Hamas fires missiles at Tel Aviv. So you. . . what? Support Israeli retaliation?
@JohnSF: Whether it is likely to happen today does not make it irrelevant to the mindset of modern Palestinians, nor in the mindset of Israelis from SWANA populations, who have been struggling internally to have it recognized for decades. The article I linked is from 2021 – hardly old news.
My best friend’s family is Palestinian. He was born here, but has an Israeli passport as well as a US one, because his maternal family was fortunate enough to not be dispossessed entirely during the Naqba. He and I have been friends for over a decade, and the Yemeni experience in Israel is something that he come up multiple times over the years when I am spending time with him and his mother.
The treatment of Yemeni and other Middle Eastern and African Jewish populations upon their arrival as refugees in Israel in the late 1940s and 1950s is still salient for both them and for Palestinians as part of a larger pattern within Israel. If you don’t think it isn’t used as one of the examples to drum up anti-Israel feelings in Palestine, I’m not sure what to tell you.
@SenyorDave:
Um, no. Israel will not submit to us over 4 billion, which is less than 1% of Israel’s GDP. Further, the idea that this is charity is naive. That money comes right back to Northrop and Lockheed, or goes into development of weapons we end up liking ourselves. Israel’s ultimate ‘backstop’ is not the US, Israel’s backstop is between 75 and 400 nuclear weapons. You don’t understand the power relationships, here. Israel conventionally is the 400 pound gorilla, in terms of the power it could deploy, it’s Godzilla. There are people in Bibi’s cabinet who, should the US abandon Israel, would be thinking quite seriously about finishing Gaza permanently. Far from the enabler, we are the restraint.
And again, I’d point out that tiny, embattled Israel is striking back at the group that attacked it, while under much less threatening circumstances, our approach was to invade and occupy two entire countries, one of which wasn’t even involved. It’s bad enough holding the Israelis to a higher standard than we do the Palestinians, it’s a bit rich holding them to higher standards than we maintain for ourselves.
@SenyorDave:
Not disagreeing with any of that, but I suspect you intended it for someone else’s post. I’ve accidently clicked the wrong post to respond to myself once or twice.
I suspect the IDFs decision to frame the hospital op as a military necessity instead of a humanitarian one reflects the true nature of their thinking, but even so it was un-smart. They are acutely aware of how important their relationship with the American public is.
@DK: The pro-Israel lobby have been big Biden donors going back decades.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=q05&cycle=All&recipdetail=S&mem=Y
I assume that it is less that he is bought and paid for, than folks recognizing and rewarding a fellow traveller, but the money is right there, and the access that money provides can be implied.
(It leaves an icky “Jews are secretly controlling the world leaders” vibe to post that, so to put it in context it’s also worth noting the Turkish influence on Gen. Flynn and Eric Adams, and all the other instances of foreign governments and their local allied people lobbying. And then the Koch brother. It’s anyone with money, not “the Jews”. If Palestinians had money, they would be lobbying too. Or Hamas*)
He’s also in a spot where not supporting Israel will be viewed as “weak on terrorism” with the majority of Americans.
Of course, that should be balanced by the kids these days being bombarded with “Biden supports genocide, vote for Lunatic #3” on social media (if there is not a right wing group pushing this, I would be disappointed… it’s such an obvious division to push at)
(There’s also videos purporting to be IDF propaganda circulating that show smiling “Israeli soldiers” delivering boxes to hospitals and grateful doctors marked “MEDICAL SUPPLIES” in English on printed on paper taped to the side of the boxes… I assume this is fake Israeli propaganda meant to make people think they are seeing through real Israeli propaganda.)
——
*: have we considered just giving terrorist organizations money for lobbying? We would want to insure it isn’t spent on bombs and stuff, so maybe gift certificates that they can use on lobbying firms?
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s charity to Israel AND Northrop and Lockheed!
@Michael Reynolds:
The strong do what they will and the weak do what they must, yes?
Look, on balance, our positions on this situation likely converge more than they diverge, but statements like the above make it sound like you don’t understand there is a moral calculus that has to be taken into account, as well as an efficacy calculus.
@Michael Reynolds:
And that was, to use the technical term, a massive fucking mistake.
In regard to the hospital, I am sympathetic to Israeli suspicions and fully believe that Hamas might behave this way.
