(Dobbs) Israel Has Been Sloppy, And The Consequences Have Been Fatal
The strategy it's using isn't working.
In the news business, when people are suffering and solutions are vital, a story with pictures of a thousand starving children might move the needle. A story about one starving child, with protruding ribs and lifeless eyes, might move mountains.
That’s what’s happening right now to Israel. The incessantly growing numbers of the dead, of the hungry, of the homeless in Gaza, have been moving the needle of world opinion in the wrong direction for Israel and now, after the attack that killed seven good samaritans distributing food from the World Central Kitchen, it’s the mountain that’s moving and Israel that’s getting crushed. The mountain of opinion has moved to the point where in many people’s minds, in fact in much of the world’s minds, Israel is the only villain in the war in Gaza, as if Hamas’s hands are clean. They aren’t.
But it is increasingly clear that Israel’s aren’t either. It isn’t just that seven innocent people died. It is that they were seven humanitarians, and since they were putting their lives at risk by even being there, seven heroes. The fact that six of the seven were foreigners who came from far away to feed refugees in a war zone somehow makes the tragedy seem even deeper. Deep enough that even President Biden, in his confrontational call yesterday with the prime minister of Israel, might now be pushing against that mountain himself.
The chief of the Israel Defense Forces apologized, calling the air attack on the convoy "a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn't have happened.” But the founder of the World Central Kitchen, whose mission is to deliver food to people in crisis, doesn’t accept that. In his opinion, Jose Andres told Reuters, “This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place. It’s very clear who we are and what we do.” He told PBS, “We were targeted deliberately, nonstop, until everybody was dead in this convoy.”
People are more likely to sympathize with the characterization of the attack by the founder of the World Central Kitchen than by the chief of the Israel Defense Forces. But I don’t believe it. Yes, Israel deliberately targeted the three vehicles that were hit, but it defies logic that Israel knew the passengers were humanitarians from the World Central Kitchen. There would be nothing in it for Israel, nothing, to kill them on purpose. To the contrary, it only makes matters worse for Israel, much worse. But there also is no excuse for what happened. According to experts who know how the Israel Defense Forces operate, there wasn’t just one careless or rogue operator firing missiles from a drone. In an effort for a failsafe system, more than a dozen people had to be involved, but when they identified this target, something in the system broke down.
It cost the lives of seven good people. What it suggests is, since so many innocents have died in Gaza since the war started, there have been similar breakdowns before. And that suggests what more citizens every day seem to believe: that even when the stakes are the highest, Israel has been sloppy, and the consequences have been fatal.
The consequences also take the crisis into new territory. Just as an agency that monitors famines worldwide issued its “Integrated Phase Classification” report saying, “The Gaza Strip famine is imminent as 1.1 million people, half of Gaza, experience catastrophic food insecurity," Monday’s catastrophic attack prompted a cutback in food aid. United Nations relief agencies and two other aid groups at least temporarily have suspended their own efforts in Gaza out of concerns for the safety of their staffs. And it is no surprise that the World Central Kitchen turned around another barge loaded with meals, enroute to Gaza.
There also is another piece of collateral damage: President Biden. Making it very clear that “the defense of Israel is still critical,” he has condemned some of what the Israelis do but still helps them do it. The Washington Post has reported that the U.S. recently approved the delivery of 1,800 more two-thousand-pound bombs, the very kinds of munitions that have laid waste to much of Gaza. Secretary of State Blinken this week justified the delivery because, he said, while Israel is fighting in Gaza, it still also faces threats from Hezbollah and Iran. But that won’t stop the erosion of the president’s support.
Maybe now, albeit too late, the pressure of the mountain might make a difference. The White House says that yesterday, in his call with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Biden demanded “a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” It says the president made clear that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.” Maybe Israel got the message. Shortly after the phone call, it announced new measures to allow more aid into Gaza. This won’t change what has happened and it won’t stop the suffering, but it should ease it.
An essay has been circulating on the internet. It begins by citing “some inconvenient truths that’ll surely anger the anti Israel crowd.”
The inconvenient truths include these:
— “No country in history ever supplied so much food and medical aid to the enemy and its populus as Israel has during this current war.”
— “Israel is already facilitating the entry of more than 1,000 trucks of aid to Gaza per week and stands ready to do more.”
— “Israel has facilitated the delivery of more than 18,400 tons of medical supplies to Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel.”
— “Israel has worked with Jordan and the UAE to establish two field hospitals in Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
It also then says, “Over 600,000 Syrians have been killed since 2013. Where are the protests in streets and universities worldwide and condemnation at the U.N.?”
The answer to the question is both complex and simple, but the simple part is, we expect more of Israel.
I don’t have a magical strategy that would allow Israel to completely destroy Hamas while, at the same time, to save it from completely destroying the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza. All I know is, the strategy it’s using isn’t working.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Mistakes happen in war innocents are killed and injured. It is a sad fact of war. Unlike most however Israel immediately admitted its mistake and apologized for its actions and began a formal investigation into what happened. Not so some of the main “allies” heaping condemnations. Lest we forget the US killed an entire wedding party in Iraq including the bride by mistake, and in its “withdrawal” from Afghanistan in response to the bombing that killed 13 American soldiers killed a family of 10 in a drone strike US General Milley called righteous until finally admitting it was a mistake. Not to be left out NATO forces mistakenly killed innocents in Libya and were slow to admit their mistake. As the old saying goes people who live in glass houses… it is sad that the condemnations are not directed at Hamas who hides under and behind women and children and could easily end this by releasing the hostages and surrendering. But it appears we are now more outraged by the tragic and mistaken killing of aid workers than those who created the situation in the first place.
Excellent piece and too true. Israel lost the public relations battle by Oct 10th…. And with Jose Andres appropriate outrage, the camels back broke.