>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.
This is hardly a defence. For the past few decades people all over the world, including in the US, have condemned their wars and pointed out how unnecessary and damaging they were. Hardly anybody that’s not right wing would call the US’s wars permissible.
We gave you a perfect picture of what not to do, and you think you’re supposed to copy it!
“Yeah, but the Americans did it!” Is not a good look.
We have the most expensive, least effective medical system in the developed world and a new mass shooting every week. Give it a try, see how your people like the American Way.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen:
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
We must reject the crackpot realism of war criminals.
There must not be any such thing as a free war crime.
Either: war crimes are recognized, responsibility for such crimes are borne by the perpetrators, and actions are taken (willingly or unwillingly) to make amends,
Or: Total war and all crimes against humanity will become the norm.
Poison gas? Why not? Security is only assured when everybody (except us) is dead.
In an area that the US has jurisdiction, it’s citizens can sue for a violation of their constitutional rights.
Israel promised the UN in 1948 that they would get around to writing a Constitution, so long as they got a state.
They still haven’t gotten around to it.
What is to stop them from doing anything they want to the people in their country? No one has constitutional rights.
What aboutism at a whole other level. Children, children wearing suits and making the rules.
The last twenty year of US foreign policy have been hideous and evil, unforgivable in many aspects. To join us along that path is not a defense it is a condemnation.
When they start pulling moral relativism that means they have no defense.
Did one nuclear power just ‘no u’ another?
That’s a good way to keep friends.
Talk about biting the hand
Take their allowance away.
Virtually everyone in America who is criticizing Israel over this also absolutely despises US foreign policy more broadly. Like, a large portion of the prominent pro-Palestine figures in the West were also very involved with antiwar protests during Vietnam and Iraq.
In other words, yes. From the Mississippi to the Atlantic!
What a mutually-beneficial relationship! /s
The US needs to reassess its relationship with Israel
The “we are actually both bastards” doesn’t seem like a morally useful argument.
Biting the hand that feeds you. Not smart. Can’t say I’m surprised though.
Never saw an Israeli soldier in Iraq and they want to say something about the things done during ww2 to free the jewish people from concentration camps and that ultimately gave them their own country on land that they have a dubious at best claim to?
If they feel like running their mouthes when its pretty much the threat of the US bailing them out that keeps the entire region from jumping in to assist the Palestinians; let them figure it out on their own.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. 100+ Billion in aid still up in the air …
Yeah, be like America’s great reputation in invading Iraq, that will really give you a lot of moral authority
Pretty sure Biden gave a whole speech saying Israelis should look at what we did after 9/11 out of fear, anger, and corrupt motives by politicians, and not let their own fear, anger, and corrupt politicians do a repeat.
With friends like these…
This is an article by the Economist explaining why more civilians have been killed in Gaza in less than 3A weeks than in the siege of Mosul which lasted nine months.
Here is a summary of the key points of the article.
1. More Civilians remain in Northern Gaza vs Mosul. Packed in a smaller area. From what I read elsewhere most likely 600000 vs 300000 in Mosul.
2. Fewer humanitarian stations than in Iraq
3. Civilian and military infrastructure is more intermingled in Gaza than in Mosul,, because Hamas has been operating as a charity from 1967-1987 and as a government from 2006 onward.
4. The IDF dropped 6,000 bombs on the territory in the first six days of the war, a rate of ordnance far exceeding American and Western counter-terrorism campaigns. In Mosul, for instance, the American-led coalition dropped 7,000 over two months in the most intense period of bombing.
5. The IDF does not have the same affinity with Palestinian civilians that Iraqi forces did with the compatriots they were liberating from ISIS rule.
6. Poorer human intelligence than the Iraqis. In Mosul, local civilians, many of whom hated ISIS, provided a wealth of human intelligence, or humint—information passed on by sources on the ground—to Iraqi forces, helping them to target is fighters.
I think too many people here keep on saying Hamas is EVIL and they use human shields as if ISIS didn’t also use them.
My opinion is Israel wants to eliminate Hamas without having to lose many IDF soldiers and do it quickly, they aren’t willing to take 9 months like the Iraqis did.
There is justification why some Western officials are accusing the IDF of indiscriminate bombing when you compare it with Mosul. Why should IDF be held to a lower standard than the Iraqi forces, which consisted of remnants of Saddam’s Army and Shite Militia.
**NOTE:** Please send any complaints about the article to [letters@economist.com](mailto:letters@economist.com). I just wrote the summary, I am not the author of the article.
Yeah that’s not a good thing. We lost those wars.
Ah, the tried and true “No, you” retort.
I don’t see how saying “They did it too!” makes it look any better. 🤨
The recent US wars should were horrible horrible mismanaged pieces of shit, that probably did more harm than good.
It’s not exactly something one should take as inspiration.
So according to Israel, civilian body count doesn’t matter, bit the reason they’re doing this is because of… The dead civilians?
Everyone is concerned about the tit for tat between two armies.
All I can see is that there is no hope for those poor people crushed under the oppression. What a sad sad place. Where people in power justify bombing children for a military advantage.
30 comments
>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.
