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War is messy. It is cruel. It cannot be refined. It cannot be sanitized. Wars were once fought on battle fields. No longer. Civil War historian James McPherson has estimated that about 50,000 civilians died during that conflict, still less than 10% of all military deaths. That changed in the 20th Century. About half of all deaths in World War I were civilians. In World War II, twice as many civilians died as military personnel. Innocent people get hurt in modern wars, as residents of London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Naples learned during World War II, and as residents of My Lai and Hué learned during the Vietnam War. And as people today in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, in Gaza City, Jabalia, and Rafah understand, and in the border villages of Israel’s north where residents have evacuated due to threats from Iran’s other proxy, Hezbollah.
When the fight is between good and evil, a “proportional” response, as attractive as the concept sounds, is not an alternative. “The moral thing to do,” the columnist Moshe Phillips wrote recently in Israel National News, “is to destroy evil when it poses a ‘clear and present danger’ or likely will again.” Hamas presents to Israel such a threat. In September 1864, on the cusp of taking Atlanta, General William Tecumseh Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln: “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in until we are whipped or they are.” When Hamas attacked the Kibbutz Nir Oz, during the Tribe of Nova music festival, on October 7, raping women, slaughtering babies and children, mutilating those they had killed and kidnapping those they had not, war was the choice they made. Now, the only way to end the war is for Israel to totally destroy Hamas.
The battle in Gaza, like the American Civil War and World War II, is a fight between forces of good and evil. (In one sense, this is a civil war, as both Israelis and Palestinians descend from Abraham.) This is not to suggest that all Israelis are paragons of virtue and that all Palestinians are devils incarnate. But Israel, according to the Economist Groups Democracy Index, is the only democracy in the Middle East, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Britain. The people of Gaza bear some responsibility, as Hamas was elected in 2006 with 75% of the vote. Citizens of Gaza know that terrorists hide and store arms in tunnels beneath schools and hospitals. On September 11, 2001 there was dancing in the streets of Gaza. Ismail Haniyeh, former Gaza Prime Minister and Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau (and who now lives in Qatar), explained in 2020 why Hamas rejects ceasefire agreements: “We cannot, in exchange for money or projects, give up Palestine and our weapons. We will not give up the resistance. We will not recognize Israel. Palestine must stretch from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.” Commenting on the loss of civilian deaths in Gaza on October 26, 2023, Mr. Haniyeh said: The blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit.”
