Mr. Biden has warned Israel not to do what has to be done to eliminate Hamas in their last stronghold in Rafah and Chuck Schumer has called for the Israelis to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Their indictment of the Israelis has to do with what they see as unjustifiable casualty levels among Palestinian civilians. According to Gazan authorities some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed so far by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) operations, mostly bombings.
There are a number of things wrong with the criticisms leveled by Messrs. Biden and Schumer, however:
- The Gaza Health Ministry which released these casualty figures is controlled by Hamas, the same organization that launched the murders of over 1200 Israeli civilians on October 7th. It'd be foolish to believe them.
- The 30,000 dead figure does not distinguish between non-combatants and Hamas militants. As many as 20,000 of the dead could be Hamas fighters.
- We're told that many of the 30,000 are children, but anyone under 18 is counted as a child. Many of the Hamas fighters are teenagers between 15 and 18 years of age and would be considered to be child casualties.
- Many civilians either participated in or abetted the atrocities of October 7th or cheered for them, they overwhelmingly voted for the people who carried them out. It's ironic that the critics of Israel are often believers in the notion of the collective guilt of whites when it comes to the history of racism in this country, but draw a sharp distinction between the "innocent" Palestinians who live in Gaza and the terrorists of Hamas whom they've elected to govern them.
- The ratio of combatant to non-combatant deaths in Gaza is historically low for any urban combat. The U.N. calculates that the ratio in modern warfare is 9:1 - nine civilians killed for every soldier who's slain. The ratio in Gaza is 1.5:1.
- For perspective, during World War II 100,000 civilians were killed in the battle for Manila and nearly 20,000 French citizens were killed by allied bombs in the run-up to the Normandy invasion.
- Usually absent from the criticisms of Israel is any suggestion as to what the Israelis should do differently from what they actually are doing. The complaints are often very general laments that Israel is just killing too many people, but we're never told what the magic number of acceptable deaths is nor how the IDF is to avoid killing civilians when Hamas uses them as shields to hide among and uses schools hospitals and residences from which to launch their attacks. Unless people can offer constructive recommendations as to how the Israelis should go about destroying Hamas it'd be best if they'd simply not say anything.
- Nor is there much, if any, pressure put on Hamas to end the killing by surrendering and releasing all Israeli hostages. Much of the world community, however, is demanding that Israel stop fighting. This makes no sense. Why are there so few calls for Hamas to surrender both themselves and the hostages? It is Hamas, after all, who started this war on October 7th when they barbarously slaughtered over 1200 Israeli civilians.