I’ve been grateful that all the work I had to do in the last weeks of the PA General Assembly has given me a respite from reading and thinking about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

I have a couple of things I want to say about it. If I were making a larger argument, this one would not come first. But I finished it after reading an article comparing Israel’s bombing of Gaza with the Allied bombing of German cities in WW II. The article is in the comments.

Thanks to Karly Whittaker for sharing that article.

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The comparison with Allied bombing in WWII is even more telling than the article suggests.

The Allies had three justification for a bombing campaign that aimed at the center of German cities and that probably killed at least 300,000 civilians. Historians are divided about which was more important at different times during the war.

For the first few years of the war, Britain had no other way of going on the offensive against Germany than bombing.  Because the Luftwaffe was so powerful, British bombers could only fly at night. At the time, however, there were no  technical means to target bombing against military bases, factories, and refineries. So, the bombers were directed to aim for the centers of cities, which they could find because of their nighttime lights.

Bombing cities was also thought to be a way to break the morale of the German population. And it was defended by some in the British military and by Churchill publicly in those terms.

And there was a third reason for the bombing of German cities: It appears that Churchill thought it was a way to keep British morale up when London was being attacked night after night, and especially after the horror of the bombing of Coventry.

Later in the war, improvements in radar made it possible to target bombers at military targets. Yet Britain and the US did not rethink its campaign against German cities until after the horrible attack on Dresden, which did lead Churchill to reconsider his orders. And at any rate, it was clear by then the Allies would win.

There is a great deal of dispute about morality of the three rationales for the Allied bombing of German cities.

The third reason is, I believe, never a justification for attacking civilians. Raising morale on one’s own side may be helpful in war but is not always critical. And certainly, Britain and the US could and find other ways to raise it. It also is based on, and exacerbates, an evil motive for conducting war—the desire for revenge. It’s also not clear that the people of Britain all welcomed the bombing of German civilians. It appears that people in rural Britain did support bombing German cities. But most Londoners, who understood what bombing civilians meant, did not.

At the time it was not as clear as it is now that the second justification is wrong. We know now that bombing civilians on the other side increases their support for the war effort and those who are leading it. That has been shown in pretty much every major bombing campaign since the bombing of German cities, including the horrific US firebombing of Japan, the utterly unnecessary use atomic weapons, as well as the US bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq, all of which spurred resistance to our war efforts.

The third reason for bombing German cities, that Britain had no other way of fighting back against the Nazis, may for a time have justified doing so, even at the horrific cost in civilian life. But that justification ended long before the bombing ended, once it became possible for Allied bombers to fly during the day and target military facilities.

And most importantly, that justification for aiming at civilians is predicated on the nature of the evil that the Allies were facing. Nazi Germany was both one of the most evil regimes in human history and incredibly powerful. Britain was in profound danger of losing the war and being invaded by the Nazis with potential horrifying consequence not just for Britain but ultimately the US.

This was a true moment in which dire necessity could overcome the moral rights of civilians.

But that is not the situation of Israel and Hamas.

I have argued that after October 7 Israel had not only a right but obligation to respond to Hamas and weaken its military capacity. And that is true for four  reasons, to pressure Hamas to give up the hostages, to deter Hamas from attacking again,  to reduce Hamas’ capacity to attack, and to limit Hamas’ influence since it is very clear that Hamas’s ideological rejection of the very existence of Israel is a major barrier to an peaceful settlement.

Defenders of Israel’s war  have argued that because Hamas hides behind and underneath Gaza civilians—and clearly sought to provoke Israel to respond militarily in ways that would lead to many civilian deaths—Israel can legitimately go to war against Hamas even at the cost of many civilian deaths. Some have even held that Hama is morally responsible for all those civilian death.

But the comparison with the Allied bombing of German cities shows us why that argument from military fails. Hamas, while certainly evil, is not a mortal threat to Israel now. And it is likely to never be. That’s not to say that Hamas doesn’t intend to destroy Israel and expel or kill all Jews. But it should be obvious from this war that Hamas has no capacity to do so. Indeed, if Israel’s civilian and military leaders were not asleep at the switch the terrible devastation of October 7 would not have happened.

So, Israel has no  justification for engaging in a bombing campaign that would lead to enormous loss of civilian life.

That doesn’t mean that Israel could not, morally, take action that would lead to civilian death. It is widely, and rightly agreed, that the moral rules of how to conduct war can’t limit military action to such an extent that a legitimate defensive war cannot be fought. And after the devastating attack of October 7, Israel has a right to respond with force.

But Israel had an obligation to be scrupulous in trying to limit civilian casualties in its responses to Hamas—even if that meant taking on larger risk to its own soldiers to do so.

It is increasingly clear that its bombing campaign has not, and most likely could never have been targeted enough to be just. And sadly, it does seem that while there are examples of Israel warning before bombing and of encouraging civilians to leave areas it planned to attack, there too many examples of Israel acting with far less restraint in this war than it has in other wars and that is morally required in this one. .

And worse, it does seem that the bombing campaign has been inspired in part by the political effort on the part of Netanyahu to punish the civilians of Gaza to win back public support by appealing to the worst instincts of his base of Israelis right-wingers.

I wrote a week or so after October 7 that a just war against Hamas had to be one that mostly took place on the ground with targeted air support and that operated slowly, because that was the only kind of warfare that would limit civilian deaths. I also said that only a just war could attain the various goals of the war and especially to retrieve or force Hamas to release the hostages, to reduce Hamas’ military capacity and influence on Palestinian politics, and to do so in a way that does as little as possible to increase political support for Hamas to preserve the possibility for settlement in the future. And I wrote that Israel should lead in providing humanitarian aid for Gazans, not just because it is a moral obligation but because it would also help make a peaceful settlement possible in the future.

Instead, Israel has engaged in, if not indiscriminate bombing, then bombing that too often fails to meet the test of morality. It has done too little to provide humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza. And all that  is not just a moral but, for those of us who still hold out hope for a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, a terrible strategic failure.