In an airstrike Monday in Syria, Israel’s military displayed the kind of pinpoint accuracy for which the Israeli Defense Force is both known and feared.
The IDF’s precision strike hit the Iranian embassy complex on a busy Damascus street, where it was surrounded on all sides by occupied buildings. The strike targeted and killed senior Iranian military commanders and Palestinian militants expressly identified in advance, yet despite the congested area, no civilians were killed.
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A mere few hours later, that same “precision” military accidentally killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers who had just delivered and unloaded tons of food meant for desperate, starving Palestinians. Killed along an open road in a deconflicted zone under IDF control in Gaza, the workers had done everything right: They coordinated with IDF to make sure the workers’ planned route and schedule were known, and they drove together in a highly visible caravan of white vehicles clearly identified by a large World Central Kitchen logo on the rooftop.
There were logistical differences between the two airstrikes. The strike in Syria reflected highly coordinated intelligence efforts and targeted a well-known, stationary building in broad daylight. The kitchen workers, in contrast, were misidentified in a triple drone strike and killed at night, as they drove along a dark road.
Although mitigating, those distinctions aren’t enough to quell the growing international outcry over the number of people killed by Israel in response to Hamas’ October attack, a death toll of Palestinians that Al Jazeera now puts at 33,494.
The World Central Kitchen disaster cranked the dial under a slow-boiling and pre-existing suspicion that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet are indifferent to the lives of innocent Palestinians and those that seek to help them survive.
A digital billboard welcomes President Joe Biden to Israel on Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Biden has long been a strong supporter of Israel but faces an unprecedented crisis with the Israeli military having killed tens of thousands of Gaza residents as it wages war on Hamas. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
It also increased fire under President Joe Biden to put his money where his concerned mouth is, leading him to warn Netanyahu on Friday that U.S. aid may stop absent stronger protections for Palestinian civilians.
International law requires proportional response
Nearly 200 aid workers have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, including local Palestinians who worked as United Nations employees. Military analysts say the World Central Kitchen debacle was the predictable outcome of Israel’s shoot-first style of engagement, a tactic Israel has employed since the Hamas attacks.
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The U.S., Israel and all signatories to the Geneva Convention adhere to the principle of proportionality, which seeks to limit civilian casualties during acts of war. Proportionality requires that the means and methods of warfare must not be disproportionate to the military advantage sought. International Humanitarian Law seeks to spare those who have not participated in hostilities, and to restrict violence to the amount necessary to achieve the aim of the conflict, which can only be to weaken the military potential of the enemy.
Israel’s right to defend itself against the Neanderthalic brutality of Hamas, which exists to destroy Israel, is not in question. The problem is that determinations of proportionality will always be subjective, depending on perceived strengths and strategies of the enemy. To illustrate, if someone intentionally stomps on your foot, you don’t pull a gun and shoot. But if you have reason to believe they will come back at night to murder your family, you aim to kill.
People mourn as they receive the dead bodies of victims of an Israeli strike on April 4, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
Although some Zionists assail a double standard when it comes to judging Israel, the number of Palestinian casualties is hard to defend.
Even under the vengeful justice of an eye for an eye, killing 34,000 Palestinians to redress the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis appears excessive.
Forget Christian beliefs about turning the other cheek; Netanyahu has taken 28 eyes for one eye, and the ratio keeps getting worse.
Food is a cruel weapon
As horrifying as it is to be bombed in the night, helplessly watching your children starve as you starve with them is far, far worse.
Since the fighting began in Gaza, supply routes for food, water and medicine, already tightly constricted before Hamas’ October attack, have been blocked, partly by Hamas-backing Houthi terrorists from Yemen, and partly by Israeli security measures that require painstaking searches of each box transported into Gaza via land routes.
Oxfam International now reports catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation in Gaza, the highest scale ever recorded in terms of number and percentage of the civilian population.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director, said that Oxfam has “never before” seen “such rapid deterioration into widespread starvation.”
Workers become emotional as they receive the bodies of World Central Kitchen workers who were killed by Israeli air strikes on April 02, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
The World Central Kitchen disaster will only make matters worse. After the IDF attack on its convoy, World Central Kitchen sent three ships laden with hundreds of tons of food back to port. Fearing for their own lives, they ceased their life-saving operations just as 2 million Gazans were desperately waiting for food. It was like bringing a bowl of gruel to a starving prisoner, only to yank it away just as he opens his mouth.
Palestinians are so desperate for food, particularly in the north, that they regularly converge on the relatively small number of aid trucks that do enter the territory. Volunteers for various aid groups say Palestinians have begun eating leaves, donkey feed and food scraps, to say nothing of the starving animals themselves.
Netanyahu is to Israel what Trump is to the U.S.
Credible world leaders have begun accusing Israel of genocide. As the world increasingly turns against Israel for violating international law, Netanyahu and his cabinet present an existential threat to Israel’s existence. Nothing will put a more visible target on innocent Jewish people than continuing to commit heinous crimes in their name.
The American parallels are obvious. Netanyahu, like Trump, is facing legal troubles including corruption and fraud charges.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a meeting with then-President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House March 5, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
Netanyahu’s aggressive tactics in “othering” Palestinians — similar to Trump’s attacks on immigrants — suggests he is using the war in Gaza to stay out of jail and remain in power.
Like Trump, Netanyahu is willing to sacrifice his country for his own well-being. Like Trump with NATO, Netanyahu has alienated his best allies, diminished his country’s reputation and created more enemies for his nation’s people who themselves are grappling with unimaginable loss.
Netanyahu makes it difficult to separate innocent Israelis from their cruel government; the resulting rise in antisemitism is both heartbreaking and unfair. Blaming Israel for Netanyahu is like blaming all Americans for Trump, even though more than half the country detests him and supports his prosecution on 88 felony charges across four criminal cases.
Biden faces an impossible dilemma
Biden, the most experienced statesman ever to serve in the Oval Office, faces a nearly impossible challenge.
In 1948, while the world was still reeling from the horrors of Adolf Hitler, the U.S. was the first to recognize Israel as a nation state.
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Although many presidents since then have tried, none have succeeded in brokering a just homeland for dispossessed Palestinians. When President Barack Obama wanted to freeze Israeli settlements to begin the establishment of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu started encouraging partisan division in the U.S., and the dangerous GOP-Netanyahu alliance was born, endangering long-term bipartisan support for Israel.
According to the Washington Post, the U.S. has given more aid to Israel since World War II than it has given to any other country. Biden has repeatedly urged Netanyahu to use greater precision and restraint to protect civilians in Gaza, and to “do everything possible to prevent innocent Palestinian civilians” from being killed.
But to Biden critics on the left, those were empty words given that the U.S. could simply condition further aid on IDF changes.
A woman holds a sign suggesting that she might now vote for Donald Trump for president as protesters no Dec. 8, 2023, in Los Angeles denounced the Biden administration's support of Israel, which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians so far in its war against Hamas in Gaza. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Every time the IDF kills innocent civilians, global support for Israel weakens. The situation is untenable for both innocent Palestinians and innocent Israelis. Hamas would not win a bullets-for-bullets war against Israel, but they are winning the propaganda war with Netanyahu’s help, and destabilizing the U.S., Israel’s strongest ally, in the process.
Given recent polls, mounting deaths in Gaza may alienate enough Democratic voters to put Trump back in office.
If that happens, Netanyahu will celebrate by extending Jewish settlements to the Mediterranean Sea, and Palestinian cries of sorrow will fade by attrition.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.
