We have earned the accusations of starvation and a blood libel that have spread worldwide and among us. Instead of fully implementing Operation Gideon's Chariots, the Israel Defense Forces carried it out hesitantly and partially. Its key element, separating enemy forces from the civilian population in the northern Gaza Strip, was not done.
Leaving aside the reason for this failure, the results are clear: The population in northern Gaza remained under Hamas control and was not moved south for its safety and to receive food. This meant the American supply company could not deliver aid to them in the south. Israel was then forced to bring in supplies through the old method, directly into Hamas' hands, allowing the terrorist group to steal, withhold and create food shortages. Hamas could then fabricate shocking scenes of severe hunger, exploiting sick children. In this, our stupidity rivaled Hamas' malice.
Who is responsible? Perhaps Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanting to use a scaled-down version of Gideon's Chariots to secure the release of 10 hostages from Hamas without committing to the group's survival after the war. The result has been defeat in world opinion due to Hamas' starvation tactics, aided by the Israeli left's embrace of its propaganda, while the hostages still languish in tunnels.
But this failure may also stem from poor decisions by the army's General Staff, led by Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, acting "in consultation" with or under pressure from Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Ghassan Alian, and the military's hostage affairs officer Nitzan Alon. Responsibility likely lies with both Netanyahu, consistently committed to freeing hostages, and with Zamir, Tomer-Yerushalmi, Alian and Alon, who fear evacuating civilians and are anxious about the hostages' fate.
Here we see moral considerations that ultimately proved moralistic: an emotional application of the principle of redeeming captives that, for now, has only prolonged their suffering and deepened their danger; supposed protection of noncombatants that has left them starving and trapped in an especially dangerous war zone.
It shows that "the moral" are not always moral in their decisions and actions. Moral courage is sometimes needed to do what is necessary, despite pseudo-moralistic denunciations from "the world" or from the Israeli left, which embraces them either from well-intentioned patriotism or from the cynical pursuit of political power.
Sentimentality (as distinct from sensitivity) leading to moralism (as distinct from morality) is a widespread affliction in the liberal democratic world. The current war, against a barbaric terrorist army embedded within a sympathetic civilian population, is an extreme test case. But this disease of immoral moralism was evident before and after World War II. An example was the Allies' refusal to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it, one reason being concern for the prisoners' safety. Good intentions, apparently, paved the road to hell.
The horrors of the senseless, unnecessary World War I produced a moralistic pacifist movement. It not only ignored the rise of Nazism in the 1930s but also condemned the victorious Allies even after the full extent of Nazi and Japanese atrocities in World War II became known.
This was the backdrop for the so-called "antiwar," in fact pro-Nazi, novels of Joseph Heller ("Catch-22") and Kurt Vonnegut ("Slaughterhouse-Five"), and for exaggerated Nazi and pacifist propaganda about the bombing of Dresden, both during the war and later by neo-Nazis and pacifists.
Israel today needs moral courage and emotional fortitude to stand against distorted moralism and false sentimentality. It must reject moralistic, defeatist arguments for allowing a barbaric terrorist army to survive.
Our moral duty is to remove noncombatants from the combat zones, provide them with food in humanitarian shelters, open the gates of emigration to those who wish to leave, and end the imprisonment of civilians under a regime of ruin and repression.
