Armchair moralizing is easy, but war entails hard choices.
“War is hell,” said Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, and he knew what he was talking about, as he had done all he could to make life hell for the Southerners who were unlucky enough to be in the path of his 1864 march through Georgia. Debates still rage to this day about the morality of the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Dresden, during World War II. Such debates take on a new urgency now in light of Israel’s impending incursion into Gaza, and what are certain to be claims of “disproportionate” civilian casualties and calls for restraint. The armchair moralizers will ignore, as always, that in war, hard choices must be made.
Contrary to its reputation, the Israeli military is careful to avoid civilian casualties. The British Colonel Richard Kemp investigated its conduct and concluded that during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli defensive action against Hamas and other jihad groups in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, “the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” Kemp wrote in May 2023 that “the IDF which is known by all Western military commanders to be more effective than any other force in the world in preventing the deaths of civilians in enemy territory.”
Yet there are civilian casualties. On Thursday, a blast struck Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza, and at least sixteen people were killed. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem reacted swiftly, issuing a statement declaring: “The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expresses its strongest condemnation of the Israeli airstrike that have struck its church compound in the city of Gaza.” According to the Washington Post, however, “the Israel Defense Forces said in an emailed statement that a strike targeting a Hamas control center ‘damaged the wall of a church in the area’ and that it was ‘aware of reports on casualties’ and was reviewing the incident. They declined to provide further information and reiterated, ‘It is important to clarify that the Church was not the target of the strike.’”
Is it implausible that the IDF might have hit the church in targeting a “Hamas control center”? Not in the slightest degree. Even the United Nations, which is no friend of Israel, has condemned the practice of terrorist organizations using civilians as human shields. In August 2014, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, told the UN’s Secretary-General: “Hamas deliberately embeds its military operations in residential areas with the clear intention of using its own people, including women and children, as protection. One does not have to look any further than Hamas’ own combat manual on urban warfare to see how the terror organization has institutionalized its disregard for human life. Its combat strategy guidelines explicitly instruct terrorists to use civilians as human shields. This is not a new tactic — it has been the modus operandi of Hamas each and every time it has waged hostilities against Israel.”
The end result of such practices are incidents such as the blast at Saint Porphyrius Church. The responsibility for the deaths of the people there lies entirely with Hamas, which chose to set up a command center next to a twelfth-century church, not with the IDF. Some people, however, insist that the IDF strike is unacceptable under any circumstances, insisting that even if Hamas does launch attacks from civilian areas in order to draw retaliatory fire that it can exploit for propaganda purposes, there is no excuse to hit areas where civilians are present under any circumstances.
Yet this is facile. War presents people with hard alternatives. If the IDF declines to hit the Hamas control center because it will not risk any civilian casualties in Gaza, by making that decision it will be allowing for more civilian casualties in Israel, including attacks launched from that same Hamas control center. No civilian casualties are ultimately acceptable, and it would be nice if they could be entirely avoided, but given the weaponry that is used in modern warfare and the demonic evil of groups such as Hamas in seeking civilian deaths in order to advance their own cause in the international media, that is simply impossible.
War, as Sherman said, is hell. It requires numerous difficult choices. In light of that fact, we can be grateful that, as Colonel Kemp noted, the Israeli miltary is so scrupulous in doing all it can to keep civilians out of harm’s way. Other forces, including those arrayed against Israel now, do not have the same ethical code.
CogitoErgoSum says
Sometimes the ethical thing to do is to fight in order to protect the weak. Sometimes the only choices we are given are all bad but we must still make a choice. Will bombing the enemy next to a church save more lives than it destroys? That decision is up to those who must fight the war. Yes, war is a Hell of its own. A big difference between us and our enemy is that we look upon it as Hell and do not celebrate death and destruction as being our goal in life.
somehistory says
It’s kind of like criminals driving at high speed in residential areas, or jumping fences surrounding civilian homes.
