As the Israeli military continues its offensive against Hamas — and the casualty numbers among Palestinian civilians continue to rise — there is an emerging argument from those who count themselves among Israel’s supporters: Israel has a right to defend itself, but it must do more to protect civilian lives.
“Israel’s war against Hamas is just, but it must be fought justly,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote last week in a Washington Post op-ed. American officials, he says, should insist that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “produce a verifiable plan to reduce the unacceptable level of civilian casualties … in Gaza.”
It seems many in the West, including those supporting Israel, are struggling to come to grips with the moral dilemmas the war in Gaza has created.
“Israel has both a right to defend its citizens from Hamas’ terrorist attacks,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., but it also has “an obligation under the laws of war to protect innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Israel is “conducting military operations with little regard for civilian life,” she said in a Senate speech last week, and she cited the “humanitarian catastrophe” taking place in Gaza, including estimates that more than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed and that more than 40,000 have been injured.
But there is a fundamental and, perhaps, unbridgeable disconnect in these arguments. If you endorse the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself, then that means tacitly endorsing the collateral deaths that result from that position.
Going into Gaza and uprooting a terrorist organization that has had a decade and a half to construct a military and political infrastructure in and among the civilian population is going to cause massive casualties. Even in the most ideal of scenarios, thousands would still die in Gaza. Many of Israel’s critics and friends are ignoring that reality. Complaints that Israel needs to wage war in a less deadly way are a bit like trying to wipe off the moral stain of supporting a policy that will inevitably lead to the deaths of innocents.
It is, as a colleague said to me, wanting only the good parts of war (killing Hamas militants) and not the bad ones (the collateral damage of civilian casualties). The war in Gaza, against an enemy capable of the barbarism we saw on Oct. 7 and stunningly indifferent to the cost borne by its own people, is a callback to the fearsome wars of the past — and it seems many in the West, including those supporting Israel, are struggling to come to grips with the moral dilemmas the war has created.
To be clear, Israel’s critics have a point. The Israel Defense Forces has, compared to previous wars, almost certainly loosened its rules of engagement in Gaza. As a recent article in The Washington Post noted, “U.S. officials who have met with Israeli counterparts in recent weeks cite the process Israeli forces use for calculating the value of individual militant targets and how many civilians are considered acceptable collateral damage. But they also said that Israel’s bar is far higher than the United States’ would be.”
A report last week in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz concluded that the rate of civilian casualties in the current conflict is higher than in Israel’s past wars in Gaza. Part of this is a function of Israel undertaking a much broader military operation than in the past. In previous conflicts, Israel sought to weaken Hamas while tolerating, even encouraging their presence in Gaza. Now, Israel seeks Hamas’ total eradication.
It’s no accident that Hamas places its military infrastructure among the civilian population.
According to Yonatan Touval, a foreign policy analyst with Mitvim, an Israeli think tank, the “IDF could and should demonstrate more regard for civilian life — that more can and should be done.” He points to the fact that “in recent days, some of the freed hostages have testified that while they were in Gaza, they felt that the IDF had no idea what it was bombing and that some of the places they were in were bombed (which the IDF would obviously not have done had it known that).” But to the arguments espoused by Warren, Van Hollen and others, Touval says, “They have no idea what war is.”
After all, when it comes to Van Hollen’s assertion that the current level of civilian casualties is “unacceptable,” where should the bar be set? Would 10,000 deaths in Gaza be “acceptable”? What about 12,000?
As Michael Walzer, who literally wrote the book on just wars, commented recently about public condemnations of Israel’s actions in Gaza, “It seems clear that ‘disproportionate’ just means any number that horrifies me.” As Walzer points out, there’s a paradox unfolding in Gaza — when it comes to civilian casualties, Israel would prefer to limit them, while Hamas would prefer to grow them. The group’s own leaders have washed their hands of responsibility for Palestinian lives and even suggested that sacrifice by ordinary Palestinians is necessary in pursuit of their goal of eliminating Israel.
It’s no accident that Hamas places its military infrastructure among the civilian population. When innocent Palestinians are trapped under tons of rubble and parents scream hysterically for their dead children, those heartbreaking pictures are beamed by satellites around the world. The outrage is directed not at Hamas for endangering the lives of the people it is allegedly fighting on behalf of, but rather at Israel. This increases the pressure on Israel to limit its military efforts. Indeed, if Israel were guilty of what its critics frequently allege — indiscriminately killing Palestinians or committing “genocide” — it would make it that much more difficult for Israel to prosecute the war against Hamas. Put aside the legal or moral constraints — from a strategic perspective, Israel gains nothing by cavalierly killing Palestinians. The challenge of assessing the rightness of Israel’s actions — or whether proper steps are taken to protect civilians — is also clouded by the fog of war. Demolishing an apartment building that contains a Hamas terrorist leader but kills dozens of civilians will, to many an outside observer, seem disproportionate and callous. But without knowing the status of the leader or the importance to Israel of eliminating him or the intelligence available to Israeli officials about the number of civilians in the building at the time, it is impossible to make an accurate assessment as to whether such an act falls within the constraints of international law. Israel is facing something deeply unfamiliar for Western countries — not just in the proximity of the threat from Hamas but also in its truly evil nature. Complicating matters in the Gaza war is that the idea of a democratic nation’s going to war with a neighboring enemy bent on its destruction and eradication is simply not part of the modern warfare playbook. There is no modern precedent or analogy for such a conflict. Even in a period of endless war in the Middle East, from 2001 to 2021, the U.S. military fought these battles thousands of miles from home. Moreover, we have come to expect that Western democracies will do everything possible to avoid harming innocent civilians — and take for granted that nondemocratic regimes will not (Russia in Ukraine or the Syrian civil war). Israel is facing something deeply unfamiliar for Western countries — not just in the proximity of the threat from Hamas but also in its truly evil nature. This conflict brings a set of moral choices that few Western leaders have faced since World War II. Every decision made by Israeli leaders will lead to someone’s death — either a Hamas militant’s, an Israeli soldier’s or, most likely, a Palestinian civilian’s. And failure to eradicate the threat from Hamas means confronting the very real possibility of more Oct. 7s in the future. After 9/11, the U.S. could protect against a similar attack in the future simply by making locks on airplane cockpit doors mandatory. Stopping another Oct. 7 requires something far deadlier and more awful. Indeed, for all the money and attention that U.S. policymakers devote to protecting civilians, the U.S. military has still killed thousands of innocents in recent conflicts. While the casualties in Gaza are horrific and the deaths of innocents are tragic and there are steps that Israel could perhaps take to limit them, thousands will still die. Supporting Israel’s right to self-defense while seeking to distance oneself from the consequences of that support demonstrates a dangerous misunderstanding about the nature of war. Israel’s military offensive in Gaza is horrible. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. But what many of Israel’s critics struggle to come to grips with is the question of whether the horrible is necessary. Far too many, from a moral perspective, want to have their cake and eat it, too.
Michael Cohen is an MSNBC columnist. He is also the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast That ‘70s Movie Podcast. 
