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It is now almost three months since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government launched its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target=_blank>ground invasion of Gaza</a>, and it is time to ask some hard questions: Has it been proportional to the damage that Hamas inflicted on Israel? Has the Israeli military been careful to avoid civilian casualties? Was there another path?

I write this as a supporter of Israel, a country that I believe has been a remarkable success in an environment that was for decades deeply hostile toward it — and where some countries, such as Iran, remain opposed to its very existence. I am also dismayed and appalled by the rise of antisemitism across the world, which is a powerful reminder as to why Israel was founded.

This week, hearings at the International Court of Justice began to determine whether Israel’s government is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. I think the charge is invalid; there is no systematic effort to exterminate Gaza’s population. (If there were, given the vast disparity in power, Israel would surely have killed many more than <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/middleeast/south-africa-israel-genocide-icj-hague-day-one-intl/index.html" target=_blank>23,000 people</a>, though that number is, of course, still staggeringly high. The death toll figure comes from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.) Genocide is an incendiary accusation that should not be used loosely. Nevertheless, during these hearings, some deeply troubling facts might emerge about Israel’s bombing campaign.

Israel suffered a brutal terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and had a right to respond forcefully. But consider what it has done in a small territory housing <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/21/middleeast/northern-gaza-humanitarian-situation-dire-intl-hnk/index.html" target=_blank>2.2 million people</a>, half of whom are children and of which, by <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-considers-how-to-remove-threat-of-hamas-fighters-in-gaza-062f01b4" target=_blank>Israel’s own estimate</a> before the war, only 30,000 are Hamas fighters.

A <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal analysis</a> of Israel’s bombing campaign notes that by mid-December, “nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. … Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.” Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, only eight can still accept patients. U.N. monitors report that more than two-thirds of all school buildings have been damaged, as have several churches and more than 100 mosques.

The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-bombs-destruction-death-toll-scope-419488c511f83c85baea22458472a796" target=_blank>Associated Press reports</a> that according to experts, in roughly two months, Israel caused more destruction in Gaza than the battle for Aleppo in Syria or the razing of Mariupol in Ukraine, and killed more civilians than the United States and its allies did in a three-year campaign against the Islamic State. Proportionally, Israel’s campaign has exceeded the destruction of the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II and, as the University of Chicago’s Robert Pape notes, “is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza/index.html" target=_blank>CNN reported</a> in mid-December that U.S. intelligence estimated that 40 to 45 percent of the 29,000 bombs Israel had dropped were unguided, prone to cause greater collateral damage. Indeed, an Israeli rear admiral acknowledged before the ground invasion began that while the Israel Defense Forces was “balancing accuracy … right now, we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.” Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has invoked the <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/" target=_blank>biblical story of Amalek</a>, in which God tells the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child, destroy all property — even kill every animal — in retaliation for a surprise attack.

The <a href="https://cpj.org/2023/12/israel-gaza-war-takes-record-toll-on-journalists/" target=_blank>Committee to Protect Journalists reports</a> that “more journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/14/middleeast/united-nations-staff-deaths-gaza-intl-hnk/index.html" target=_blank>United Nations reports</a> that more U.N. aid workers have been killed in Gaza than in any other conflict over the 78 years of the organization. It’s possible that some of these numbers are misleading. But are all of them, coming from various sources, wrong?

This military campaign is being perpetrated by a deeply unpopular government in Jerusalem that is trying to salvage its reputation. Polls since the start of this conflict have shown that most of the public has lost faith in Netanyahu. A poll <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/52085" target=_blank>released last week</a> found that only 15 percent of those surveyed wanted Netanyahu to keep his job after the war. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/only-15-israelis-want-netanyahu-keep-job-after-gaza-war-poll-finds-2024-01-02/" target=_blank>An earlier poll</a> found that 69 percent wanted elections as soon as the war ends. It is awkward to note this, but Netanyahu has every incentive to keep the military campaign going in the hope that his day of reckoning can be postponed, if not put off indefinitely. Having bungled the strategy toward Hamas before the war, he is trying to use maximum force now as political compensation.

Israel is a democracy and an open society, and precisely because of that it will one day have to ask itself whether it acted appropriately in the heat of its anger and sorrow after Oct. 7. Friends of Israel should help it ask those questions now, so that it does not look back on this episode with shame and regret.

National Magazine Award, 2010

Peabody Award, 2011

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Yale College, BA

Harvard University, PhD

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS.

Fareed Zakaria

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Israel is not guilty of genocide. But its war in Gaza has been brutal.

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