Criminals, including terrorists, want to make it difficult for the LE, or army, to get at them; to bring them in or shoot in return fire.
If Israel had some novel way of waging war without harming a single innocent person, terrorists would still put the people in danger and when killed, call it Israel’s fault.
Perhaps Southerners should dig up Sherman’s molded corpse and hold a trial for all of his doings against the South where innocent people were killed. My father and his entire family, was from GA. I can only guess how many the general may have killed which would have limited the cousins< uncles< aunts and others of which i was deprived. And that goes for others whose relatives were in the South at that time. If Israel is guilty, the Sherman is doubly so.
hamas, hezbollah, islamic jihad, iran, etc. don't care how many innocents they murder in their quest for subjugation of earth's population. Making charges and complaints of the killing of innocent people by Israel or others on defense against terrorism, is just a war tactic.
NickM says
What an interesting article! On this particular subject, may I recommend a book called “The Road to Gomorrah,” which you can find on Amazon. The book provides a Machiavellian analysis of some of the decisions made by Roosevelt and Churchill in the course of WW2. (Not the least of which was the decision to ally their countries with the Soviet Union.) The overall argument in the book is just what is being argued here in this article – when a country is at war, decisions will be made that would under any other circumstances be the “wrong” thing to do, but in a war, the leaders of a country must adopt a consequentialist view of things, with all that entails. It’s known as the “dirty hands” problem. The book describes how the British government went from fighting a “phoney war” and dropping leaflets over Germany to sending a massive fleet of heavy bombers to carpet bomb Hamburg, which is when they started a firestorm that resembled hell on earth. Then they went back again for another go! (Operation Gomorrah was the code-name for the bombing raid on Hamburg btw.) Meanwhile, through the day, the Americans were trying to use precision bombing to attack specific targets in Hamburg. It’s all interesting stuff, in light of what’s going on just now.
Westman says
Hamas soldiers are Palestinians. NAZI soldiers were Germans. National NAZI leadership was installed through elections. Hamas government was voted in by more than 50% of the Palestinians; knowing the Hamas charter calls for the annihilation of Israel. The citizens of Germany were bombed. The very same nations which bombed Germany insist, after horrific crimes by Hamas, that Israel must not accidently bomb the Palestinians, collateral damage, who voted for Hamas and its terror methods.
The hypocrisy is stunning. But that is the nature of power grabs. Even the US Founding Fathers quickly made laws prohibiting any declaration of independence against them. It’s always, “Do what we say, not what we did”.
Obviously, International Law is a fantasy, fungible to the victor: “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” – Gen Curtis LeMay.
While Biden sidelines Israel: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Gen George Patton
Westman says
More hypocritical grandstanding:
UN Secretary Guterres (Portugal Socialist) said he was “deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.”
And to whom, since Neurenburg and the escaped Nazi hunting, has this been applied? Saddam? Bin Laden(US execution without trial)? Putin? What BS, the best the West can hope for is a frozen conflict in Ukraine and the worst is Ukrainian defeat. Putin’s Russia will continue to prosper by expanding non-Western markets and avoiding national debt. Putin will never stand trial by the West; by his own people, another matter.
James Lincoln says
Westman,
Your post is factual and evidence-based.
Hamas does the actual butchering, but they are supported by the so-called Palestinians.
That being said, the mainstream media refers to the “Palestinians” as innocent bystanders.
Nothing could be further from the truth…
OLD GUY says
The people of Palestine voted in Hamas and promote and support the attacks against Israel. They are seen cheering at the death of women and children and the elderly of Israel every time one of these attacks takes place. They just jumped up and down like they won the Super Bowl after they MURDERED 1400 civilians. So why in the hell should Israel and the west be so concerned about the non-innocent citizens of Gaza that are supporting and promoting these attacks of WAR on Israel? It’s time to go in and kick their asses back to the Stone Age where they belong and any other nation that supports them.