WAR: Morality vs. Pseudo-Morality
Israel and the Post-Modern Menace
The post WWII world which saw the end of two long, bloody wars in less than 40 years was greeted with an attempt to put the “rules of war” into the DNA of mankind. For millennia peoples and countries fought brutal wars in which the post war scenario inevitably included a massacre of remaining males, enslavement of women and children, often the utter destruction of the conquered cities and towns. Sometimes, forced exile was the punishment of the victors on the vanquished, but the caring of the lives of those we now call “non-combatants” was not part of the equation of war. Even after WWII, in what the West hoped would be the enlightened era of warfare, millions of ethnic Germans were exiled from their homes, even though they had been living in the same place for centuries, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, then called DP’s (displaced persons)
After WWI and the horrors of gas warfare, the “world” made that illegal. This agreement held in WWII due mostly to deterrence. The Nazis didn’t want to risk allied use of chemical weapons and even the Soviets withstood what was certainly a tempting solution to the siege on Leningrad since they knew exactly how socialists act, national or international. Of course, now in the 21st century Israel is destroying chemical weapons stores of the Syrian dictatorship – one that used them on its own population and prompted Obama to invite the Russians in to deal with it – which they obviously did not do.
The Geneva Convention for prisoners of war was introduced and in fact protected some but not all American and British POW’s as well as German’s in American and British camps. It did nothing for Russian and Polish prisoners held by the Nazis – or Germans in Soviet POW camps. As far as I know, the American prisoners of Japan were not treated according to the convention either. Currently, the Russians hold Ukrainian prisoners in camps that are not up to Geneva Convention standards and they have kidnapped thousands of children for ‘re-education’ in Russia. In Israel, Hamas terrorists are held in Israeli jails where they can get visitors and even advanced medical care and university degrees. Even the infamous Nuchba terrorists that perpetrated the October 7 massacre are held in humane prisons where members of the Israeli Supreme Court visit to assure they are given their “rights”, including, I kid you not, enough toilet paper. Hamas of course does no such thing with their hostages/prisoners, holding them in inhumane conditions with no visits from the Red Cross or any other international organization. Neither the Red Cross nor the UN complained about this betrayal of international law.
But the real issue in war fighting is that in war there is … fighting! The West, led by the Biden-Blinken administration and the hypocrites at the UN had one thing on their mind and that was permitting “humanitarian aid” into Gaza, at all costs – even at the cost of prolonging the war and adding to the suffering of the civilian population that this aid was supposed to help. All of this is in the name of a more moral war. So too, Israel’s General Staff and legal bigwigs handcuffed (and continue to handcuff) soldiers in the field, leading to more deaths of IDF soldiers and prolonging the war so as to cause more destruction of civil infrastructure and more civilian deaths than would have occurred in a shorter, seemingly less moral, war. No one can deny the level of destruction that Israel has inflicted on Gaza. Entire neighborhoods have been pummeled and destroyed due to the fact that Hamas, no matter the danger to their fellow citizens, not only refuse to surrender but continue to recruit and arm new fighters and terrorists and continue to terrorize their own people by controlling the aid that is supposed to be humanitarian but is in fact a terrorist lifeline.
The two sources of this “excess” destruction and death are the attempt to do the impossible – to fight and win a war according to post-modern morality (which of course does not permit winning). This doesn’t mean that the IDF or the US needs to return to the ways of old and massacre men and enslave women and children or that civilians need to be indiscriminately killed. That would go against the very nature of the countries that Israel, the US and many others have built over the last few centuries. This is not a call to return to the cruelty of the past or the methods that the Soviets and their allies used from the birth of the Soviet Union until its downfall.
War is about destruction, death, occupation and pacification of the enemy. Squaring that circle helps no one. The Biden-Blinken administration could not accept that death and destruction are the main part of war and from the start were concerned not with helping their ally win, nor with sparing the lives of the non-combatants in Gaza but with appearing to support the “good” – either for political reasons or for a moral self-righteousness of people who themselves would never have to pay a price for their mistakes. For Hamas, they knew the path that the Biden administration, like the Obama regime before them, would take and therefore they knew from the start that they just had to extend the war as long as possible and they could (in their and their Arab brother’s) eyes, win, even if surrounding by rubble and dead bodies.
Hamas understood and accepted that death and destruction are the essence of war and they started the war knowing that they, and it seems their Gazan fellow citizens, would withstand anything that the IDF could throw at them, knowing two things: That Biden-Blinken and the UN would not be able to stomach the pictures of destruction and that the Israeli General Staff, supported by the Israeli legal system (the army’s and the civil one) would never accede to another occupation of Gaza. They also had a more realistic view of the unending nature of antisemitism. The two things that would have brought a quick defeat of Hamas were the two things the world and Israel would never allow, and Hamas knew that.
