UNGA passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas. The Pope called for a stop to the war. An international conference in Cairo called for a cease-fire.
From ostensibly friendlier quarters the Biden-Obama White House wants Hamas dismantled, though also wants Israel to do it "with compassion". Avoid Palestinian Arab civilians, “wherever possible.” Facilitate humanitarian aid. Abide by international law. “Minimise death and suffering, the morally just thing to do.”
Notwithstanding the veiled warnings, Western leaders root for Israel to win, though not with a heavy hand. They make no such calls, or any at all on Hamas, but that goes without saying. The West imposes no such caveats on Ukraine; on the contrary it expects Zelensky to fight the Russians to the bitter end, human suffering be damned. Only Israel must tread carefully, only the Jews must declare a cease fire when the West feels enough war is enough. No doubt the global insistence on it having compassion for the people of Gaza impeded decision making by Israel’s war cabinet. Hence the way it dithered over what kind of war to fight: hard and fast, or careful and long?
There is just one not small problem: No one tells Israel what compassion on the battle ground looks like. If only such a nebulous concept could be benchmarked. Not only can it be, but there is a benchmark for the humanitarian record of Israel at war with Palestinian Arab terrorists, readily at hand.
Why was I left to do the tabulation? After all, the strategic consequences are immense. Just think. Israel’s window of international legitimacy for vanquishing Hamas could remain open that much longer.
So here is what compassion, simply tabulated and compared, looks like:
Palestinians killed South Africa: violent deaths
Terrorists + Civs *
1998 – 2022 1994 – 2022
1st Intifada 1 550
2nd Intifada 3 200
3rd Intifada 1 300
Def Shield 240
Cast Lead 1 400
Protective Edge 2 100
Pillar of Defence 150
Wall Guardian 300
Breaking Dawn 36
Observe
- Average Palestinian fatalities over 25 years: 411 per year
- Average murders in S Africa (not at war) over 28 years: 19 178 per year
- The victims in SA were 100% innocent. In contrast the Palestinian Arab tolls contain mostly combatants. (They who live by the sword shall die by the sword...)
- According to the Int. Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism: http://www.ict.org.il unarmed Palestinian Arabs killed as a % of total have been approx 5%
- Therefore: innocent Palestinian arabs killed: 21 per year
- For the comfort of Israel’s quick-fire accusers who regard the IDF as a brutal killing machine, the tally of 21 per year is devastating. It should be in the hundreds of thousands.
- Contrast Israel’s record of killing 21 Palestinian civilians per year with 19,000 violent deaths per year in S. Africa, a country not at war.
- So: the IDF “killing machine” has been 913 times less bloodthirsty than criminals in S. Africa.
That is what a compassionate culture in war looks like
And the Palestinian Arab lives that Israel spared? They were paid for by Israeli lives lost.
During the intifadas and Gaza conflicts, Israelis by the horrific thousands paid the price for the IDF not being heavy-handed. Compassion proved deadly.
That was the genuine variety. If international compassion comes not from a soft heart but one that is greedy and dark, it becomes a weapon no iron dome can blast out of the sky. In a nutshell the human rights watchdogs’ business model is to make the IDF walk on eggshells. The duty for doing that mainly falls on home grown Israeli NGOs. Here is the director of B’Tselem, Jessica Montell, arming the ‘walking on eggshell’ trap.
“Israel, unlike Hamas, did not have a policy to intentionally fire at civilians. But is this cause for rejoicing? Shouldn’t our expectations be a bit higher? Heaven help us if our moral standard is reduced to not committing crimes against humanity. From my country (Israel) I demand a lot more.” (Quoted in my first book, “Hadrian’s Echo. The whys and wherefores of Israel’s critics.’)
Taking up this pipe dream of compassionate combat, the global watchdogs (Amnesty, HRW, Human Rights Commission, and so on) rub expectant hands. How long can it be before eggshells get crunched underfoot by IDF jackboots? When this inevitability happens the UN sets up a commission, appoints a clutch of reptilian law professors, and despatches the full charade to ‘Palestine’ mandated to bring Israel to book. Likewise, when the UN Secretary General says he is “terribly worried blah blah blah” he is fitting a warhead to compassion. It won’t be too long before international kangaroo courts, but even sooner, the court of public opinion, indict the juggernaut Jews.
So having battlefield compassion has been harmful to Israel? Well, look at the gratitude Israel got. In the nine tabulated conflicts it did everything and more which humanitarians are now demanding Israel do in the war against Hamas. For all the trouble it took, and the price in Jewish lives, Israel got a taste of the Holocaust. Boris Johnson called the October 7 massacres, “Among the most depraved events in the history of human cruelty.”
The oldest class on the evil done by misplaced compassion was held in biblical times. Samuel 15:1-34 tells of King Saul attacking the Amalek people, of what led up to the war, and what followed.
Israel dug its grave so to speak, when the army departed from the military plan set by the prophet Samuel, to whom God had relayed instructions. The objective was simple: annihilate Amalek, do not spare one human, not even one animal. Have no pity, Amalek is your (what we now call existential) enemy. As it is with modern Israel so it was with ancient Israel. Feelings of pity intervened. The nation strove to be, in the eyes of the ‘international community’, more angelic than is good for their survival. And so King Saul, as Israel’s commander in chief, spared Agag the King of Amalek. Departing from the battle plan Saul took him captive.
A more consequential folly has never been committed. How did the callous and ungrateful Agag thank Saul for the one night he was allowed to live? He made a woman pregnant, the Midrash tells us.. Agag’s monster descendants were none other than Haman and Hitler. The one plotted a Holocaust in the Persian Empire, the other carried out one in Europe.
The cleverest Jews never learn from history. At his trial in Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann emulated Agag. As the king had pleaded with the Prophet Samuel to spare him, so Eichmann pleaded with the President of the court. The President responded with the sentence that Samuel the prophet had pronounced on Agag. Before cutting him to pieces Samuel cried,
“As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” Using the exact terms, the court of Israel passed the death sentence on Adolf Eichmann. Beyond all reason certain Jews of great intellect and attainment objected. Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, Hugo Bergmann, Isaiah Berlin, Professor Walter Kaufmann and the Harvard historian Oscar Handlin, opposed the death sentence on Eichmann. Hitler’s henchman, they said to their infinite shame, had a right to live.
Compassion in wartime is a luxury. The international community knows it very well. That hasn’t stopped Biden, Obama and the whole spectrum of humanists blackmailing Israel to dismantle Hamas with pity.
Israel should recoil from the old trap. Exterminating evil cannot be accomplished with compassion.
Steve Apfel is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author generally. Follow selections of his work at https://enemiesofzion.wordpress.com/ and at https://substack.com/@steveapfel1