WASHINGTON — Fallujah. Mosul. Hiroshima.
Facing global criticism over a military campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, Israeli officials have turned to history in their defense. In public statements and private diplomatic conversations, officials have cited Western military actions in urban areas from World War II to the wars on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, up to 200,000 civilians died after the United States dropped atomic bombs to force Japan’s surrender. In Iraq, hundreds of civilians died in Fallujah as US forces fought Iraqi insurgents, and thousands died in Mosul in Iraqi and US battles against the Islamic State.
Israel insists it is trying to limit civilian casualties in a war against a terrorist enemy, Hamas. The war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people on October 7 in southern Israel, mostly civilians.
But human rights advocates and many governments in Europe and the Middle East have accused Israel of war crimes in the weeks of airstrikes that have devastated entire city blocks in Gaza, destroying schools, mosques and other apparently non-military targets.
Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters, who according to Israeli estimates number about 30,000, are embedded in Gaza’s population of 2.2 million and stockpile weapons in or under civilian sites. Officials also say Hamas is clearly guilty of intentionally murdering Israeli civilians.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his advisers have been careful not to even hint publicly that Israel might be violating any laws of war, and the U.S. State Department continues to approve arms sales to Israel.
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 October 30. “But the British pilots missed and instead of the Gestapo headquarters, their bombs hit a nearby children’s hospital. And I think 84 children were injured and burned alive. “That is not a war crime.” (In fact, the bombing occurred in 1945, hit a school and is believed to have killed 86 children and 18 adults.)
Netanyahu added that the attack “was a legitimate act of war with the tragic consequences that such legitimate action entails. And the Allies were not told, ‘Do not end Nazism because of such tragic consequences.'”
And during US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s visits to Israel after the October 7 attacks, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For Gaza residents, there is little hope of escape. And Hamas has been infiltrating Gaza’s infrastructure for more than 15 years.
Therefore, Israeli commanders repeatedly face the presence of civilians at or near their targets. A senior legal adviser to the Israel Defense Forces said that in such cases, commanders use their personal judgment before ordering a strike, assessing the likely cost in lives and whether the intended target is worth the price.
Israeli officials say they take extensive measures to protect civilians, including dropping leaflets or broadcasting radio and television broadcasts and even phone calls urging residents to leave danger zones before some attacks. But these actions are not taken when they could cost a necessary element of surprise, for example when attacking a Hamas leader who could flee, explains the Israeli advisor.
Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service that the Israeli “ratio” of Hamas fighters to civilians killed “compares very well with NATO and other Western forces” in past military campaigns.
It is impossible to determine that proportion with precision. More than 10,000 people have died in Gaza since the October 7 attacks, 40 percent of them children, the Health Ministry there reports. It is unknown how many Hamas militants have been killed.
By: MICHAEL CROWLEY and EDWARD WONG
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6986113, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-11-15 22:10:07
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