As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza from Israeli military strikes rises to more than 10,000, according to the Palestinian Gaza health ministry — with an estimated 4,000 of the dead being children — there’s a question to be asked among Israeli and US government officials that I doubt will yield any straightforward answers.
How many Palestinian babies should die to destroy Hamas?
If the goal is to destroy Hamas, should the world tolerate 5,000 additional deaths of Palestinian children? 10,000 more?
How many more elderly Palestinian civilians should die so that Hamas no longer exists?
How many more hospitals should catch bombs? How many more schools? How many more churches and mosques?
The question has nothing to do with antisemitism, and everything to do with the number of additional Palestinian civilian deaths U.S. and Israeli officials are willing to see.
15,000 more dead children? Peace will surely follow, right?
20,000 more? 30,000?
Gaza has approximately one million children under the age of 18. How many more of the one million children should die?
If you’re not a politician and are reading this piece, how many more babies should die?
Most people I know are stunned by the October 7 murders of more than a reported 1,000 Israeli civilians at the bloody hands of Hamas combatants. Jewish babies also deserve to live.
Fewer people understand the complexity of events during the past 56 years — or 75 — that brought us to today. And breaking down the social and political currents that have pushed this tinderbox to yet another unstable state requires more real estate to explain than this piece. Perhaps a future post …
But if Palestinian babies seem to be standing in the way of destroying Hamas, how many more babies should die?
Can *you* tell me? What’s your number?
Does anyone realistically believe that killing more babies will mean more peace in the region?
And for the babies who survive the current war, how resentful do you think they’ll feel — years later — about witnessing their parents’ maiming, obliteration, and incineration?
The US should know how to answer that question, but I’ll help this process along by asking another one: how much absence of goodwill did the American military build among Afghan children — now adults — who witnessed their elders’ bodies torn apart by drones, home raids, and missile targeting during two decades of post-9/11 occupation?
As a reference point, author Anand Gopal does a good job of explaining how America lost Afghanistan in No Good Men Among the Living.
One can make the argument that destroying Hamas for slaughtering Jewish civilians is justice.
But there’s no equivalent argument for Israeli warplanes destroying apartment buildings filled with innocent civilians.
This isn’t justice. Killing civilians is mass slaughter.
And this slaughter will not make Israelis safer. It will only plant the seeds for more danger.
I’ll leave you with a quote that made news back in 2010 when General David Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command shared this observation with the Senate Armed Services Committee:
The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [or area of responsibility]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations.The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011 TO U.S. SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE— TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2010
By the way, this report is not so easy to find these days — a shame since his words are every bit as relevant now as they were more than 13 years ago.
We need a different solution to the region because bombs will never destroy a feeling or an idea — especially when civilians are the victims …
song currently stuck in my head: “when your lover has gone” – art blakey and the jazz messengers
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