This is hardly a defence. For the past few decades people all over the world, including in the US, have condemned their wars and pointed out how unnecessary and damaging they were. Hardly anybody that’s not right wing would call the US’s wars permissible.
We gave you a perfect picture of what not to do, and you think you’re supposed to copy it!
“Yeah, but the Americans did it!” Is not a good look.
We have the most expensive, least effective medical system in the developed world and a new mass shooting every week. Give it a try, see how your people like the American Way.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen:
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you%27re_no_Jack_Kennedy
We must reject the crackpot realism of war criminals.
There must not be any such thing as a free war crime.
Either: war crimes are recognized, responsibility for such crimes are borne by the perpetrators, and actions are taken (willingly or unwillingly) to make amends,
Or: Total war and all crimes against humanity will become the norm.
Poison gas? Why not? Security is only assured when everybody (except us) is dead.
In an area that the US has jurisdiction, it’s citizens can sue for a violation of their constitutional rights.
Israel promised the UN in 1948 that they would get around to writing a Constitution, so long as they got a state.
They still haven’t gotten around to it.
What is to stop them from doing anything they want to the people in their country? No one has constitutional rights.
What aboutism at a whole other level. Children, children wearing suits and making the rules.
The last twenty year of US foreign policy have been hideous and evil, unforgivable in many aspects. To join us along that path is not a defense it is a condemnation.
When they start pulling moral relativism that means they have no defense.
Did one nuclear power just ‘no u’ another?
That’s a good way to keep friends.
Talk about biting the hand
Take their allowance away.
Virtually everyone in America who is criticizing Israel over this also absolutely despises US foreign policy more broadly. Like, a large portion of the prominent pro-Palestine figures in the West were also very involved with antiwar protests during Vietnam and Iraq.
In other words, yes. From the Mississippi to the Atlantic!
What a mutually-beneficial relationship! /s
The US needs to reassess its relationship with Israel
The “we are actually both bastards” doesn’t seem like a morally useful argument.
Biting the hand that feeds you. Not smart. Can’t say I’m surprised though.
Never saw an Israeli soldier in Iraq and they want to say something about the things done during ww2 to free the jewish people from concentration camps and that ultimately gave them their own country on land that they have a dubious at best claim to?
If they feel like running their mouthes when its pretty much the threat of the US bailing them out that keeps the entire region from jumping in to assist the Palestinians; let them figure it out on their own.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. 100+ Billion in aid still up in the air …
Yeah, be like America’s great reputation in invading Iraq, that will really give you a lot of moral authority
Pretty sure Biden gave a whole speech saying Israelis should look at what we did after 9/11 out of fear, anger, and corrupt motives by politicians, and not let their own fear, anger, and corrupt politicians do a repeat.
With friends like these…
This is an article by the Economist explaining why more civilians have been killed in Gaza in less than 3A weeks than in the siege of Mosul which lasted nine months.
[Why urban warfare in Gaza will be bloodier than in Iraq](https://archive.ph/ebXod)
Here is a summary of the key points of the article.
1. More Civilians remain in Northern Gaza vs Mosul. Packed in a smaller area. From what I read elsewhere most likely 600000 vs 300000 in Mosul.
2. Fewer humanitarian stations than in Iraq
3. Civilian and military infrastructure is more intermingled in Gaza than in Mosul,, because Hamas has been operating as a charity from 1967-1987 and as a government from 2006 onward.
4. The IDF dropped 6,000 bombs on the territory in the first six days of the war, a rate of ordnance far exceeding American and Western counter-terrorism campaigns. In Mosul, for instance, the American-led coalition dropped 7,000 over two months in the most intense period of bombing.
5. The IDF does not have the same affinity with Palestinian civilians that Iraqi forces did with the compatriots they were liberating from ISIS rule.
6. Poorer human intelligence than the Iraqis. In Mosul, local civilians, many of whom hated ISIS, provided a wealth of human intelligence, or humint—information passed on by sources on the ground—to Iraqi forces, helping them to target is fighters.
I think too many people here keep on saying Hamas is EVIL and they use human shields as if ISIS didn’t also use them.
My opinion is Israel wants to eliminate Hamas without having to lose many IDF soldiers and do it quickly, they aren’t willing to take 9 months like the Iraqis did.
There is justification why some Western officials are accusing the IDF of indiscriminate bombing when you compare it with Mosul. Why should IDF be held to a lower standard than the Iraqi forces, which consisted of remnants of Saddam’s Army and Shite Militia.
**NOTE:** Please send any complaints about the article to [letters@economist.com](mailto:letters@economist.com). I just wrote the summary, I am not the author of the article.
Yeah that’s not a good thing. We lost those wars.
Ah, the tried and true “No, you” retort.
I don’t see how saying “They did it too!” makes it look any better. 🤨
The recent US wars should were horrible horrible mismanaged pieces of shit, that probably did more harm than good.
It’s not exactly something one should take as inspiration.
So according to Israel, civilian body count doesn’t matter, bit the reason they’re doing this is because of… The dead civilians?
Everyone is concerned about the tit for tat between two armies.
All I can see is that there is no hope for those poor people crushed under the oppression. What a sad sad place. Where people in power justify bombing children for a military advantage.