Ceasefire in Gaza has been a great mercy to many people. The tearful catharsis of seeing hostage families reunited. The tent-dwelling refugees of Gaza making the long walk to find out what is left of their homes. And for those of us further away, in the diaspora, the hushing of that gnawing daily anxiety over the fact people are fighting and dying in a war that has transformed the lives of Jews around the world.
But this pause is also a moment to ask questions. To try and make at least some sense of what just happened and how to feel about it.
The onslaught of criticism towards Israel has been fiercer than ever before, at least in my lifetime. Allegations of genocide are now accepted as fact on large swathes of the left and used with abandon. It has been difficult at times to know how to respond.
As a Zionist and a Jew, I support Israel’s existence and do not believe it to be an evil country. I have friends and family there who I love. I find the allegation of genocide to be a politicised calumny. A brutal war, yes. The deliberate elimination of an entire people, in whole or even in part? No.
Coming anywhere close to a reasonable assessment of this awful situation means holding multiple painful and emotionally conflicting truths in one’s head at the same time
My instinct in the face of this opprobrium is to be defensive. I tend not to criticise Israel in public, because there are plenty of others doing that with gusto. I don’t want to give succour to people who hate my people. But, if I’m honest, I also don’t quite know where I stand anymore. I’m still reeling from the blizzard of violence and slaughter. The scale of information warfare around this conflict is also unlike anything I’ve ever seen, so I don’t always know who or what to trust.
Palestinians Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, walk in front of the destroyed buildings (Credit Image: © Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire)
In truth, I have more questions than answers at this point; difficult, awkward questions about Israel’s prosecution of this war. Questions that I think any Jews who care deeply for Israel should be asking themselves.
Because we shouldn’t let the ill-founded slurs of our enemies preclude us from asking questions of ourselves and of the Jewish state. Just because they are a bunch of hypocrites, fixating on Israel’s misdeeds and ignoring conflicts from Sudan to Syria, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek to hold it to account, fairly and where necessary.
Here are four questions that I’m thinking about.
1) Were targeting protocols too loose?
It has been widely reported that the IDF changed its targeting protocols during this war. I’m going to quote from a New York Times report, which was recent and comprehensive and not some kind of wild-eyed anti-Israel rant, but this is a well-known fact in Israel too.
From 7 October onwards, Israel’s military leadership issued orders allowing mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike not only senior Hamas commanders, but also the lowest-ranking fighters. “In each strike, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians,” meaning Hamas fighters could be killed at home, surrounded by friends and family.
On some occasions, such as the hit on the Jabalia camp in October 2023, air strikes claimed the lives of over 100 civilians.
Clearly, this approach goes some way to explaining why the civilian death toll in Gaza has been very high. Anti-Israel polemicists have pointed to this targeting as evidence of genocide. I don’t find that convincing.
Josh Glancy Pic: Sunday Times
Pro-Israel hawks will point out that trying to destroy Hamas, a perfectly valid goal after 7 October, meant killing its fighters wherever they are. If they choose to hide among their own civilian population, building military tunnels under places like Jabalia, then the collateral damage is on them.
There is some force to these arguments, though clearly Israel has not fulfilled its goal of totally destroying Hamas. But the question remains as to whether the price was too high in some cases, whether the targeting was too loose and whether enough care was taken to prevent thousands of women and children dying. It’s not clear that it was.
2) Why was the Al-Israa University blown up?
This question has nagged at me since January of last year, when I saw footage of the university exploding. It was a quite stunningly destructive act. But was there a good rationale for it, other than to punish?
It’s not clear that there was. In March, the IDF formally censured brigadier general Barak Hiram, commander of the Israeli military’s 99th Division, who was the officer in charge of the demolition for proceeding without receiving authorisation.
An IDF investigation found that Hamas had used the building and its surroundings for military activity, but that the building’s evisceration was done without required approval. Hiram reportedly claimed that his troops felt in danger due to intelligence that Hamas had a network of tunnels under the university.
