Israel-Gaza: It’s all so complicated until it’s not!

An Israeli-American scholar says Israel's brutal assault on the Gaza Strip is at risk of becoming a genocide with severe war crimes being committed.

“It’s all just so complicated,” I once thought!

Years of historical innuendos, brutal violence, the pangs of a partition plan, theological debates, archeological assertions, and the failure of international law to enforce itself, diplomatic deadlocks, feckless leadership, and of course, my personal favourite, “there are always two sides to a story”.

The West Bank is hell on earth for Palestinians right now, but the situation in Gaza makes purgatory look like paradise as it’s come under incessant brutal shelling and bombardment as retaliation for the brutal October 7 terror attacks perpetrated by Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza Strip.

The Dehumanisation Of Gazans

A heinous abhorrent attack further exacerbated with hostages still in captivity, would only prompt a wrath like no other, as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mobilised, and the State of Israel declared war for the first time in fifty years. The most right-wing government in Israel's history has made insidious statements, dehumanising Gazans with verbal assaults before the military assaults took over. Shockingly, what’s troubling the international community is that there has been little to no bifurcation between dehumanising ordinary Gazans and Hamas militants, the former stuck in what Human Rights Watch terms an “open-air prison” due to the Israeli blockade.

However, war crimes open a Pandora’s Box. Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American scholar is one of the world's leading experts on genocide and says Israel's brutal assault on the Gaza Strip is at risk of becoming a genocide with severe war crimes being committed.

The first step of genocide is to prove intent. In the past month, it’s been insidious and brazen dehumanising comments from the Knesset members. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege and said, “We are fighting against human animals”. Some members have called not just for the end of Hamas but for the obliteration of Gaza. The Geneva Conventions very clearly prohibits collective punishment. Depriving an already penurious population of over two million people by cutting off food, water, and electricity and forced starvation, the steady removal of Palestinian people, reoccupying Gaza,  initiating a second Nakba is what human rights groups say make Israel complicit in war crimes.

Bibi Netanyahu references the Hebrew Bible and called the Gazans, Amalek, the “biblical commandment is to destroy all of Amalek.” Netanyahu, now reviled ad-nauseum even in Israel, called Gazans “children of darkness” and juxtaposed them with Israeli “children of light”. But there is worse. To think, it couldn’t get worse and then apropos of darkness, enter the far-right Otzma Yehudit party’s Amihai Eliyahu, who had the temerity to state that dropping a nuclear weapon was an option. So extreme, that even Bibi Netanyahu had to suspend him. Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog shockingly suggested that civilians in the Hamas-controlled territory are not “innocent.”

What Does ‘Defending Itself’ Mean?

Of course, there are the usual caveats that come up. “But Hamas” and “Israel has a right to defend itself”.  No doubt Hamas' attack was abominable and has to be unequivocally condemned, as the killing of innocent civilians and hostages is a war crime.

But Israel is so far behind the “defending itself” argument, that one would have to wonder, which other state has gone from victim (October 7 attacks) to villain overnight.  Israel’s asymmetrical strength and unchecked retribution means eight times the number of Palestinians in Gaza have been slain. As the Washington Post reports more than 11,100 have been killed. That’s one out of every 200 people, including doctors, journalists, poets, and heart-wrenchingly, children as young as 40 days, whose ventilators in hospitals have run out of air.

A professor at my alma-mater, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, Tom Dannenbaum with expertise in international humanitarian law and the use of force and judicial ethics stated that “the first is the rule of distinction, which means targeting military objectives and not civilians or civilian objects; second, the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks, which is to say that one has to have a discrete military target, not target an area in which there are military objectives but also civilian populations and civilian objects; third, that one has to take adequate precautions, which is to say do everything feasible to minimise the expected civilian loss of life, injury and damage to civilian objects; and finally, not to engage in the attack at all if the civilian loss of life, injury or damage to civilian objects that would be expected from the attack would be excessive in relation to the military advantage that the commander authorising the attack anticipates from that attack.” 

Safe to say the images from Gaza paint a horrid story and Israel fails this test.

Where Washington is Failing

As Tom Friedman in the Times wrote of Dr Manmohan Singh's era of restraint after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, some may call it pusillanimous foreign policy, others pragmatic. But Jewish Voices for Peace through its protests has made a clear call for a ceasefire and one of their protests read, “mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living”.  Sadly, nothing will bring the 1,400 lost on October 7, but blind retribution and killing of 11,000 innocent Palestinians isn’t justice for the 1,400.

There is seldom a conflict in the Middle East without Washington being involved in some form or other. President Biden in the immediate aftermath ushered unwavering support and said “We Stand with Israel”. Par for the course from any American President, let alone with an attack this heinous. However, many critics say that years of unchecked Israeli aggression with Washington’s continuous military patronage means another blank check to Bibi and his right-wing ilk to continue doing what they do. The Grim Reaper could be felt in the room, ominous signs of what was to follow then and proven now.

President Biden during his address from the Oval Office, made his appeal to Congress to fund over $105 billion in aid to Ukraine and Israel. There is a false dichotomy at play. On one hand, Israel and Ukraine are at war, but one aggressor in Israel is the ally, while the other aggressor in Russia is an adversary.  Ergo pegging Israel and Ukraine in the same camp misses the forest for the trees.

Secretary Blinken’s address at a Senate Appropriations hearing was met with constant disruption, a surge of protestors, and some with red paint and hands raised to indicate “blood on the hands”.

Craig Mokhiber, who stepped down as Director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), due to what he said was a failure to stop "genocide" in Gaza, said, it’s important to remember, “Israel pushes an old antisemitic trope that it somehow represents Jewish people around the world. Not only is that not factual, but it’s very dangerous. Everyone needs to know that Israel is a state that’s responsible for its own crimes and that responsibility does not extend to our Jewish brothers and sisters”.

Gaza is a unique place; it has innocent hearts and has Hamas. Israel has the Iron Dome and continues to raze buildings leaving Gazans with no home.

Sadly, in the fabled land of David, it’s Israel that's being the Goliath.

Akshobh Giridharadas is a Washington DC-based former journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.