PALESTINIAN CIVILIAN CASUALTIES have become the issue in the Israel-Hamas war, precipitating worldwide condemnation of Israel. “A staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said. “Far too many” Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. President Joe Biden summed up the dilemma on December 12, saying that while Israel has had European support in addition to U.S. backing, “they’re starting to lose the support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
The high number of Palestinian deaths has provoked accusations of Israeli war crimes and even genocide, on the premise that civilians are being intentionally targeted. Government officials from around the world and media outlets have sustained the impression that Israel is attacking hospitals, schools, refugee camps and humanitarian facilities, all seemingly with a disregard for civilian life. If Israel were attacking indiscriminately or targeting civilians—it’s not—that would indeed constitute a war crime.
Calculating the acceptability of taking any human life creates the weightiest of moral dilemmas, and the images of suffering in Gaza have prompted demands by many for a ceasefire. But armies must always weigh the cost of civilian lives against any perceived military advantage according to the laws of war.
To try to answer the question of whether so many civilian deaths and injuries are indeed too many—according to legal definitions of proportionality —Newsweek spoke to over a dozen active and retired Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and U.S. military and intelligence officers, all of whom were able to speak more candidly because they were granted anonymity, often in criticizing the conduct of the war. Newsweek also spoke to a number of prominent human rights experts and has reviewed Israeli and American classified data relating to the conflict.
The casualty numbers that are emerging from Gaza are startling; the images from Gaza, heartbreaking. But based on new and exclusive data about the magnitude of Israel’s attacks, the number of Palestinian casualties, while high, does not appear to be disproportionate by the kind of measures used in international law: not in terms of the number of weapons used by Israel, the number of targets hit, the nature of Hamas or the unique features of the Gaza Strip, with its exceptionally high population density. U.S. military sources, many of whom are critical of much of Israel’s conduct, agree.
What Newsweek found is a more fundamental divide between the militaries of the two countries.
Israel is focused on conduct—each individual strike and its compliance with the requirements of international law—while Washington is focused on results, which means the state of Gaza overall as a result of strikes. It is a philosophical disagreement that helps explain the nature of Israel’s attacks and the ferocity of the public debate.
“Part of the problem in the end is Israel’s arrogance,” says a U.S. Air Force officer who has been involved in internal deliberations within the Biden administration and discussions with his Israeli counterparts. “Even to us, in private and candid conversations, they have referred to the Hamas surprise attack and its brutality, they have invoked the Holocaust, they have blamed Hamas, they have referred to 9/11 and argued the ‘Never Again’ justification for their unforgiving operation. The simple truth is Israel has lost the information war because it has destroyed so much, even if they can justify each individual attack.”
Israel’s assault on Hamas is one
