There was a time when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were a byword for competence and professionalism that was always accompanied by a touch of elan. No more. Its most recent campaign against Hamas in Gaza has revealed it to be operating without any restraint. It has physically erased the urban infrastructure of the territory and has, by the latest count, killed over 20,000 people, most of them women.
The Israelis most certainly have the right to seek the elimination of the military capacity of Hamas, given the October 7 terror attacks that took the lives of 1,200 Israelis. Most militaries confronting similar objectives in urban environments have faced similar challenges. But none in recent times have shown the ferocity of the IDF, which seems to be unconcerned about the death and destruction it is visiting upon ordinary Gazans. Perhaps, many of the IDF seem to believe that all Gazans are complicit in the October 7 events and do not deserve any special consideration.
Three recent incidents bring out the new IDF. The first was the tragic gunning down of three Israeli hostages, Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Al-Talalka. At the time they were unarmed, had no shirts on (to indicate they were not wired up with bombs) and carried white flags. The only excuse for this is that it was a nervous reaction by a soldier amid combat worried that Hamas was using this tactic of deception.
The second instance is more troublesome. An elderly Palestinian Christian mother and her daughter were shot in the compound of Gaza’s only Catholic church, where a large number of Christians had taken refuge at the start of the war. This was not a case of nervous reaction, but almost certainly deliberate. The shooting was allegedly done by a sniper who usually stalks targets carefully before firing. The IDF has denied that its forces were involved in the incident and suggested that the victims may have been acting as spotters for Hamas.
The third instance was the killing in October of a Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah in Lebanon, a kilometre or so from the Israeli border. Reuters investigated the incident and reviewed hours of video footage and hundreds of photos and interviews of officials, and experts and concluded that two tank shells were aimed at a group of journalists, including Abdallah. Reuters gave the evidence to the IDF whose non-sequitur of a reaction was that “we don’t target journalists”.
Another major issue is the indiscriminate use of firepower, particularly aerial bombs in its Gaza military campaign. The use of such munitions in the dense urban environment of Gaza is bound to result in widespread destruction and it has. A report estimates that by December 4 already more than 60% of the buildings in north Gaza had been severely damaged, and across Gaza over 100,000 buildings have been left in ruins. What is surprising and unprofessional is that almost half of the bombs being used by IDF are the so-called ‘dumb bombs’. These days there is abundant technology that can increase the accuracy of these unguided bombs. The IDF, as an advanced military, has the wherewithal, but it persists in using such weapons.
A Financial Times report earlier this month noted that Israel uses the US Mark 80 series of general-purpose aerial bombs. These can be fitted with GPS and INS guidance kits to make them accurate. The difference is crucial: Unguided bombs have a CEP (circular error probable, a measure of accuracy) of approximately 100 metres; with GPS guidance it can be cut to five metres. The Israelis have also used what is called the small diameter bomb, which is laser-guided and pinpoint-accurate. But as we noted earlier, nearly half the bombs were unguided and heavier ones weighing 500 lbs-2000 lbs, which are “four times larger than the 500 lbs bombs that were typically the largest used by allied forces in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul”.
Professional militaries do not deliberately target civilians. We know, though, that in a major war, especially fought in urban areas there is always the risk of collateral damage and casualties. That is why the concept of proportionality is an important element in the laws of war. In fact, the International Committee of the Red Cross notes that the principle of proportionality prohibits attacks against military objectives that are “expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Bringing down apartment complexes and killing scores of people to kill a fugitive Hamas leader would certainly fit this Bill.
Modern wars have seen a flagrant violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, but most militaries do their best to show themselves as being ruled by moral and ethical rules. This is especially important in our information era where every move is recorded by someone somewhere. By its over-the-top response, the IDF has lost the war in terms of the narrative. Its “just cause” response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack is being overwhelmed by the physical suffering of the Palestinians.
The IDF of today probably does not care. Its attitude is set by Right-wing politicians who do not see the Palestinians as their equals as human beings. Theirs is not to pick up the broken pieces of Gaza, just as it was not the responsibility of the Americans to heal the wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. But their conduct is worrying even the Americans whose secretary of defence has warned that Israel risked “strategic defeat” in Gaza.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal
By targeting civilians, Israel lost the narrative
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01.01.2024
There was a time when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were a byword for competence and professionalism that was always accompanied by a touch of elan. No more. Its most recent campaign against Hamas in Gaza has revealed it to be operating without any restraint. It has physically erased the urban infrastructure of the territory and has, by the latest count, killed over 20,000 people, most of them women.
The Israelis most certainly have the right to seek the elimination of the military capacity of Hamas, given the October 7 terror attacks that took the lives of 1,200 Israelis. Most militaries confronting similar objectives in urban environments have faced similar challenges. But none in recent times have shown the ferocity of the IDF, which seems to be unconcerned about the death and destruction it is visiting upon ordinary Gazans. Perhaps, many of the IDF seem to believe that all Gazans are complicit in the October 7 events and do not deserve any special consideration.
Three recent incidents bring out the new IDF. The first was the tragic gunning down of three Israeli hostages, Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Al-Talalka. At the time they were unarmed, had no shirts on (to indicate they were not wired up with bombs) and carried white flags. The only excuse for this is that it was a nervous reaction by a soldier amid combat worried that Hamas was using this tactic of deception.
The second instance is more........
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