by Ken Grossberger, PhD

The butchery and torture that took place during the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, would have embarrassed the Gestapo. Israel immediately declared war and attacked Hamas in the Gaza strip, a small piece of land in the Middle East and one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world. The Jewish state is convinced that Hamas must be eliminated to ensure the survival of Israel, but unfortunately Hamas was, and is, deeply embedded in the Palestinian people. This is the deadly tactical issue, how can the IDF kill Hamas without killing innocent Palestinians. The answer: they can’t.

Reports (which vary) state that about 31,000 people have been killed in the war, including around 12,000 Hamas fighters and several hundred journalists and UN workers. This leaves about 18,000 or so Palestinian civilians killed. About 1,800 Israelis have died, including almost 600 IDF soldiers. Again, reports of these numbers vary. But if they are reasonably close, a lot of innocents have been killed, which has generated a great deal of protest and uproar. Much has been made of the IDF killing civilians, and this in a region where the fighting has a long history. Many have died on both sides over a long time thus October 7 cannot be viewed in isolation, but the sheer savagery of Hamas cannot be condoned in any historical frame. Israel means to destroy that organization once and for all, but not without severe collateral consequences. It has tried to minimize the casualties but are getting a lot of blame in the press and from around the world nonetheless. There is a partial defense for Israel in that attempting to not kill innocents, and actually killing innocents, are two different ethical constructs, but the damage has been done and the dilemma remains. Israel does not want to kill Palestinians but must kill them to accomplish its mission to eliminate what they firmly believe is an existential threat.

Palestinian children caught in the cross-hairs of a violent war are innocent in the baseline meaning of the word, and by any estimate thousands have been killed. This is the agonizing choice for the Israeli people, and a desperate moral quandary: are the deaths of innocent children necessary to the survival of the Israeli people? Supporting Israel and saving the innocent Gazans are not necessarily mutually excludable goals, thus the current attempt at a deal between the warring parties to exchange the remaining hostages in return for a 6 week pause in the fighting. But then Hamas resupplies and repositions, and how many more IDF soldiers would die as a result? How does Israel make such a decision? Innocents for soldiers. No good answer.

Not as many Americans are paying attention as there were in the early days of the war. How quickly these disasters fade in the rearview mirror, maybe a few new cycles. But the great moral issue remains.