I suppose by now everyone has heard charges and counter-charges about the war between Hamas and Israel. Lurid stories of atrocities committed in person by Hamas fighters are countered by stories of thousands of children at risk from Israeli bombs falling in Gaza. Who is believable? All governments lie when it suits them. And each government plays on the fact that the opposition is totally untrustworthy. Thus, the supporters of the Palestinians are skeptical of Israeli charges of brutal mass killings by Hamas and supporters of Israel do not believe stories about casualties caused by Israeli air strikes.
[Two very interesting conflicting examples illustrate the almost impossibility of figuring out “the truth” through the “fog of war.” The day of the Hamas attack, the charge went all around the world that when they massacred Israelis (and members of other nationalities, by the way) they beheaded babies. Turns out, no one can confirm that this occurred. See Matthew Chance, Richard Allen Greene and Joshua Berlinger, “Israeli official says government cannot confirm babies were beheaded in Hamas attack,” CNN, October 12, 2023, available here.
Despite that, the charge keeps getting repeated over and over again as evidence of how savage and barbaric Hamas is. A few days later, Hamas claimed that Israeli planes bombed and destroyed a hospital. Photographic evidence was totally inconclusive and Hamas claimed that there was nothing left of the bomb that struck at or near the hospital making investigation to determine what kind of missile it was impossible. See Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, “Hamas Fails to Make Case That Israel Struck Hospital.”
In addition to the uncertainty of what caused the destruction, it also appears from many photos that the hospital itself was not destroyed. Again, the fog of war was at work. The point is that it is impossible to know the facts by consulting propagandists from either side.]
My solution was to check out UNICEF. UNICEF is on the ground in Gaza trying to help. They are not partisan. Their job is to care for children. According to them, as of October 31 over 3 thousand CHILDREN have been killed in Gaza. And that does not include those at risk because of the shortage of clean drinking water and the danger of hospitals losing electricity which spells almost instant death to babies on incubators.
[See “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” An online release summarizing the briefing by UNICEF spokesperson James Elder in Geneva Switzerland on October 31. The entire summary is available here.]
I can already hear the angry responses. “Hamas is hiding among the civilians --- thus they are responsible for the civilian deaths. Israel urged Gaza civilians to move South to safety. Those that stayed behind are either supporters of Hamas or FORCED by Hamas to stay.”
I have no truck with Hamas. It is a vicious, racist, fascist organization who by the way is decidedly unpopular among the citizens of Gaza. It also has been supported for years by successive Israeli governments who preferred having such a vicious enemy rather than having to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority. Hamas uses Netanyahu’s brutality and militarism while Netanyahu uses Hamas’ terrorism --- they both cynically gain support among their own people by identifying the horrendous nature of the enemy.
[I have to admit, when I first learned that Israel had helped create Hamas, I dismissed that assertion as ridiculous. However, there is a lot of evidence, most of it from Israeli sources. See, for example Mehdi Hasan and Dina Sayedahmed, “Blowback: How Israel Went from Helping Create Hamas to Bombing it.” The Intercept, February, 19, 2018. The article quotes three former Israeli officials as to the role the Israeli government played in creating Hamas “as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, …”. Or consider the view of current Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu back in 2019: “According to various reports, Netanyahu … was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” (Tal Schneider, “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces. The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from.” The Times of Israel, (November 2, 2023).) ]
The problem is that the Israeli government seems to be willing to physically destroy Hamas even if that means it has to physically destroy much of Gaza --- as well as to kill thousands of civilians. Well, Israel has been trying similar activities in Lebanon since 1982. How has that turned out? Very poorly. The 1982 invasion spawned Hezbollah which is stronger today than it ever was.
And let’s ask ourselves how the wholesale destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths will play out. I would argue that for every child killed by Israeli activity in Gaza, a bunch of friends and relatives of that child (five, ten???) will grow up to join Hamas or whatever organization rises from Hamas’ ashes.
[On that point, the journalist Peter Beinart is very strong. Yes, Israel could destroy Hamas as an organization but if the realities of Gaza do not change, a similar movement with murder in its eye will form and rise to challenge Israel in the future.]
This is of course just what happened in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. There was no Hezbollah in Lebanon before 1982.
One of the definitions of insanity is to engage in the same actions over and over again while assuming that finally at some point there will be a different result. We Americans have learned that lesson in spades. WE invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and fought battles over and over again to maintain control --- only to finally give up in both places. Currently, as I mentioned in my last commentary, the Taliban which we drove out of Afghanistan in 2001 is back in power and though Iraq is finally free of the Islamic State after many years of highly destructive fighting, political divisions there continue to erupt in violence.
The moral of the stories in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and now Gaza is --- murder and mayhem cannot in the end “win.” Yes, you can kill a lot of people. And sometimes, the murder and mayhem is so extensive that a kind of QUIET or PEACE seems to prevail ---- but it’s the quiet and peace of a pressure cooker building up pressure slowly but surely.
That is why I am in total support of the people all over the world who are demonstrating for a cease fire --- or humanitarian pause if you want to call it that. (I think it’s ridiculous nit-picking for American officials to say they oppose a cease fire because it would give Hamas time to resupply and re-position but they support a “humanitarian pause.” What the Hell’s the difference? The important thing, is --- stop the violence so relief supplies can be delivered, the hospitals can get fuel for their generators, the wounded and displaced can be resettled and foreign nationals in Gaza be permitted to leave.)
The children of Gaza do not deserve to be massacred. As it is, those who survive this war will likely be scarred for life.
ADDENDUM === on the morning of November 3, David Leonhardt of the NY Times posted a piece which details the Times’ on-going investigation of what happened at the hospital in Gaza --- He attempt to cut through the fog of war and it certainly appears that the “story” of Israel blowing up a hospital and killing 500 people is as false as the “story” that Hamas fighters beheaded babies when they initially attacked. The fog of war continues to produce lies from both sides.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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