Under Scrutiny Over Gaza, Israel Points to Civilian Toll of U.S. Wars

Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters, numbering perhaps 30,000 by Israeli estimates, embed within Gaza’s population of 2.2 million and store weapons in or under civilian sites, daring Israel to launch strikes that fuel outrage. The officials also say Hamas is clearly guilty of intentionally murdering Israeli civilians.

President Biden and his aides have been careful not to even hint in public that Israel could be violating any laws of war. And the State Department continues to approve sales of weapons to Israel while refraining from making any assessments of the legality of Israel’s actions. Some diplomats are uneasy with that, especially since the department formally pledged earlier this year to investigate episodes of civilian casualties involving American-made weapons.

Israel says it is impossible to defeat its enemy without killing innocents — a lesson that Americans and their allies should understand.

“In 1944, the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen — a perfectly legitimate target,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in an address to his nation on Oct. 30. “But the British pilots missed and instead of the Gestapo headquarters, they hit a children’s hospital nearby. And I think 84 children were harmed and burned to death. That is not a war crime. That is not something you blame Britain for doing.” (In fact the bombing was in 1945, hit a school, and is believed to have killed 86 children and 18 adults.)

Mr. Netanyahu added that the attack “was a legitimate act of war with tragic consequences that accompany such legitimate action. And you didn’t tell the Allies, ‘Don’t stamp out Nazism because of such tragic consequences.’”

Israeli officials have also invoked American battles against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja in 2004, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and, in tandem with Iraqi government forces, against the Islamic State terrorist group in the Iraqi city of Mosul from 2016 to 2017.

And during Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s visits to Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“In any combat situation, like when the United States was leading a coalition to get ISIS out of Mosul, there were civilian casualties,” Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said in an Oct. 24 interview with PBS. Mr. Regev said that Israel’s “ratio” of Hamas fighters to civilians killed “compares very well to NATO and other Western forces” in past military campaigns.

sandboxmatt on November 8th, 2023 at 04:34 UTC »

The "we are actually both bastards" doesn't seem like a morally useful argument.

giabollc on November 8th, 2023 at 03:58 UTC »

That’s a good way to keep friends.

DungeonDefense on November 8th, 2023 at 02:55 UTC »

Falluja. Mosul. Copenhagen. Hiroshima.

Facing global criticism over a bloody military campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians, Israeli officials have turned to history in their defense. And the names of several infamous sites of death and destruction have been on their lips.

In public statements and private diplomatic conversations, the officials have cited past Western military actions in urban areas dating from World War II to the post-9/11 wars against terrorism. Their goal is to help justify a campaign against Hamas that is claiming thousands of Palestinian lives.

In those earlier conflicts, innocent civilians paid the price for the defeat of enemies. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as many as 200,000 civilians perished after the United States dropped atomic bombs to force Japan’s surrender. In Iraq, hundreds of civilians were killed in Falluja as U.S. forces fought Iraqi insurgents, and thousands died in Mosul in Iraqi and American battles against the Islamic State.

Israel insists that it is trying to limit civilian casualties in a war against a terrorist enemy, which began when Hamas killed 1,400 people on Oct. 7 in southern Israel, most of them civilians.

Human rights advocates and many governments in Europe and the Middle East scoff at that. They accuse Israel of committing war crimes in the weeks of airstrikes that have leveled entire city blocks in Gaza, destroying schools, mosques and other seemingly nonmilitary targets.

Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters, numbering perhaps 30,000 by Israeli estimates, embed within Gaza’s population of 2.2 million and store weapons in or under civilian sites, daring Israel to launch strikes that fuel outrage. The officials also say Hamas is clearly guilty of intentionally murdering Israeli civilians.

President Biden and his aides have been careful not to even hint in public that Israel could be violating any laws of war. And the State Department continues to approve sales of weapons to Israel while refraining from making any assessments of the legality of Israel’s actions. Some diplomats are uneasy with that, especially since the department formally pledged earlier this year to investigate episodes of civilian casualties involving American-made weapons.

Israel says it is impossible to defeat its enemy without killing innocents — a lesson that Americans and their allies should understand.

“In 1944, the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen — a perfectly legitimate target,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in an address to his nation on Oct. 30. “But the British pilots missed and instead of the Gestapo headquarters, they hit a children’s hospital nearby. And I think 84 children were harmed and burned to death. That is not a war crime. That is not something you blame Britain for doing.” (In fact the bombing was in 1945, hit a school, and is believed to have killed 86 children and 18 adults.)

Mr. Netanyahu added that the attack “was a legitimate act of war with tragic consequences that accompany such legitimate action. And you didn’t tell the Allies, ‘Don’t stamp out Nazism because of such tragic consequences.’”

Israeli officials have also invoked American battles against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja in 2004, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and, in tandem with Iraqi government forces, against the Islamic State terrorist group in the Iraqi city of Mosul from 2016 to 2017.

And during Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s visits to Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“In any combat situation, like when the United States was leading a coalition to get ISIS out of Mosul, there were civilian casualties,” Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said in an Oct. 24 interview with PBS. Mr. Regev said that Israel’s “ratio” of Hamas fighters to civilians killed “compares very well to NATO and other Western forces” in past military campaigns.

It is impossible to determine that ratio accurately. More than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past month, 40 percent of them children, according to the health ministry there. It is unknown how many might have been Hamas militants.

The battle of Mosul was far bloodier than earlier fights in Falluja, costing as many as 8,000 civilian lives to kill perhaps several thousand Islamic State fighters. Much of the city center was destroyed. Echoing Israeli assertions today, U.S. officials said at the time that Islamic State fighters used civilians as human shields and even welcomed civilian deaths as a way of undermining support for the U.S.-Iraqi military campaign.