Apart from the fact that the cost in human lives is absolutely horrific and utterly unacceptable, Israel´s actions are downright stupid from a long-term, strategic point of view - and not only for Israel!
The more suffering they cause, the more people will hate them! A whole generation of Gazan children, right now, is learning a hands-on lessons that is hard to understand as anything other than "Israel is the devil"! Do you think they will grow up and happily sing along to the Hatikvah? Or is Israel playing a hands-on role in forming the ideology of a new Hamas?
More globally speaking: a whole generation of young people, globally, is growing up and learning the same! They are not getting their news from the BBC but from TikTok, from Twitter, and from Telegram Channels where the unfiltered horror is visible to everyone and anyone. (I am actually deeply worried for them - as well as for adults because secondary trauma is a thing!). They are currently growing up and learning that Israel must be utterly and completely evil.
And minorities, people in the Global South, are watching and learning something else, too: specifically, that Western powers would be more than happy for them to be slaughtered, and that the entirety of the supposed Western value system is nothing but hypocrisy and lies. So ... why not prefer China over the US?! Iran over the UK?
... and I am not saying that all of this is, in fact, true. My own takes are a lot more nuanced than this. But you only have to follow social media to see an alarming rise not only in anti-Israeli but also more general anti-Western sentiment happening live! This will not "just go away" again. Again: secondary trauma exists, and trauma has a way of burning itself into everything we are, believe, and say!
This is, in fact, all very dangerous both for Israel and for the so-called liberal consensus.
... and that is, literally, just mostly the bombing! I have not even touched upon the brutally inhumane medieval siege tactics of cutting people off food and water - that is not even really tactically useful in the short term (but does one hell of a job on the "Israel is evil" propaganda front)!
Finally, while many will not be seeing it like this right now, the current strategy is also just bad for Israeli identity in the long term. Eventually, some sort of consensus will emerge that, yes, this was, in fact just horrifically wrong! Because it is. And because, after the war is over, Western governments will want to return ASAP to the pretense of being in favour of such things such as international law and human rights. So PhD theses will be written, documentaries will be produced , politicians who are no longer in office will be written off as the evil ones who let it happen and the ones still in office will find some sort of an excuse about how some of the facts were not immediately clear and, in hindight, ... it was different then ... whatever! Unless they can just get away with never mentioning it again, of course! Because this will be necessary to keep the system stable! This is precisely what has happened after every single Western-backed atrocity! But this narrative generally needs a scapegoat! And it will have to be Israelis. You see, I work with a lot of Germans, and Germans have somehow, literally, had to shape their national identity around the fact that they committed the holocaust. They have a word for this. They call it "Tätergesellschaft" (perpetrator society). They also have "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", which roughly means "coming to terms with the past". And while I am absolutely not - just to make this crystal clear - in any way, shape or form equating Gaza 2023 with Germany 1941, narratives tend not to care that much about facts. I wish future Israelis a better future than "people whose identity re-shapes to revolve around the fact that their ancestors did the unspeakable"!
That is why! Or, some of the reasons why!
Yes, there are better options, for example:
- Ceasefire
- Hostage exchange
- UN peacekeepers (or some other international force - the point is: Israel cannot
- The arrest and prosecution of those responsible (and, yes, that has to include Israelis)
- Good faith negotiations for a political settlement
This is not going to happen, mind, and I know it! But it would be far, far, far better in terms of a response - not just for Palestinians, but also Israelis. For us all!
It could happen, but for it to happen, Netanyahu needs to be removed as PM!
EDIT: oh, yikes! I wrote an essay!