As I write, students in universities across the US are occupying their campuses in protest at what they consider to be Israel’s genocide against the Gazan people. Unlike the Met Police who freeze at the prospect of arresting pro-Palestine demonstrators guilty of breaching the peace, the American police who have no such hang ups are arresting protestors in large numbers for their illegal encampments. So far, around 120 students have been arrested at Columbia University alone.
What makes these illegal occupations particularly contemptible is the anti-Semitism of some of those taking part. Jewish students and university staff have been harassed with taunts of ‘Go back to Poland’ and ‘7th October is about to be every day for you’.
These barbs are not only revolting, they also display the monumental moral stupidity of those conducting this harassment. How can a person demonstrate against what they think is a genocide in Gaza whilst calling for the genocide of Jews? But what did we expect? Irrationality is integral to extremism.
But there is also the empirical question of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza actually are a genocide. It is time to listen to an expert rather than students who mentally and emotionally are still in nappies. Enter John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point and a former infantry soldier of twenty-five years’ service.
In an article for Newsweek, Spencer, who studies and advises the American military on the kind of warfare in which Israel is currently engaged, namely urban warfare, argues that no other nation in history has shown as much concern to protect civilians as the Israeli Defence Force has done in Gaza. If the IDF were carrying out a genocide, civilians would be targeted too, but they are not. Yet still the international community does not acknowledge Israel’s concern for non-combatants and continues to scold it for failing to protect them. So exemplary has the IDF been in minimising civilian casualties, it is Spencer’s opinion that the US ought to learn the IDF’s methods.
What is more remarkable according to Spencer is that Israel’s concern for Gazan civilians defies military orthodoxy regarding offensives. According to the theory and praxis of manoeuvre warfare, the attacker must smash an enemy morally and physically with surprise, overwhelming force and speed, and destroy political and military centres. Warning civilians to evacuate is forbidden as enemy forces would learn of the coming attack.
Yet this is what the IDF has done before almost every move it has made, thus ceding the advantage of surprise and allowing Hamas to relocate its ununiformed forces inside Gaza’s dense urban spaces where they can mingle with civilians and hide in their labyrinth of tunnels. Spencer confirms that Israel warned civilians in northern Gaza weeks in advance before launching its ground offensive. Israel also made over seventy thousand phone calls, sent over thirteen million text messages and left more than fifteen million pre-recorded voicemails to warn civilians in that region to leave combat zones and to advise on where they should go and how to get there. Additionally, the IDF has used drones with speakers to exhort civilians to leave and has conducted frequent pauses of operations to allow any civilians who have not left battle zones to do so. These efforts resulted in an impressive evacuation of eighty-five per cent of civilians in northern Gaza.
But we are not done yet. The IDF has given out its military maps to civilians so they can evacuate more safely. This is unprecedented in war. The IDF has used drone and satellite imagery to detect the presence of civilians who have not evacuated to avoid hitting them. Overseeing all these measures is the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit that is based close to the action in southern Israel. Even the ultra-liberal New York Times has reported in January that the rate of civilian casualties has steeply declined.
Spencer does not evaluate Israel’s motives for its unorthodox approach. These may be a combination of humanitarian concern, a determination to undercut Hamas’ anti-Israel propaganda, or an attempt at silencing Israel’s international critics, thereby preserving the recent rapprochement between Israel and leading Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia. Whatever the reasons, Israel’s concern for civilians is in marked contrast to Hamas’ gleeful massacre of civilians on 7th October.
It is not possible to know the true number of civilian deaths in Gaza. Spencer estimates from the sources he most trusts that eighteen thousand civilians have been killed. This is a tragedy, but when seen in the context of modern wars, is a remarkably low figure. The UN and the EU calculate that on average, eighty to ninety per cent of deaths in modern war are those of civilians. As the IDF estimates that it has killed thirteen thousand Hamas terrorists, the percentage of all deaths in Gaza that are civilian is around fifty-eight per cent. That brings no comfort to the relatives of the dead, but it disproves the accusation of genocide made by Hamas’ useful idiots currently disrupting university life and threatening Jews.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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Very informative, thank you.
But what does any of that count for compared with the sound of Fergal Keene lamenting the death of a baby?
If Israel had decided to implement genocide in Gaza then there would not be a living thing there today other than rats and cockroaches. And the two-legged rats are very much still alive. Go IDF!
The entire purpose of the Jewish State is to ensure a future for Jews- The entire purpose of Hamas is to ensure that no Jew exists anywhere. The two positions are irreconcilable. No right thinking person can deny Israel the right to defend its existence.
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