Call me a warmonger if you must for my support of Israel in its war against Hamas-led Palestinians, but war is the price that Israel must pay not only for its freedom but for its very existence.
So why are so many in the news media sidling up to Hamas and other Palestinian leaders who criticize Israel’s fight for existence? Especially as civilian casualties mount. The latest at this writing being Israel’s bombing of the al-Taba’een school in Gaza City with at least 70 deaths.
The school sheltered more than 1,000 displaced Palestinians.
An Israeli Defense spokesperson told the BBC, "... based on Israeli intelligence, approximately 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, including senior commanders, were operating from the compound the school, using it to carry out terrorist attacks."
Later, Israel’s Defense spokesperson reported "at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists" were "eliminated ..."
CNN and other media, including BBC, focused on grisly details, interviews with victims’ family members, and other emotional, anti-Israel reporting.
News organizations are accepting at, face value, data and comments from Hamas and Palestine’s supporters, while questioning Israel’s right to protect itself.
Civilian deaths in wars are documented at least as far back as the Christian Crusades (1095 to 1291 CE or AD, as you prefer). Estimates range from 1.9 million to 9 million civilian deaths during the Crusades.
Historians argue about how many civilians died during World War II. Estimates range into the millions. In truth, such was the destruction that no one will ever know.
Estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied carpet (strategic) bombing range between 350,000 and 500,000.
Between 440,000 and 1.2 million Japanese civilians died in our carpet bombing, including more than 300,000 civilians in our firebombing of Tokyo. At least 8 million were left homeless.
In America’s Civil War (1861-1865), Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman harshly targeted civilians in his strategy of scorched earth for his famous “March to the Sea” campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas. He fought little, but engaged in large-scale destruction of both military and civilian infrastructure.
Estimates of civilian deaths in our Civil War are all over the table, from 20,000 to 850,000, but civilians in the South suffered seriously because most battles were fought there.
Sherman defended his strategy against complaints by Southerners, saying: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”
Years later, in an address at the Michigan Military Academy, he shortened it to, “War is hell.” He believed that victory required not only defeating, but also destroying, the enemy’s army and military superstructure, but also its psychological will to continue the war.
With this background, we return to the Hamas/Israeli War.
The very thought that our news media during earlier wars (earlier than Vietnam), would have been quoting enemy data and interviewing enemy leaders and supporters about individual military actions is beyond baffling.
I could be wrong. I do remember WWII and listening to war news, but I was only 7 years old when the war ended, so I don’t claim to remember details of those broadcasts, and at that tender age, I read only the funnies.
Nonetheless, I can’t imagine that our news media was broadcasting interviews with survivors of our firebombing of Tokyo, or of the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with newscasters anguishing over civilian casualties and accusing us of war crimes.
War isn’t pretty. It’s hell warmed over, if you will excuse a metaphor of Sherman’s famous statement on the subject.
Death, and both physical and emotional trauma, are part and parcel of the necessary cruelty of war.
Those who want the war to end should address their demands to Hamas, which insinuates military operations into schools and hospitals, using civilians as shields from Israeli militia defending their country.
Hamas is guilty of every one of the Palestinian civilians who have died in this horrible war, and media coverage supports Palestinian war crimes.
Speaking of a news media that has gone off its rail: Where is the reporting on the war crimes that Russia commits against civilians in Ukraine?
Day has lived in Pullman since 1972. We was a newspaper reporter and photographer for 11 years, then served on the Washington State University faculty for 32 years as a science communicator. He enjoys email at terence@moscow.com, pro or con.
