What’s the right next move in this war — and why is it so hard to trust anyone’s answer?
People check the destruction caused by overnight Israeli bombardment in Rafah on Feb. 23. Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson February 23, 2024
With a possible siege of Rafah now imminent, the Israel-Gaza war has come to yet another painful juncture — most of all, of course, for the roughly 1 million Palestinians who fled to Gaza’s southernmost city for safety, only to find the war once more at their doorstep, with nowhere else to run.
This is a uniquely challenging moment. There is so much we don’t know, and it’s increasingly unclear who to trust.
Has Israel’s conduct of the war been careful or negligent? Are the motivations of key leaders strategically limited, as they claim, or part of a longer term, right-wing campaign to somehow subjugate or expel Palestinians living in Gaza — as they also sometimes claim?
There is evidence for every argument. On the pro-Israel side, Israel’s boosters insist — supported by some military experts — that its army has gone above and beyond standard military procedures to minimize civilian casualties, including by reducing the average size of bombs dropped on Gaza; sending text messages warning civilians in advance of operations; and having lawyers “in the room” whenever air strikes are authorized.
As a result of such steps, Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., has claimed that Israel’s war is far less bloody for civilians than others of similar breadth. Of the 28,000 Palestinian so far estimated to have been killed, Oren asserts that 12,000 have been combatants, and another 2,000 were killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
13,000 dead civilians is still a horrifying number, but a nearly 1:1 ratio of civilian deaths to non-civilian (and friendly fire) ones is considered far better than average for modern urban wars in which enemy combatants hide among civilian populations. Citing a number of studies, Oren writes that “in America’s wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the ratio was four civilians killed for every combatant.”
And yet, there are plenty of reasons to mistrust Israeli leadership.
There have been numerous extreme comments from government officials, mostly uncondemned by leadership. (President Isaac Herzog said, for example, that “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … and we’ll fight until we break their backbone.”) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that his “day after” plan for the war involves an endless re-occupation if not ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Netanyahu has boasted of having prevented the formation of a Palestinian state, which is still the only just solution to this conflict, for decades. There are disturbing videos of soldiers abusing Palestinians and delighting in the destruction of Gaza.
How can one trust the Israeli military and political apparatus in the face of this evidence bringing their motives and strategy into question?
And given how hard it is to have faith in Israel’s leadership, how can one assess if an attack on Rafah, which will surely kill many innocent people, is justified?
On the pro-Israel side, the answer is straightforward. Rafah is Hamas’ last holdout: Almost certainly, its leaders and hostages are hiding in tunnels there. Thus, escalated operations in Rafah are necessary to rescue the hostages, and hopefully defeat Hamas.
On the anti-Israel left, the answer is also easy. Israel has at best been callous about civilian deaths, and at worst is using the war against Hamas as a pretext for genocide against Palestinians. A siege of Rafah threatens to become perhaps the culmination of that horror; as one student leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, Salem Younes, put it, “Rafah is supposed to be a safe place,” but after months of war, “now there’s nowhere else to go, so this is one of the final stages of genocide.”
Who to believe? Increasingly, the discourse on Israel and Palestine is beginning to look like American polarization more generally, with each “side” inhabiting its own media, communal and rhetorical universes. And yet for those who, like me, are neither on the hard left nor the hard right — who want a bilateral ceasefire that includes the release of all the hostages and the cessation of all the bombing — the answer is not straightforward at all. We don’t have access to the military intelligence on which Israel says it’s relying, and we can’t assess whether any of its actions have realistic strategic goals.
In addition, whatever doubts one has about Israel’s military campaign and the motives of the political leaders informing it, the primary moral responsibility for all of this still rests with Hamas’ gang of genocidal war criminals. From the rapes and massacres of Oct. 7 to Hamas’ continued use of human shields today, this horror is Hamas’ fault. Indeed, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attacks, has called Gaza “a nation of martyrs” — as if innocent Palestinian families consented to be martyrs to his cause.
And other, international parties are not free of scrutiny either — particularly Egypt, which is so determined to keep out Gazan refugees that it is currently erecting a wall to keep them from entering Egyptian territory.
This is all a maelstrom, a storm of unknowing and pain. Yet among so many on the right and left, there has been what is called the “tyranny of certainty.” Israel is totally right or totally wrong. Palestinian suffering is either the result of brutal Israeli genocide, or an unavoidable side effect of a necessary military operation.
The right and the left are mirror images of one another: Each is certain that the other side is evil, and each is opposed to coexistence. Maybe the real conflict isn’t between right and left after all, but between those who yearn for coexistence and those who oppose it — for either right-wing or left-wing reasons.
Certainty is a delusion. I can’t escape the feeling that the war has gone beyond a justified military response to Oct. 7, or the fear that it is being spurred on in part because of a thirst for collective punishment. I’m praying for Rafah, and praying for a hostages-and-ceasefire deal. I even find myself praying that Israeli leadership is using the threat of a Rafah operation to compel Hamas to agree to such a deal. But then, do those in power even want this war to end? I wish I could trust the motivations, endgame, and conduct of Israeli leadership, but they’ve lost that trust.
When it comes to theology, philosophy and the mystery of human relationships, not knowing is a value I cherish. But now, with so many lives at stake, I’m finding it excruciating.
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