SHOULD AMERICA LECTURE ISRAEL?

The latest reports from the Gazan “Health Ministry” state that the death toll has topped 16,000.  Of course, such figures must be taken with a grain of salt. The “Health Ministry” officials work for Hamas, a terrorist organization which routinely lies.  Moreover, the number does not distinguish between Hamas soldiers and true civilians. Nor do the figures account for the inhabitants killed by Hamas’s or Islamic Jihad’s own rockets, 20% of which fall into Gaza.

But even allowing for exaggeration and fabrication, there is little doubt that the Gazan civilian death toll far exceeds the number of Israelis and other nationalities murdered by Hamas on October 7. This lack of “proportionality” has become a problem for the Biden administration. Its support for Israel, rock solid right after October 7, has softened and become more qualified as the toll increases.

On his third trip to the Middle East since the war began, Secretary of State Blinken declared that America’s support requires Israel’s “compliance with international humanitarian law.” He urged Israel “to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm.”

Two days later, Vice President Harris issued a similar statement after a meeting with Egyptian President el-Sisi: “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images coming from Gaza are devastating.”

Are these lectures deserved?

They would be — if numerical proportionality were the touchstone of morality. But it is not. Under international humanitarian law, proportionality is not based on mathematics. Instead, the principle entitles the nation under attack to use the amount of force required to eliminate the threat. The focus is on the means necessary for defense, not on the number of casualties.

To illustrate, consider a mother wheeling a baby carriage when she is attacked by two armed men. Imagine further that the mother happens to be packing heat. Would the mother have the right to kill two attackers in order to save one child?

Of course, she would. The 2:1 ratio would be no obstacle. Indeed, she would be within her rights even if the ratio were 10:1. What matters is the amount of force necessary to remove the threat.

Under that focus, it is clear that Israel’s use of force has not been excessive, regardless of the casualty count. Even now – forty days after the ground war began – Hamas is still shooting missiles at Israel. As long as Hamas poses a threat to Israel’s population, it is impossible to say that Israel’s use of force has been disproportionate.

The deaths of non-combatant civilians are always tragic, but the blame does not belong to the nation under attack. That victim has the right to use the amount of force necessary to defend itself even if it is compelled to cause civilian deaths in doing so. The blame for those civilian deaths belongs to the attacker who rendered them inevitable. In this case, the blame belongs to Hamas – which embedded itself in mosques, hospitals, schools, and other civilian institutions, and then embarked on a savage campaign of murder and rape, certain to invite the same massive retaliation of which it now complains.

All of this should be clear to any reasonable person. It is certainly clear to the American public. A recent NPR/PBS poll shows that 55% of Americans consider Israel’s military response to the attack to be “about right” or “too little.” Only 38% consider Israel’s military response to be “too much.” In an earlier IPSOS poll, 76% of the respondents agreed that “Israel is doing what any country would do in response to a terror attack and the taking of civilian hostages.”

So it is both surprising and disappointing to see Secretary Blinken and Vice President Harris lecture Israel about its moral responsibilities. Israel has been fulfilling those responsibilities assiduously.

Moreover, Blinken and Harris represent the United States, which, as they know or should know, has always eschewed mathematical proportionality in conducting its wars.

The “Powell Doctrine,” articulated by the late Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell during the First Gulf War, called for the use of “overwhelming force quickly and decisively.” In practice, that has meant the opposite of mathematical proportionality, as is evident from the post 9/11 data collected by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, in its “Costs of War” project.

In the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the United States suffered 2,324 military fatalities. It inflicted 52,893 deaths on the opposing armed forces, a ratio of 23:1. In that same war, 46,319 civilians died. Comparing that figure to American military fatalities produces a ratio of 20:1.

In the 2003 Iraq war, the United States suffered 4,599 military fatalities. It inflicted between 36,806 to 43,881 military deaths on its opponent, a ratio of roughly 9:1. In that same war, between 186,694 to 210,038 civilians died. Comparing that range to the number of American military fatalities produces a ratio of about 43:1.

Admittedly there are many differences between those American wars and Israel’s war with Hamas. But the figures show that when the United States goes to war, it focuses on its strategic goals, not on mathematical proportionality. We should not expect any more or any less from Israel.

Before 9/11, the United States showed even less concern for enemy civilians — at least when the United States itself was embroiled in the fight.

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt sent messages to all of the warring nations, urging them to refrain from the “inhuman barbarism” of bombing civilian targets. But once the nation found itself at war with Germany and Japan, the United States adopted a very different approach to such bombing.

On July 27, 1943, 728 American and British bombers flew over Hamburg, dropping 10,000 tons of incendiary bombs. The result was a firestorm so intense it created winds of hurricane force. Over 45,000 men, women, and children perished, half the houses in the city were destroyed, and more than a million civilians were forced to flee to the countryside.  And that was only the beginning. In the next two years, American and British bombers turned 120 German cities into virtual rubble, killing somewhere between 570,000 to 800,000 civilians in the process.

American military policy toward Japanese civilians was, if anything, more devastating. In March 1945, American airplanes fire bombed Tokyo, killing an estimated 100,000 people, and injuring an additional one million. Most of the victims were civilians. Bomber crews returning to their bases could see Tokyo burning from 150 miles away. The American military determined that bombing civilian targets was an effective tactic, so it decided to conduct additional attacks on Tokyo, and to mete out similar punishment on other Japanese cities. By the end of the war, our bombers had dropped 153,000 tons of bombs on civilian targets, and had burned down 60 major Japanese cities. The civilian death toll is estimated between 330,000 and 900,000.

And this happened before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing an additional 112,000 civilian deaths.

The purpose of recounting these stark figures and facts is not to criticize American conduct in past wars. We often refer to World War II as “the good war,” and for good reasons. The United States faced profoundly evil foes, responsible for inflicting millions more deaths on other nations than they themselves endured. The same German and Japanese civilian populations which suffered under American bombing also generally supported their governments. Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor in a regular election. And when his campaign of conquest appeared to be succeeding, the German people thronged in the streets to cheer him, as the Japanese people cheered their Emperor when his Imperial Army delivered victories.

The civilians of Gaza also elected Hamas to lead them. And they too have thronged in the streets, celebrating as Hamas gunmen returned from Israel bearing bleeding and terrified women and children.

These are matters which Secretary Blinken and Vice President Harris might do well to keep in mind as they lecture Israel on how to conduct its war against Hamas.