More than three months after the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, criticism of Israel’s conduct in this war has escalated. South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel lodged recently with the International Court of Justice in The Hague sent shock waves through the international community. Israel’s supporters regard the accusation as absurd, an example of double standards and possibly an anti-Jewish bigotry that singles out the world’s only Jewish state. Israel’s opponents see it as a powerful statement that finally demands accountability for the violence unleashed against the Palestinian population of Gaza.
But it’s possible to think that the genocide charge has no merit — as the United States and most Western countries have said — and also to believe that Israel’s actions deserve tough scrutiny from its allies.
While the precise number of civilians deaths in Gaza is unknown and figures offered by the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health have been vociferously questioned, it is clear the death count, including among children, has been staggering. Most commentators accept the estimate of 23,000 dead, 14,000 of them civilians and as many as 9,000 under 18. One may argue about numbers, but there are known cases of large families being entirely or almost entirely wiped out in bombings and people losing dozens of relatives in a short span of time. While one report of a hospital bombing notoriously proved wrong, multiple hospitals have been severely damaged. The devastation to residential housing has been horrific.
Israel supporters reasonably point to a tragic fact: Hamas is embedded in Gaza’s civilian infrastructure to an extraordinary degree, using hospitals and schools and bases, constructing its notorious tunnels underneath residential buildings, and hiding its nonuniformed combatants among the civilian population. Defeating Hamas militarily is impossible without causing massive death and suffering to civilians. When Israel has encouraged civilians to evacuate to places where Hamas has not had an active presence, Hamas fighters often follow with their rocket launchers — and so do Israeli bombs.
Israel has a right to self-defense. But there is also substantial evidence that in this war, after the trauma of the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli Defense Forces have made much less of an effort than in past conflicts to minimize civilian casualties. To many Israelis, abandoning restraint seemed a justified attitude after the horrors of the Hamas raids. But at some point, a civilized state must ask itself when the cost in innocent lives is too high.
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The extremist rhetoric coming from certain corners in Israeli politics — including people in government posts who are members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition — has compounded Israel’s problems with de facto calls for ethnic cleansing and collective punishment. Even if none of the people spouting this rhetoric are directly in charge of military action, they lend credibility to accusations of genocidal war.
South Africa’s charge, which reflects that country’s self-positioning as a foe of Western imperialism, is undercut by its refusal to condemn human rights abuses by China and Myanmar. But the United States and other Western allies must also judge Israel as a fellow democracy. In that sense, the Biden administration’s approach — backing Israel and its defense against Hamas aggression while criticizing the mounting civilian toll and pushing Israel to respect its commitments to human rights — is the right one, not only for the Palestinians caught between Israel and Hamas but also for Israel itself.
OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.
Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.
Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.
Weighing toll of civilian deaths in Gaza
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19.01.2024
More than three months after the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, criticism of Israel’s conduct in this war has escalated. South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel lodged recently with the International Court of Justice in The Hague sent shock waves through the international community. Israel’s supporters regard the accusation as absurd, an example of double standards and possibly an anti-Jewish bigotry that singles out the world’s only Jewish state. Israel’s opponents see it as a powerful statement that finally demands accountability for the violence unleashed against the Palestinian population of Gaza.
But it’s possible to think that the genocide charge has no merit — as the United States and most Western countries have said — and also to believe that Israel’s actions deserve tough scrutiny from its allies.
While the precise number of civilians deaths in Gaza is unknown and figures offered by the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health........
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