The killing of seven NGO volunteers by an Israeli drone World Central Kitchenintent on bringing food to the hungry in Gaza, risks make Israel lose the war. The US president Joe Bidenin one of the harshest confrontations with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahuhe threatened to change the line on Gaza.
Netanyahu responded to the crisis triggered by the killing of the volunteers with a series of concessions. In addition to admitting responsibility and firing two brigadier generals, held directly responsible for the error, he reopened the Erez crossing and designated the port of Ashdod for the flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. But it might not be enough. The scandal is worldwide and the world is now against Israel.
Aid to Gaza
However, let’s try to frame the episode outside the media vulgate, at the risk of being unpleasant. One is underway in Gaza high intensity warfarewhich erupted after the terrorists of Hamas they crossed the border and exterminated, in the worst possible way, more than 1,200 Israeli citizens in a single day. From then until today, Hamas it never ceased hostilities, launching rockets against Israeli cities.
The Israeli army (IDF) responded, first, with aerial and artillery bombardments, then, taking a much greater risk, with a ground invasion of the Strip. The border crossings are closed (of course: there is war), so it is more difficult to distribute food. Then, right from the UN, the accusation of “hunger strategy”as if Israel was doing to the Palestinians what Stalin did to the Ukrainians in 1932-33: a planned famine.
Actually, help continues to arrive, also from Israel: 250 thousand tons of food and 3.3 million cubic meters of water, are just some of Israel’s aid to Gaza since 7 October. Currently, 126 food trucks enter Gaza every day. AND Hamas continues to seize 66 percent of loads, to reiterate who’s in charge.
The accident
In this war scenario, even if there is coordination between the private individuals who bring the food and the IDF who has to let them pass, errors are always possible. All it takes is for a communication to be missed or for the humanitarian procession to be mistaken for a convoy of terrorists (who also use ambulances to shield themselves) for tragedy to occur: instead of shooting at the terrorists, the Israelis shot unarmed volunteers from the international NGO, raising the ire of the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Poland, their countries of origin. For this reason, despite having so far won all the battles against HamasIsrael risks losing the war.
Two wars together
The episode demonstrates, better than others, how Western armies, Israel included, must fight two wars together: the one for the control of the territory and the one for the control of the image. To a Western army, in fact, perfection is asked for. We ask: not to lose men, not to cause even one civilian death, to win quickly (within television time). If there is a serious incident, such as the killing of volunteers World Central Kitchenthe war may even be lost because at that point the international pressure becomes so strong as to put the continuation of operations at risk.
A similar thing also happened to the Americans after they accidentally hit a hotel full of journalists in Baghdad in April 2003. The USA was winning the war against Saddam Husseinbut they suffered a very strong pressure to cease hostilities. For just one cannon shot he fired at the wrong target.
In 2004, in Falluja, the mere suspicion of the indiscriminate killing of civilians by the Americans raised American public opinion, which called for the withdrawal of the contingent from Iraq. In 1999, the destruction of a bridge in Serbia, while a passenger train was passing, provoked another uprising for the immediate cessation of hostilities, although the air force of the NATO countries was intent on stopping a Serbian army that he was carrying out ethnic cleansing (now documented, deniers please abstain) in Kosovo. Similar scandals have broken out all the time, in every war, at least since Vietnam, the first conflict in the television age.
In general this is good for Western armies: if they are monitored so much, it becomes more difficult for them to commit crimes and this makes them more moral than the armies of dictatorships who fight, who instead have no qualms about killing unarmed civilians. However, it also becomes a weakness if the continuous control of the morality of our armies prevents them from fighting and win a legitimate war. And what Israel is fighting is a legitimate, defensive war.
Error or crime
The boundary that we must always keep in mind is between error and deliberate crime, between individual and systematic crime. Error is always possible, but it is not a crime: if I accidentally shoot at the Red Cross or at humanitarian workers it is a tragedy, but I cannot be put in the dock as a war criminal.
But even in the case of deliberate crimes a distinction must be made the crime of the individual from the systematic one. If the sniper shoots at civilians with a white flag he is a criminal and must be tried, but his crime cannot be attributed to the entire army or to the entire state to which he belongs. If, however, shooting civilians becomes a habitual practice (as the Russians do in Ukraine) then condemnation of the State is legitimate, because it is clear that there is an order from above at that point.
In the media these distinctions are never made. Then we come to the grotesque situation where the US and Israel (whose armies commit individual errors or crimes) are accused of genocide. While of Hamas and the Russians, who carry out horrendous mass crimes, are never discussed, as if it were in their nature to kill, kidnap and rape.
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