But, I will also say the Israel (specifically Bibi) has made this sound like a slam dunk of epic proportions (for example, his interview with NPR). This all feels more like Bush administration claims of WMD in Iraq than it does a solid case will justify to the world that invading a hospital was a good idea
To be less oblique about my point to MR above: I understand Israel’s need to take out Hamas, but I have serious moral concerns when I hear how many deaths there have already been in Gaza as a result of this action and the humanitarian crisis here is real and can’t be hand waved away.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I understand that there’s a moral calculus, but in the end it’s an add-on. One can argue the morality of dropping a nuke on Hiroshima, but what mattered was the act itself. Or the US expansion into Indian territory. Or the Mexican-American War. We beat Japan, we ethnically-cleansed the Indians, and we’re keeping California. Possession is nine points of the law.
In any analysis of FP, but most of life as well, I start from solution, no matter how appalling it may seem, and work backward to look at the right and wrong of it. First find the bright, clear line from where I am, to where I want to be. Second, think about morality. If you put morality first, then you let Hitler out of the bunker because Russians are raping German woman and ‘that’s got to stop.’ But you do have to include morality – a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. I’m not dismissing good and evil, hell, I’ve made a very nice living trading on good and evil. But first, see if there’s a possible solution, because if you start with feelings, you don’t get past them. And sometimes you do have to do things that feel bad in order to do good.
Incidentally, this just mirrors how people actually think – what’s good for me? Followed by, how do I justify it? But when people are thinking about things that don’t affect their bottom line, it feels good to start from atop one’s high horse.
@Michael Reynolds: So you are thinking a small, localized nuclear bomb? Who would be the target, with Gaza as the target. So a crime against humanity by anybody’s definition. And they presumably would have no problem with the repercussions of 100’s of thousands dead or maimed? Please make the argument, I’m sure everyone would like to hear.
@Kazzy: I would prefer that we stop arguing into the vacuum, but everyone feels a need to justify their side and vilify the other.
@Michael Reynolds:
Funny how this logic is never surfaced here vis a vis US criticism of Russia’s conduct in Ukraine.
I take it from now on we’ll all cease from holding Putin to a “higher standard” because of something something the Bush administration did twenty years ago something something?
@just nutha: No, not everyone feels the need pick a side here, between Hamas terrorists and Likud extremists (and enablers of terrorism).
Some people — including Palestinians and Israelis who are dedicated to finding a lasting peace — are capable of supporting innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians both. And criticizing Israeli and Palestinian leaders both, where such criticism is so clearly and obviously warranted. Much to the chagrin of those hyping social media’s childish pro-Palestine vs. pro-Israel zero sum game.
@Steven L. Taylor:
A noble goal requiring competent, sober, serious leadership.
Instead, Israel has Hamas-fluffing, corrupt dirtbag Netanyahu and his genocidal, far right coalition cronies.
Good luck to Israel.
@SenyorDave:
Some non-trivial portion (no time or desire to look up specific numbers) is based on our guarantee of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. This is also why we continue to give Egypt significant military and economic aid despite the fact it’s a de facto dictatorship, and why Egypt continues to “buy” a whole bunch of military equipment – especially tanks – that it doesn’t need.
While not an official part of the treaty, it’s a similar arrangement with Jordan. Jordan becoming and remaining a US ally with a guarantee of support was implicitly part of the bargain when they made their peace with Israel.
So I’d say if you are angry that the US doesn’t tie US aid to Israel based on settlements, you ought to consider we don’t tie US aid to Egypt to most internal matters, including the lack of democracy and persecution of religious minorities. And probably the less said about aid to other countries, both current and historically, the better for your argument.
Point being, if one wants to be pure and principled in this region, that isn’t possible. Let me get on my soapbox again and declare the we must deal with the world as it is and not as we wish it to be. And if you’re paying attention to current events, you may have heard that Biden is at least floating the idea of sanctioning violent settlers and adding some sticks to change Israel’s behavior, which I think is overdue.
And it’s not exactly a good look when Israel is singled out for bad behavior based on US aid. I think one should acknowledge the weird hyper-salience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict writ large in US politics compared to pretty much anything else in FP and the many horrors taking place in other parts of the globe that few are aware of and even fewer care about is both revealing and depressing.
