A black flag waves over the offensive in Gaza. The order to launch precision bombs into families’ apartments, resulting in the certain death of women and children, and, as it turned out, also those unconnected to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is a patently illegal order. The pilots who launched the bombs were supposed to refuse it. These are pilots who, in all likelihood, oppose the regime upheaval and perhaps even declared that they would refuse to serve under a dictatorship. Their values and morals are also supposed to inform how they carry out their duties.
The commanders and legal counsels at the Defense Ministry, and the political decision-makers who approved the attack, are responsible for a war crime. Even if we deduct suspicions of a partisan motive in the decision, this is an offensive of choice, intended to “return deterrence,” or to exact vengeance, and not to foil an imminent attack on Israelis. It claimed the lives of four women and four children.
After 100 years of conflict and 56 years of occupation, we must sadly admit that Israel has undergone sweeping moral corruption. The true story is the consensus, the normalization, the obtuseness. The fact is that such actions are received among the public with glee, or at least consent, and at most a shrug.
Israel would have declared all-out war had 10 of its citizens perished in a missile attack on its soil. It would also have done so had a physician, his wife, and his son been killed by a rocket. But that’s precisely what happened in Gaza. When you obliterate an apartment from the air because a terrorist sleeps there with his family, sometimes the family in the apartment above gets obliterated too. This is no “surgical action,” no “targeted assassination,” and no “intelligence achievement.” On the contrary, it is callousness and cruelty.
There is hardly any opposition in Israel to these operations. Fairness compels us to admit that a government of the other side would have approved them as well. Proof of this is seen in how the opposition parties snapped to attention and automatically voiced support for the government. Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid offered full backing, MK Efrat Rayten was troubled by “difficult images to explain,” and tweeted about a “successful operation. Thank God our troops returned safely.” To set her mind at ease, our soldiers did not return from anywhere, and our pilots were in no danger, as the Gaza Strip has no anti-aircraft weapons.
Even more depressing than the moral failure is the complete absence of a strategic debate over the importance of the goal and the cost-benefit considerations. Israel takes out three terrorists along with their families, then braces for the impact in security rooms and airs out the bomb shelters. Roads shut down, trains stop running, school is canceled, thousands of families are evacuated from their homes.
Who, then, is deterring whom? Which is the greater strategic achievement – killing three senior Islamic Jihad operatives who will merely be replaced by others, or shutting down half the country even before a single mortar shell has been fired in response? Did the safety, security and well-being of the residents of the south improve or decline following the operation?
The power of a strong sovereign country is supposed to be measured by the level of its decision-making. It is very troubling that the operation was not approved by the cabinet. A precondition for skipping the cabinet is that there is no danger of sliding into war. But the defense minister warned, following the operation, of “rocket fire at close and long range, at considerable force, for an extended period of time,” and the prime minister announced he had ordered the defense establishment to “prepare to conduct a multi-front campaign.”
If the cabinet and coalition are made up of clowns, then let the head of the government form a different cabinet and coalition. Until then, he bears responsibility for neglecting the security of the state and its citizens, and in any case he has reached the point where none of his actions or decisions can be trusted.
Israel's Patently Illegal Gaza Operation
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11.05.2023
A black flag waves over the offensive in Gaza. The order to launch precision bombs into families’ apartments, resulting in the certain death of women and children, and, as it turned out, also those unconnected to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is a patently illegal order. The pilots who launched the bombs were supposed to refuse it. These are pilots who, in all likelihood, oppose the regime upheaval and perhaps even declared that they would refuse to serve under a dictatorship. Their values and morals are also supposed to inform how they carry out their duties.
The commanders and legal counsels at the Defense Ministry, and the political decision-makers who approved the attack, are responsible for a war crime. Even if we deduct suspicions of a partisan motive in the decision, this is an offensive of choice, intended to “return deterrence,” or to exact vengeance, and not to foil an imminent attack on Israelis. It claimed the lives of four women and four children.
After 100 years of conflict and 56 years of occupation,........
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