COMMENTARY: Latest Mideast war may amount to one more Pyrrhic victory

By Berl Falbaum

Hamas won.

No, I don’t mean militarily, but it has already won the political battle which, we can be confident, was one of its major objectives. And the political victory may, in the long term, be more important than a military one.

The war has turned the entire Arab universe against Israel, and helped enrage other enemies of the Jewish state around the world.

It gave anti-Semites another reason to hate Jews — as if they needed one.

However this war ends, it will take years to return to the status in which Israel and its neighbors looked suspicious at each other but, at least, did so without warfare.

Given the politics, the potential for a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia is probably dead; the Saudis, led by MBS, cannot afford to proceed and risk violent protests in the streets.

The 2020 Abraham Accords which normalized relations between Israel, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco may be imperiled as well.

The Arab parties to the accords may well succumb to political pressure from their people to void the pacts.

On the military front, the chances of the war spreading grows by the hour. Hezbollah, the terrorist organization in Lebanon, north of Israel, has already frequently fired missiles into Israel, and Iran’s proxies fired others from Yemen.

We face the possibility of a regional war with Iran and, perhaps others, joining the battle, spreading the war throughout the Middle East.

Russia and China also may decide to assist Hamas through Iran, Hamas’ sponsor, if not with troops and military equipment, then with intelligence sharing and behind-the-scene consultations. They may already be involved.

Meanwhile, in the political world, the pressure on and criticism of Israel is unrelenting for being “disproportionate” and not using “restraint” in military operations.

I do not know what is meant by “disproportionate.” Never in the history of warfare has either side ever wanted to be proportionate. Each worked to develop greater military resources and power to defeat the enemy. Neither side ever wanted proportionality; they wanted superiority.

When President Truman dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was not dissuaded because such an action was disproportionate.  Exactly the opposite; he wanted to be disproportionate and use the bombs before the Germans developed atomic weapons.

The two bombs killed 250,000 civilians and wounded tens of thousands more, many suffering life-long injuries from radioactive fallout.

In addition, the Allies bombed civilian populations throughout Germany and Japan and did so by design.

Do the critics of Israel’s “disproportionality” mean that Israel should just have butchered 1,300 civilians, or that it should have waited until Hamas became more sophisticated militarily? Or that it should not have shot down Hamas’ missiles with its Iron Dome defense system and suffer proportional casualties?

If a neighbor shoots at my family but misses, do I return fire but purposely miss to be proportionate? Before responding, do I wait until my neighbor becomes more skilled with firearms?

No one ever hid in a foxhole, facing a lethal threat, and worried about acting proportionately.

The proponents of “proportionality” do not define what they mean or how it can be achieved.

The same is true with calls for restraint. Take, for example, The New York Times.  

Calling for restraint, the Times editorial, to paraphrase, went something like this:  

—Israelis are angry and have a right to self-defense, however ...

—Hamas uses civilians as shields, however ...

—Gaza’s density makes it difficult to avoid civilian deaths, however ...

—Hamas does not abide by moral values nor does it respect human life, however ...

Which leaves us with the question: What is Israel to do?  However, The Times doesn’t answer it. Nor have I ever—and I mean ever—read or seen on TV any of the high-priced journalists ask Israel’s critics the simply questions: “How should Israel respond? What do you recommend?”

Then there is cable TV news which hour after hour centers on the suffering of civilians without any context which distorts the story feeding anti-Israel hysteria.
A hypothetical: an Israeli unit spots a Hamas squad with a rocket launcher behind a one-story home. The Israelis know if they fire at Hamas fighters, they may hit the house.

They decide not to shoot only to discover that their entire unit had been killed (or 20 Israelis in a kibbutz) by missiles fired after they left by the terrorists they had spared. (I would not want to make such moral decisions.)

It is easy for editorial writers, siting in their New York offices, to write about restraint. It is quite another matter on the battle field.  

None of this is to suggest that Israel should not work to minimize civilian casualties; it has done so in its entire history, putting its own soldiers at risk. But how far should it go when forbearance endangers its soldiers, overall military operation and Israeli citizens?

The suffering of Gazans, particularly children which comprise half of the Gaza population of 2.2 million, is heart-breaking and distressing. The plight of Gazans is deplorable, but the fault, as I have written previously, lies with Hamas and not Israel. The war can end immediately; Hamas just needs to lay down its arms.

The tragedy is that civilians always pay a high price in wars, higher than those in the military. For World War II, for instance, the numbers vary greatly as to military and civilian deaths but all show that more civilians died than those on the battlefield.

In the immediate future there is little Israel can do to counter the political defeat. That will take time — years, many years.

All we can hope for, as the battle grinds on, is that deaths are kept at a minimum for Gazans and Israelis, and that the war ends quickly.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran journalist and author of 12 books.