We've finally found the main culprit in the deaths of some 20,000 Palestinians in this war, roughly 60 percent of them civilians and about a third of them children.
"Had the international community allowed Israel to respond appropriately to Hamas attacks in previous rounds of fighting, many lives – especially Palestinian ones – would have been saved," Avi Garfinkel writes authoritatively, almost scientifically (see below).
Garfinkel apparently lacks access to the memory cells that have disappeared from the public archives. Operation Protective Edge began on July 8, 2014, and despite international pressure for a cease-fire, including a direct demand from then-U.S. President Barack Obama on July 27, it continued until August 26.
Five years later, a better explanation than the one Garfinkel proposed was found, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained explicitly why Hamas had to remain in power in the Gaza Strip. "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support strengthening Hamas and sending money to Hamas," he told a meeting of his Likud party's Knesset members in March 2019. "This is part of our strategy, to separate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria."
So much for memory. But in blaming the international community, Garfinkel carefully takes aim at the goal, and misses it. "All the critics and preachers should be told two things," he writes. "1. You've helped enough. 2. The IDF is the most moral army in the world, by a large margin."
He then attaches data to this conclusion, as befits a serious, in-depth study. For instance, "in Iraq, the Americans killed ten times as many civilians as soldiers, not 'just' one and half times as many."
Unfortunately for him, it was the IDF Spokesperson Unit's website, not some human rights organization or the Harvard student council, that in 2012 quoted British Col. Richard Kemp, who commanded the British forces in Afghanistan. Kemp said that based on UN estimates, the ratio of civilians to combatants killed was 3:1 in Afghanistan – that is, three civilians for every combatant – and 4:1 in Iraq.
Yet despite his distorted presentation of the data – which reeks of an effort to prove that the IDF is in fact the most moral army in the world when compared to all the rest, and especially to the American army – Garfinkel promptly throws these figures into the trash.
They aren't relevant, he says, because what's relevant is that "proportionality is measured by the relationship between the military benefit expected from an attack and the expected harm to enemy civilians. The desired benefit from the IDF's offensive is to prevent the enemy from carrying out its declared intention of destroying Israel."
But this is exactly where the rhetorical bluff of the whole fake argument lies. Because the question isn't what we're fighting for, but how we're fighting.
How many children and women is it "permissible" to kill in the name of this proportionality? How many is it permissible to starve? How many can be deprived of potable water or life-saving drugs? Or perhaps we should annihilate all Gazans to prevent them from annihilating Israel?
Philosopher Michael Walzer, who wrote one of the foundational books on the theory of wartime ethics, "Just and Unjust Wars," said the axiom at the basis of just war theory is that the laws of war cannot make it impossible to wage a just war. But nobody disputes that the war in Gaza is just. The argument is over when it becomes unjust because it treats every enemy civilian as someone who can justifiably be killed.
And one more niggling detail about comparisons: The title of "the most moral army in the world" wouldn't prove any army's absolute morality, its use of less violent tactics or its lack of brutality. The very use of such comparisons constitutes a dangerous moral handicap, because it grants broad permission, far beyond what is necessary, for the use of force, death and destruction. As long as it doesn't go beyond what other armies did, the army will retain its title.