Facts Don’t Care About Your Condemnation
A concerned US citizen sifts through conflicting information
Yesterday afternoon, President Biden condemned the recent Hamas attacks in the strongest possible terms. In doing so, he claimed to have seen photographic evidence of Hamas beheading children.1 Israeli officials have publicly admitted that reports of Hamas mutilating infants and children are unsubstantiated.2 Even so, these reports have spread like wildfire in Western media.
I am not a journalist, politician or public figure of any sort. I am simply a US citizen with internet access, piecing together disparate bits of publicly available information. Because dubious claims like the one Biden made yesterday are so prevalent on social media and elsewhere, I have cited my sources meticulously and quoted them directly whenever possible.
On CNN on Saturday, presenter Christiane Amanpour interviewed the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot. She began: “Welcome to the program. First and foremost, do you condemn what Hamas did inside Israel to Israeli civilians?”
“First and—”
“There are dead, and there are hostages.”
“First and foremost, Western media must abandon this framework that has gotten us to where we are today—”
“OK, but I just want to know, do you support the killing of civilians?”
Zomlot, wearily: “Of course not, of course not, of course not—”
“So do you condemn that?”3
On Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a total blockade on the Gaza strip. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no gas. We are fighting against human animals and we will act accordingly,” Gallant said.4 President Biden has since declared unconditional support for a “swift, decisive, and overwhelming” Israeli military response.5
Also on Saturday, US Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush issued press releases on the Hamas attacks that attributed them, in part, to the increasing brutality of the Israeli occupation. Both of their statements were swiftly condemned by Republicans and fellow Democrats alike.6
Interestingly, the editorial board of Israel’s longest running newspaper issued a statement that attributed the attacks to very similar factors. The Haaretz editorial placed the blame for the bloodshed squarely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It condemned Netanyahu’s “government of annexation and dispossession,” and his “foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”7
Since January 2008 the UN has been tracking and publishing data on casualties that are “the result of confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis in the context of the occupation and conflict.”8
These numbers, which, so far, cover incidents that occurred up until September of this year, show that the ratio of Palestinian casualties to Israeli casualties during that time was over 20:1.
The ratio of Palestinian child casualties to Israeli child casualties was over 57:1.
The ratio of Palestinian civilian casualties to Israeli civilian casualties was 21:1, as long as we assume that in every casualty marked as “disputed”, the slain Palestinian person was part of an armed group and can thus be excluded from the civilian count.910
In 2021, Amnesty International released a report in which they accuse Israel of a slew of human rights violations, which cumulatively constitute “the crime against humanity of apartheid.” According to this report, “violations such as forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, unlawful killings and serious injuries, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms have been well documented by Amnesty and others.”
Furthermore, the report alleges, “Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.”11
In spite of all this, when I did the math, I was surprised to learn that during the 15-year period covered by the UN data, Palestinian militants had a better track record than “the most moral army in the world” when it came to avoiding civilian casualties. Even if we ignore the fact that the 6,407 Palestinian and 308 Israeli casualties are different orders of magnitude, and even if we continue with the assumption that there was not a single civilian among more than 1,500 Palestinians whose affiliations with armed groups remain unconfirmed, the fraction of Israeli casualties identified as civilians was 57% while at least 59% of Palestinian casualties were civilians.
Furthermore, I can’t see why the 1,582 “disputed” Palestinian casualties would be “disputed” if the IDF could provide ample evidence that they were members of armed groups. According to this logic, a whopping 84% of the 6,407 Palestinians killed during that 15-year period could not be credibly linked to Hamas or any other armed group.
For me, these facts inspire some questions. For one, why are all acts of violence perpetrated by members of the “politically and geographically fragmented, frequently impoverished” population that lives in a “constant state of fear and insecurity” condemned as acts of terrorism when these acts are not only far less deadly overall, but also less likely to kill a disproportionate number of civilians, than the violent acts perpetrated by the state of Israel? Why are the far deadlier Israeli attacks on Palestinians deemed legitimate and necessary?
And how is it that an army that receives roughly $3.8 billion annually in US military funding and has access to state-of-the-art weapons and surveillance technology12 is so incomprehensibly bad at sparing civilian lives by pointedly targeting known militants?
The answer to that last question is surprisingly simple. It’s called Dahiya Doctrine, a military strategy that dates back to Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon. According to the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, this strategy, which was adopted by the IDF in both Lebanon and Gaza, prioritizes the destruction of civilian infrastructure over the targeting of opponents’ military capabilities. The strategy also dictates a use of “force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat that it poses.”13
In keeping with this strategy, a Tuesday morning military briefing revealed that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had been dropped on the Gaza Strip (the number has increased since then). An IDF spokesperson added that, “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”14
In fact, during this current spate of violence, it appears that the IDF is not even trying to minimize casualties among Israeli and international captives. According to leaks from a cabinet meeting in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We have to be cruel now and not to think too much about the hostages [in Gaza].”15 While Hamas has stated its intention to free Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinians being held in Isreali prisons, over 1,200 of whom have not been charged with a crime, the IDF will not negotiate.16 Times of Israel reported on Monday that, according to a senior government source, “Israel has decided that its attacks on terrorist targets in Gaza will be carried out with great force and breadth, even at the cost of harming Israelis who are being held captive in Gaza.”17
My intention in emphasizing this information is not to make light of Israelis’ grief, which I’m sure is immense at a time like this. Loss of human life is categorically tragic. I do not think those hundreds of civilian casualties deserved their fate. What’s more, I realize that the unprecedented scale of the attacks will greatly alter the UN data I’ve been referencing: so far over 1,200 casualties have been counted in Israel.18 It will be weeks, if not months or years, before we know the true magnitude of the death and destruction being wrought in the current phase of this decades-long conflict.
As of the time I am writing this, the total blockade on Gaza has persisted for 6 days. Israeli air strikes have killed at least 1,537 Palestinians including 500 children, and injured 6,612. 340,000 have been rendered homeless. The only power plant in Gaza has run out of fuel, and the hospital system is collapsing. The IDF has repeatedly bombed the only border crossing they didn’t already control. Attempts to offer humanitarian aid have been met with threats of Israeli air strikes, and preparations for a ground invasion are under way.1920
These facts inspire even more questions, which I’d like to address to US pundits, politicians and fellow citizens:
Do you disown the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all other international organizations that have, for years now, condemned the human rights violations perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel?
Do you disavow the numerical data these organizations have published – data that paint a picture of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity that are much greater in scale than anything Hamas has ever done?
Do you condemn the Israeli government’s publicly stated and currently active plan to systematically eliminate the entire population of Gaza by way of entrapment, starvation, and military assault?
The United States is Israel’s closest and most powerful ally. We have the power not just to condemn these atrocities but to end them.
There are no disputed Israeli casualties. As the occupying power in the region, they have an organized national military force, so questions of who is or isn’t an active service member are ostensibly clear cut.
Thanks - there are a few people asking the right questions!