\u201cYou cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will,\u201d Union general William Tecumseh Sherman wrote in an 1864 letter warning the citizens of Atlanta \u2014 which his advancing army had just occupied \u2014 to evacuate. \u201cWar is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the last two years, Sherman\u2019s words come to mind whenever an opponent of Israel and\/or supporter of the Palestinians confidently asserts that the violence in Gaza is \u201cnot a war\u201d because it is so terrible.<\/p>\n
It IS a war, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so terrible.<\/p>\n
Let us, as we should, acknowledge that the Israeli regime\u2019s goal in Gaza is genocide or, at a minimum, the only slightly less odious project of \u201cethnic cleansing.\u201d There\u2019s zero room for doubt, given Israeli officials\u2019 open public statements, that they want the Palestinian Arabs now living in Gaza either killed off or exiled en masse to make room for Israeli \u201csettlement\u201d of the area.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the objective.<\/p>\n
War is the means of achieving that objective, and war is a process of killing people.<\/p>\n
That many of the dead in all wars, and most of the dead in this one, are civilian non-combatants, doesn\u2019t turn those wars into non-wars. It just turns them into worse wars. It\u2019s right there in the terminology. The killings of civilian non-combatants aren\u2019t just \u201ccrimes,\u201d they\u2019re \u201cwar crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
One dodge the \u201cthis isn\u2019t a war, it\u2019s [insert term of opprobrium here]\u201d crowd often resorts to is a claimed disproportion in the size and power of the forces involved.<\/p>\n
By that criterion, there\u2019s never been a war in all of human history. In every war, all sides attempt to bring overwhelming force to bear on opponents they hope won\u2019t bring as much. \u201cGod,\u201d Comte de Bussy-Rabutin observed, \u201cis usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small.\u201d<\/p>\n
That truth applies at both the tactical and strategic levels. In the attacks of October 7, 2023, for example, Hamas attempted to take on a bigger overall opponent in smaller parts through the tactical element of surprise.<\/p>\n
To which Israel responded with overwhelming force at all points, because it had the people and weapons to do so. And still does \u2014 the supposed \u201cceasefire\u201d has barely reduced its tempo of operations and hasn\u2019t changed its clear objectives.<\/p>\n
Trying to separate war from the genocide and ethnic cleansing that often accompanies it is cheap moralizing for propaganda points.<\/p>\n
War, again per Sherman, is all hell.<\/p>\n