Israeli troops in Gaza. Credit: IDF
It’s difficult to extract the full truth from such scenarios. Hawks will point to the fact that Hamas militarised civilian buildings from schools to hospitals to universities, and so again bears the brunt of responsibility for the damage. War is a terribly destructive force and Hamas are reckless fools for inviting this conflict upon their homeland.
And again, there is some strength to this argument. But it’s also apparent that the university campus and some other buildings in Gaza may well have been destroyed on flimsy pretexts or simply out of spite. The damage in the strip is near total.
3) Were human shields used?
The answer to this, I’m afraid, is yes they were. According to multiple, reliable reports, Israeli forces in Gaza repeatedly used Palestinian prisoners as human shields. They would send them into buildings to find out if they were booby-trapped. These prisoners were not necessarily Hamas fighters.
Detainees were used to scout inside tunnel networks, explore areas where Hamas had prepared a potential ambush and pick up or move objects such as electricity generators that might have been wired with explosives. This practice was fairly common and authorised by officers. It was not just the odd unit freelancing in the field.
Even those who think Gaza had it coming should want Israel to uphold its own standards, for its own sake if nothing else
This tactic is difficult to justify, beyond the simple and brutal calculus that Israel values its own soldiers’ lives more than those of any Palestinian. Using human shields contravenes international law, but also the 2005 judgement of Israel’s own Supreme Court.
In the belly of the beast: Israeli captive Arbel Yehoud is escorted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters as she is handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis
Some supporters of Israel will shrug in response to this. War is hell, they will say, and the other side wants to wipe us off the planet. There is no international law in reality, only the exercise of state power to protect its citizens from those who wish to destroy them.
Well, OK. But this does not absolve Israel of all legal and moral obligations. Even those who think Gaza had it coming should want Israel to uphold its own standards, for its own sake if nothing else.
4) What happened inside Sde Teiman?
The reports that came out of Sde Teiman detention centre last June were appalling. Sde Teiman is a military base turned prison in the Negev desert, used to house detainees from Gaza.
Israeli whistleblowers from the camp told CNN of detainees unlawfully handcuffed, placed in nappies, crammed near-naked in the back of trucks, starved of food and brutally beaten. Medical procedures were done without anaesthesia. Detainees were held in these conditions for weeks at a time. There have also been credible reports of sexual assault.
These actions were taken under the aegis of Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, which was amended after 7 October to expand the military’s authority to detain suspected terrorists. But clearly some of this behaviour was excessive and unlawful. It is a reprehensible tale.
Victim and perpetrator
I could go on, but I won’t because I think the point is made and these are in my view the hardest questions to answer. Asking them is not a betrayal of Israel or an act of disloyalty, quite the opposite.
My view, for what it’s worth, is that 7 October made some version of this war justifiable and inevitable, and that it was always going to be brutal and destructive. This is one of many reasons why 7 October was such a monstrous crime. I think many other nations would have behaved quite similarly in the circumstances.
Scores of false and exaggerated allegations have been thrown at Israel since this war began. But it’s also the case that, at times, Israel has been egregious in its actions, losing sight of the basic laws and norms that protect nations from each other – and themselves – during times of war.
Some will read this and think me a bleeding heart, virtue-signalling, whinging liberal coward. This is a zero-sum conflict, they will argue
As ever, then, coming anywhere close to a reasonable assessment of this awful situation means holding multiple painful and emotionally conflicting truths in one’s head at the same time. Israel is both victim and perpetrator. Lawman and criminal. One needn’t draw moral equivalence with the depravity of Hamas to acknowledge this point.
Some will read this and think me a bleeding heart, virtue-signalling, whinging liberal coward. This is a zero-sum conflict, they will argue, akin to something like the Second World War, in which one must simply take a side and fight to the end.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter two shekels what I think, sitting on my sofa in north London tapping away on my shiny laptop. In fact it probably doesn’t. But the alternative is simply shrugging in the face of undue cruelty, which is no alternative at all.
Josh Glancy is News Review editor at the Sunday Times. Read more of his Jewish News columns HERE