@Steven L. Taylor:
IMO, it’s appropriate to wait until all the facts are in. And not because of politicians’ bias but because people and organizations make mistakes. The fact of the matter is that most of the “Bush Administration” claims about WMD in Iraq that you mention were not creations of the Bush Administration but were the official assessments of the intelligence community, including during the Clinton administration. I was in the IC at the time and spent most of my working time on Operation Southern Watch (remember that?), and the circumstantial evidence was strongly indicative of Iraq retaining some of its WMD, which drove IC assessments.
The lesson that I apply here with Hamas and infrastructure under hospitals is that the circumstantial evidence is very strong, but we shouldn’t make conclusions – one way or another – until all the facts are in. And personally, I’m happy to keep my powder dry until that happens.
@Andy: But we actually did withhold $235 million in aid to Egypt for its country’s repressive policies. That is a pretty significant chunk of the $1.3 billion in military aid. There is no serious discussion of cutting aid to Israel. I don’t think even Likud pretends anymore that the settlements are anything other than a land grab. And in addition to being illegal under international law, they are very contrary to US interests. We can see the logical result of settlements plus extremists in the Israeli cabinet (Ben-Givr was convicted of support for a terrorist group) – settlers committing acts of terrorism.
I’m an Ashkenaz. My people lived in Europe for ~1500 years. We were oppressed and persecuted. Pogrom and ghetto are words that were coined by our situation. We tried to be a model minority, but that didn’t get us much traction. We finally got sympathy, but it took Auschwitz to do it. My grandmother was murdered in Treblinka. I’d rather have a living grandmother than the sympathy of the world.
Every inch of this planet has been fought over and is occupied by the winners. My home state was named by a people and culture that was destroyed. Please note that this identifies many places in the USA. Morality is defined by the winners. That’s the way things work.
I don’t want to listen to leftist feminists who say nothing about the raped of 10/7.
Hamas esse delendam.
@Slugger: Morality is defined by the winners.
You are warped if you support this, you can defend any action by this logic. Slavery was just fine, the slaveowners were the winners. For that matter, modern day slavery is fine, the people owning slaves are the winners and the slaves are the losers.
@Slugger:
My ancestors were enslaved and then terrorized and brutalized here in the USA. Am I a “loser”? My ancestors were “losers”? The white people who enslaved and terrorized them were “winners”? Their morality of their actions is defined by this “winning” and nothing else?
Yikes. If Americans of a certain demographic profile have actually been teaching their children to think like this, no wonder so many have done so much evil to the rest of us through the years. By this logic, why should lefty feminists or anyone else be so concerned about Oct 7? It was just an example Hamas “winning” the day, no?
Morality is defined by the winners….according to people with no morals, little character, and less decency.
@DK: If you have no absolute standards of right and wrong this is what you get. Any behavior can be justified. Yes, that is subjective, but if you can’t say slavery is wrong, you have no moral compass.
@Gromitt Gunn:
I’m aware of the relationship of this, among other matters, to the contention of the Mizrahim that they were subjected to discrimination by the Ashkenazi/sabra/Labor establishement of Israel 1940’s/90’s. This is one of the reasons for the political rise of Likud, now Israelis of Mizrahi descent make up nearly half the population.
Israeli Arabs and Palestinians more widely have multiple reasons for viewing themselves as further down the scale still, and with less political leverage to remedy their situation.
But for Gazans to think this would be a good reason not to transfer patients to Israeli medical care would be pushing into the realm of paranoia. Especially as Palestinians with medical conditions beyond the capacity of Gaza’s hospitals often receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.
@SenyorDave:
“…we actually did withhold $235 million in aid to Egypt…”
But IIRC that block was a Congressional device the administration then overruled.
It’s often not good practice for a Power to resile on agreed financial arrangements relating to a state’s foreign or military policy over domestic policy, unless it is at the “wholesale massacre” stage.
Sometimes required regional allies are not models of democratic rights.
See eg the Franco/British alliance with Poland in the 1930’s, when Poland was far from being a thoroughgoing liberal democracy itself.
Bit weird to have Israel described as ‘tiny’ and ’embattled’ when its opponent is Gaza and Hamas. One of those sides has a definite weight advantage.
WW2 talk fails to mention the huge investment by the victors in rebuilding the states they destroyed. If Gaza is going to resemble Berlin who is going to rebuild it? It seems very unlikely to me that Israel will. And I know it’s controversial to quote Israeli government officials about what they want to do to the Palestinians, but the intelligence minister just called ethnic cleansing a ‘win-win’, so maybe the point of knocking off these hospitals is to destroy civil society for Palestinians so that ethnic cleansing becomes some sort of propagandized self-actualization for the people of Gaza, who are finally liberated from the rule of Hamas by the brave IDF.
