Why Gaza cannot become a binary choice

Hand-painted protest signs declaring “Israel can’t bomb its way to peace,” serve up palliative if elliptic logic for a Gaza cease fire. Continued violence guarantees violence will continue, a heart-wrenching Israeli/Palestinian pas de deux stuck on replay since 1948.

And yet, calling for an Israeli ceasefire is like telling someone to drop his gun while the psychopath who just murdered his family is still in the house. Hamas terrorists, likely armed by Iran and Russia, are committed to Israel’s complete annihilation, and they have the house surrounded.

America’s left, admirably quick to reject false binary choices in other settings, needs to reject the oppressor versus oppressed paradigm in Gaza. Two, three and 30 things can be true at the same time.

Allies urged Israel to engage in a proportional response

For religious zealotry, economic inequality and other key ingredients of radicalization, no other region in the world compares to the Middle East. Under Hamas rule, life in Gaza, one of the poorest places on earth, was described as “hell” long before Hamas’ sadistic attack on Israel.

As the world watches the humanitarian disaster unfolding — death from thirst and disease threatens to kill untold innocents — Israel’s allies expect the Jewish state to limit the deaths of innocent civilians to the extent possible, even while supporting its right to self-protection. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said early in the conflict hat the way Israel defends itself matters. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed Blinken, saying, “Europe stands with Israel…(but) how Israel responds will show that it is a democracy.”

The Biden administration, becoming more critical of Israel’s strategy as Gaza’s death toll rises, has urged Israel to be “surgical” while seeking a humanitarian pausein the shelling — requests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so far, appears to reject.

Support for Israel, coupled with support for innocent Palestinians, reflects the International Humanitarian Law of proportional response.

In 1949, the fourth Geneva convention was adopted in response to Adolf Hitler’s atrocities against civilians, reflecting signatories’ agreement to limit harm to non-combatants in time of war. The Charter of the United Nations and its collective security mechanisms similarly approve “proportional” and necessary responses, while also seeking to limit harm to civilian populations.

Hamas has manipulated proportional response expectations

Weighing the proportionality of Israel’s response is inordinately complex, requiring nuanced considerations that defy simple placard narratives.

What violence could Israel — or any nation — dream up that would be “disproportional” to decapitatedchildren? Does proportional justice allow an eye for an eye – and worse, as we are seeing in Gaza — if that is the only way to dismantle terrorists’ infrastructure?

Does the calculus of proportionality change if leaders of both sides, over decades, have intentionally negotiated/failed to negotiate a solution in such a way that left dispossessed Palestinians hopeless and desperate? And what tribunal of public opinion is informed and objective enough to assess, weigh and assign numeric value to the sincerity of each side’s peace attempts over the past 75 years?

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Putting a pin in the long history of this saga, Israel’s self-defense today requires it to identify and track Hamas operatives, locate and destroy Hamas’ hidden supplies of weapons — including rockets and missile-launching hardware — and permanently destroy Hamas’ underground tunnels and communications networks, all while an anxious world watches it for any strategic overreach.

Hamas preemptively amplified the outcry of “disproportional response” by deliberately housing terrorists with innocent Gazan families and disbursing terrorist cells throughout hospitals, schools, mosques and apartment buildings. Hamas terrorists installed combatants among civilian populations throughout Gaza precisely because they knew the world would watch and condemn civilian deaths. Nihilistic and cynical, yes, but also an accurate calculation.

As images of desperate Gazans proliferate, how relevant is it that Hamas deliberately used their bodies as shields? To thirsty parents carrying thirsty children 12 miles south to sleep in tents in southern Gaza, where the fear of being bombed into oblivion still remains ever-present, does it really matter who threw the first punch?

Palestinian civilians are not Hamas

The left loses credibility by equating Hamas with Palestinians. Although the right also conflates Hamas with Palestinians’ ethnicity, they do it to punish all Palestinians, to advance the same race/crime narrative they promote in the U.S. The left should know better. It is just as racist, ignorant and dangerous for the left to defend Hamas terror on the basis of ethnic grievance as it is for the right to blame an entire ethnicity- Palestinians- for the crimes of a few.

Whether from the left or right, attempts to equate Palestinians with Hamas reveal historical ignorance. Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority, by taking its political rival Fatah’s headquarters by bloody force, and has since maintained a stranglehold of power over the Gazan people. The citizens have not had an election since.

Celebrating Hamas’ terror attacks against Israel as political “resistance” is a short-sighted game that can only be played when the violence is “over there,” not in your own house. Does anyone justifying Hamas’ violence in Israel support the rise of political violence on the U.S. right?

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Logistics and history add even more complexity. Gaza is a densely packed and stacked concrete jungle cramming 2.3 million Palestinians into an area only five miles wide and 25 miles long; blockades from Israel and Egypt have added to the misery.

Long before Hamas’ most recent attack, electricity and running water were sporadic, and public education relied on double-shifts because there were so few schools under Hamas rule.

Israel, meanwhile, is a conundrum of complexity. Hamas slaughtered hundreds of innocent Israelis even as they were striving to help the Palestinians. Israeli humanitarian organizations working for Palestinian rights abound, including the Rabbis for Human Rights, the Coalition of Women for Peace, the Ir Shalem co-existence program and countless similar organizations. These progressive allies — including young people at a concert for peace — were brutally slaughtered, proving that Hamas’ bloodlust eclipsed any interest in improving Palestinians’ lives long ago.

A soldier’s sad lament

As many Israeli Defense Forces soldiers have made clear, they are fighting to defend their loved ones in Israel but they do not see oppressed Palestinian civilians as the enemy.

Nir Avishai Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces called from Texas to return to fight in Gaza, wrote a compelling essay about his sorrow and frustration:

For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. ... A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we

are following them …

Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy.

Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless.

The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians…

May their memories be a blessing

Aside from reducing the risk of future terrorist attacks, eradicating Hamas could provide an opening for a legitimate Palestinian government that, for once, invests its resources in the neglected lives of Palestinians instead of weapons of death and mass destruction.

But the deaths in Gaza will be meaningless, and guarantee bloodshed for years if not decades to come, if Palestinians can’t see a just and peaceful path toward self-governance after the bombing ends. If the U.S. is a true friend to Israel, and a true adherent to international law, it must make that point crystal clear.

Innocent Palestinians deserve our compassion and an understanding of the geopolitical complexities that govern them. So do innocent Israelis.

After an unthinkable number of lives have been shattered, may the memories of the dead on both sides be a blessing — and a catalyst — for lasting peace.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25-year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.