From the start, it seems, against the views of a great majority of the country, the IDF General Staff, with the apparent agreement of the government, decided that it would concentrate on destroying most of the organized fighting units of Hamas, the buildings that contained Hamas terrorists and suspected Hamas tunnels, taking control of civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools that doubled as Hamas headquarters – cleaning them out as quickly as possible and withdrawing forces. This policy was followed as soon as Israel finished its first takeover of the Al-Shifa hospital over a year ago and was the reason for the establishment of the Netzarim corridor, cutting off the city of Gaza from the south. The idea was to use this corridor and Israeli territory surrounding Gaza as staging ground for raids of various sorts. Some would be short and others would take a few weeks. The idea was that occupation was immoral and therefore Israel would only return to previously conquered areas if they saw or sensed a revival of Hamas is that area. The first major return to a conquered area (and conquered at great cost to Israel) was to al-Shifa hospital where they captured another few hundred Hamas fighters who returned.
The explanation given to the Israeli people by the IDF spokesman was that these tactics would save the lives of soldiers who would be sitting ducks if they stayed and also – occupation would cost tens of billions of dollars. This was all of course a lie as the Israeli people would have seen right through the argument for the immorality of occupation. The argument completely fell apart when dozens of Israeli soldiers lost their lives from these seemingly safer raids and from attacks by Hamas into the Netzarim corridor itself.
We understand now that the real reason is the belief by the general staff that “occupation” is the greatest of all evils and is to be avoided at all costs. Freeing the hostages, protecting the lives of its soldiers and the citizens of the country it is to defend is secondary to the post-modern concept of morality which is never to occupy the Downtrodden, the Excluded and those treated Inequitably.
From a policy perspective this meant not doing anything that would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state for the Palestinian State will have two jobs in support of the goals of Israel’s left wing. In the words of an ex-assistant IDF Chief of Staff and current head of Israel’s flagship post-Zionist left wing party, Yair Golan, these two goals are stopping of terrorism against pre-1967 Israel and as a contra to Zionism itself. While the Israeli left seems to agree with the global Davos, woke left that Zionism can no longer be justified but neither can the mass killing of Israel’s Jews, the compromise solution is an Israel Zionist in name only.
Much like the Marxist vision that with the dictatorship of the proletariat the state will “whither away” – without one noticing. Then will come the “administration of things”. So too, the Palestinian state will stop terrorism against Jews in the pre-1967 borders of Israel and then Zionism will just “whither away”. Sadly, this seems to be the view of much of the senior security establishment as well as the Supreme Court and the prosecution. The further one gets from the people they serve, the further they get from a morality that helps instead of hurts.
For the UN and the Biden-Blinken administration the end game was also a Palestinian State and were sure that Israel (and Zionism) would whither in front of the Hamas storm, and they could dictate Israel’s war policies. They were partially right in that Israel has foolishly put all its armament eggs in one basket they were able to dictate both the pace of the war and part of the strategy. But their main goal in pushing humanitarian aid was in a false moral view of war in general and war in Israel in particular. The death and destruction of people, combatants or not, was less important than not allowing the appearance of a siege that has been part of organized warfare for at least 3,500 years. The reason that siege is used is to give the enemy an opportunity to surrender and not being killed and having their property destroyed. The Biden-Blinken policy reached its most absurd point when it sanctioned an entirely legal and non-violent protest group called “Tzav 9” simply for opposing the delivery of this allegedly humanitarian aid before the hostages have been released.
The unchallenged fact that Hamas itself controls, confiscates and sells these donated aid parcels in order to prolong the war and the suffering of those supposed to benefit from this aid was secondary to the post-modern moral “truth” that the Downtrodden, the Excluded and those treated Inequitably always need to be given whatever their leaders, terrorists or not, demand. Therefore, according to this pseudo-morality, the results of the policies are less important than the purported aim of the policies. If the policy leads to more death and destruction, that is irrelevant to the fact that the goals of the policy are to oppose those who are deemed stronger and to support the “weak” at all costs – even the cost of the lives and property of the weak.
The contemporary rules of war make no sense because rarely, if ever, are wars fought between two parties that respect these rules. All these rules do, all this view of morality does, is to increase the suffering of the people this morality is supposed to protect.
The war in Gaza ought to have been over a year ago had the Biden-Blinken crew not insisted on financing Hamas and had Israel’s senior military leadership, with the support of the government, it seems, not been adamant about its Davos-like morality that puts luxury values above the lives and property of people. There is no doubt that had the IDF stayed in all the places it captured and cleansed them of terrorists without allowing them to return and created Hamas free zones, as they continued their push, the hostages would have been freed, more Israeli soldiers and Gazans would be alive and there would have been less destruction of property.
But those seem never to have been the goals of those worried about their pseudo-morality.
War is violent and destructive. And as much so many hate to admit it, in most wars there are good guys and bad guys. Very uncouth to say, I know, but that is the case currently in the wars against Israel and it is also true of the war in Ukraine Handcuffing the “good guys” or pressuring them to end the war prematurely, gives the bad an unfair advantage and delays victory so that there is more death and destruction on both sides.
The time has come for the good to rewrite the “rules of war” so that morality that takes people and their property as well as actual right and wrong as its guiding point, instead of the post-modern pseudo-morality that refuses to accept that the good are not always the alleged Downtrodden, Excluded and those treated Inequitably.