@Modulo Myself:
In fact almost all the capital and labour for redeveloping Germany came from Germany.
Much of East Germany lay derelict for years, if not decades.
Until 1950 the Allies were still carrying out a policy of dismantling German industry as reparations.
Total reparations extracted from Germany post-WW2 were not far off those imposed (and dodged) after WW1
Israel will certainly not be willing to pay to rebuild Gaza; the money is going to have to come from the West, the Saudis and the Gulf states.
The Israeli ministers favouring ethnic cleansing have not thought this through.
Egypt is not to going to open its border in order to act as an enabler in such a project.
Nor are the Westerns nations going to undertake a mega-evacuation to pull Israeli chesnuts out of the fire.
The only place available to Israel to decant the Palestinians of Gaza into is Israel itself, or the West Bank
Neither alternative appears to change the basic problem that much.
I suspect some Likudniks are getting rather desperate about the need to enable a post-Hamas resolution re. the governance of Gaza, and for that matter the West Bank.
Because the implications of that are negotiations with the PA, and that in turn means an end to settlement expansion, at the very least, and that means Mafdal and Otzma parties walk, which means Netanyahu falls, because the price of Yesh Atis and/or National Unity for coalition will be his departure.
The Administration need to keep the pressure on the Israeli government on this point.
@Michael Reynolds:
None of this is an argument. It is throwing a lot of things against the wall as a distraction. Each is it own complex discussion.
This is a borderline nonsensical assertion. Further, a moral calculus isn’t just the fact that bad things are happening, so everything must stop. You are caricaturing.
This is a core problem with you position, or at least with the way you want to argue. You ascribe to others the notion that they are starting with feelings, and therefore you can pretend like they are not dealing with reality.
Nonetheless, it ignores the reality of the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding, and only going to get worse. And further ignore the very real likelihood that none of this solves the problem.
Without reducing a complex event to a couple of sentences, at least we can say with some level of understanding that the nuclear attacks on Japan helped end a bloody war while forestalling a likely worse ground invasion and then led to decades of peace and friendship.
Maybe I will be wrong, but that is not likely where we are headed here. And that is part of the moral calculus.
You also ignored that I noted the need for an efficacy calculus in my original comment.
@Slugger:
If that is true then there is no morality, only power.
@Andy:
There is a longer-term assessment and there is an assessment in the moment. I very much hold out the willingness to assess, and reassess (and reassess) as evidence is made available.
I am just saying, and to unreasonably in my view, if a government or entity is going to make dramatic claims and promise evidence, then I have every right to assess what that evidence appears to be at the moment. I am having a hard time trusting Netanyahu. And I was hoping for clearer evidence than has been provided.
On the flip side, Hamas never produced evidence that the rocket strike on the hospital a few weeks ago was Israeli.
And in re: Iraq, all I can say is the circumstantial evidence (laced with a good bit of motivated thinking) turned out not to be accurate enough to justify what happened, which is my point.
@JohnSF:
I suspect some Likudniks are getting rather desperate about the need to enable a post-Hamas resolution re. the governance of Gaza, and for that matter the West Bank.
Because the implications of that are negotiations with the PA, and that in turn means an end to settlement expansion, at the very least, and that means Mafdal and Otzma parties walk, which means Netanyahu falls, because the price of Yesh Atis and/or National Unity for coalition will be his departure.
This does not seem very realistic. What does seem realistic is that the Palestinians are going to be pushed into an even smaller area with absolutely nothing left of what was not exactly a prosperous place to begin with. And yes the Germans suffered after the war, but after several years they started getting Marshall Plan money and by the early 60s the west was all Berliners, rockets built by Werner von Braun were shooting into space, and many Nazis were happily part of the West German government. The plan for Gaza is that the Palestinians either suffer more but without resistance, die, or move, and meanwhile in the West Bank the status quo continues.
@JohnSF:
This.
And so I have to wonder (not unreasonably) if all the suffering being visited on civilians in Gaza so as to hopefully eliminate Hamas (note the word “hopefully”) is going to be worth it if we find ourselves with the same basic problem after it is all said and done.
And while some have scoffed at the notion of a cycle of violence (how that can be scoffed at, given the region’s history, I do not understand), I do not see how this doesn’t lead to a new Hamas (whatever they may be called) even if old Hamas is truly destroyed.
