It is important to distinguish carefully between morality and moralism, between striving to act morally and striving to appear moral. The more faithful we are to ourselves, the more we are obliged to impose moral standards on our conduct. That is not easy, because we will always be left, unavoidably, in doubt about the results of our actions or our omissions.
What will happen, for example, if we go into battle to uproot Hamas under this or that set of conditions? And what will happen if we do not go into that battle?
But we must draw a sharp distinction between the hard, dirty, doubtful effort to act morally in the valley of tears and a purifying moralism aimed at giving ourselves the appearance of people of conscience. The moralist is focused on that appearance, on how he seems to himself and to others, and above all on what will be said about him, rather than on what will actually occur in the world as a result of his act or omission.
These words are written in light of leaks and semi-anonymous briefings that give the impression the chief of staff and at least part of his headquarters are being swept up in moralizing propaganda of security activists gone astray.
There is also reason to fear that the failure so far to drive the entire civilian population out of Gaza City is due, at least in part, to the adoption by certain legalistic military theorists and ethicists outside the army of unique moral rules to impose on the IDF that have not been imposed on any other army fighting in a populated arena, even when that other nation acted to avert existential threats.
We need to understand the general meaning of applying moral principles to warfare against a terror army such as the murderous and rapacious terrorist organization Hamas, which entrenched itself inside a dense civilian population and under the ground of its homes.
By invoking a false claim of "ethnic cleansing" they impose prohibitions or heavy constraints on the measures required to remove the civilian population from the danger zone.
The moral failure stemming from the influence of moralizing propaganda is twofold: it prevents noncombatant populations from being protected by moving them out of the battlefield, and it guarantees the survival of the terror army.
Is it excessive to suspect that at least some of those wearing this counterfeit morality actually want Hamas to survive?
The result of applying these bans and burdens on evacuating populations from a danger zone will be that no army of a morally inclined sovereign state will be able to uproot a terror army like Hamas. That is an intolerable moral outcome. The immunity thus conferred on sadistic murder organizations elevated to the status of terror armies is a moral catastrophe.
The same applies to another purportedly "humanitarian" argument regarding emigration from Gaza.
Just as they invert reality and present the evacuation of noncombatants and their rescue from a danger zone as if it were ethnic cleansing, so too is opening the gates to those wishing to emigrate depicted as expulsion. This is an old story. As Dr. Einat Wilf and Dr. Adi Schwartz have shown, since the 1950s the Gaza Strip was maintained as a perpetual multi-generation refugee camp through various movement restrictions and aid organizations such as UNRWA, whose entire purpose was to perpetuate refugee status.
Only to defend such a warped reality, cultivated by the world against Israel, can opening borders and easing emigration routes — which are the wish of many residents of the Strip — be portrayed as immoral or illegal expulsion.
The simple truth is this: when populations are entangled in conflicts, as in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria and countless other places throughout human history and today, emigration is one of the principal ways of coping.
It was not Israel but Hamas that entrenched itself within the population of the Gaza Strip and took it hostage. The more the population is allowed to flee for its life from both Hamas and Israel, the more it will escape the consequences of Hamas's crimes against us and against them. They have the right to emigrate.
A cloud of moral wrong hovers over those who enshrine it in the Strip.