@Modulo Myself: That status quo being, of course, a perpetual loss of territory with no tradeoff in terms of politics or economics (and that’s not even addressing the settlers being able to shoot people with impunity).
@Steven L. Taylor:
War is inherently an uncertain enterprise which means it is always risky. Also, suffering in war is inevitable and is never “worth it,” except for those who haven’t suffered, but war is sometimes necessary. I think it’s historically the case that nations and political communities that start wars routinely underestimate the costs and overestimate the benefits.
And in this case, it was Hamas that opened Pandora’s box and started a war that would ensure much suffering and also carry the inherent uncertainty of any war.
It might lead to a new Hamas, and it might not. We don’t really know. Very rarely is it possible to see the actual outcome early in a war, much less correctly assess probabilities. In WW2, for example, no one knew if it was even possible to get Japan to surrender. Japan had never surrendered to a foreign power in almost all of its history and through the entire course of the war, no Japanese unit ever surrendered. There was – at the time – a big question as to whether the goal of “unconditional surrender” – which was set as the war gaol very early in the conflict – was reasonable or achievable. Attempting to achieve that goal ensured much suffering. Maybe it would have been better to just settle with Japan to avoid that? Opinions vary. But my view is that those who choose to start a war are ultimately the most responsible for what happens. Japan chose war and by doing so it allowed the US to set its own goals to terminate the war – unconditional surrender.
It’s not any different in this war. Starting a war comes with consequences that often can’t be controlled. Hamas started the war and Israel gets to define its victory conditions and try to achieve them.
And there is the problem of viable alternatives. Hamas started this war and doesn’t seem willing to surrender, so it’s not exactly clear what one expects Israel to do other than continue to prosecute the war.
@Modulo Myself:
Seems realistic to me
That may be the preference of some Israeli politicians. In fact it’s this that is utterly unrealistic.
The population of Gaza cannot be moved, absent the co-operation of Egypt, to anywhere other than Israel or the West Bank, even in theory. In practice moving 2 million people is logistically impossible.
Therefore they will remain.
Therefore there will need to be a governance system (and financing); as Israel is unlikely to desire a prolonged occupation (see reasons for evacuating the Strip in 2005) they must either accept a PA &/0r third party control or the revival of Hamas control.
Assuming the revival of Hamas control is unacceptable to Israel, they need to enable the alternative.
Neither the Fatah PA, nor any 3rd party, nor any combination of the two, will undertake the role solely to serve the political desires of the current Israeli Right coalition.
Therefore, Israel is going to have to pay their price.
Which will be a renewal of the peace process including the West Bank.
This is going to be made easier by the obvious political reality that the current political standstill in Israel under a War Cabinet is not going to outlast the current military operation.
When I said “some Likudniks ” earlier I should have been more specific: those immovably attached to Netanyahu.
Because Netanyahu is finished once the current war is done.
At least half of Likud will dump him to try and preserve the party.
Without Netanyahus’s need for political protection from prosecution, Mafdal and Otzma parties are done as well.
The next elections are not required till 2026; but I’d bet on them coming a lot sooner.
Israeli party politics are always complicated, but the likelihood is for a NU/YA coalition.
Even before that, post-operation pre-election a temporary “government of national unity” of c. 1/2 of Likud/NU/YA looks fairly likely.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Both a governance system and reconstruction is going to be required to prevent the resurgence of Hamas, or a “Hamas-alike”, and quite soon, unless the the Israelis’ intend to attempt to occupy and police a rubble-pile.
This seems unlikely to me, given their decision to vacate in 2005, and the probable international consequences of such. Which were part of the evacuation decision.
It has to be said: the US preference for “benign neglect” by all post-2005 administrations has not worked out well. As a lot of other parties attempted to tell the US was the likely outcome.
There is now an opportunity to convince the Israeli political plurality that a two-state settlement remains the only effective choice.
That convincing is the problem, given the conviction, on reasonable historical evidence, it must be admitted, of a large number of Israelis, that the Palestinians will never agree to terms that Israel can accept.
It is this Israeli fear, coupled to their local predominance, that requires persuasion and engagement. The desire among some Americans and Europeans to decouple is natural enough; but would be entirely counter-productive.
An abandoned Israel would be far more likely to resort to extreme means to ensure its security.
An Israel with partners may be persuadable that the delusions of the kahanites are a false lure.