When Collateral Damage Is the Strategy

W.J. Astore

Buildings destroyed, civilians killed, millions made refugees: mission accomplished

In Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, so-called collateral damage (a terrifying euphemism) isn’t a regrettable cost of destroying Hamas. It’s the very strategy and goal of Israel’s response.

Israel* has already killed five thousand Palestinian children, but that’s spun as the regrettable price of destroying Hamas. More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed already, and I’ve seen reports of 46 journalists and 190 doctors and nurses among the dead. Babies are dying in hospitals due to Israeli attacks on the same and disruptions in power and medical supplies.

International law doesn’t seem to matter. What matters to Israel is expelling the Palestinians; to paraphrase what Tacitus once said of the Romans, Israel is creating a wasteland of rubble in Gaza and calling it “peace.”

They create a wasteland of rubble and call it “peace”

Israel’s goal is simple: the creation of new facts on the ground. Gaza is being rendered uninhabitable for Palestinians even as Hamas is being hunted down and decimated.

Israel recognizes Hamas is both an idea and the people who represent that idea; far easier it is to kill people than the idea, but if you can’t kill the idea, at least kill Hamas members and push Palestinians out of Gaza, mainly by bombing, blockade, and further invasion.

The end game is a land grab. Israel wants to annex Gaza after it’s made Palestinian-free. Palestinians will be pushed into the Sinai Peninsula or elsewhere. Collateral damage doesn’t matter because it’s inseparable from the strategy. In some sense, it is the strategy.

Since the US government has defined no “red lines” for Israel while promising a $14 billion gift in deadly arms, I’m not surprised Israel’s government assumes it can do whatever it wants. After all, President Biden has pledged his total and unconditional support to the right-wing rulers of Israel.

6000 bombs in six days. That was the initial sign that Israel had far more ambitious goals in sight than neutralizing Hamas. Gaza may yet cease to exist, its territory absorbed into Israel, the Palestinians forced out into tent cities or worse. With unconditional US support, Israel may well prevail in this ethnic cleansing, but at immense cost not only to Palestinians but to Jews as well.

*I realize many brave Israelis have resisted and condemned the actions of their right-wing government. I wish to acknowledge their clarity of purpose and moral courage.

6 thoughts on “When Collateral Damage Is the Strategy”

  2. Propaganda. Hamas’ is recognized as terrorist & does not respect anyone’s human life. Their main objective is to destroy Israel & to kill all Jews. Do you support terrorism? They use the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza & the hostages as human shields & are willing to sacrifice their lives to meet their two objectives.

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    1. Does Hamas have the power “to destroy Israel & to kill all Jews”? It does not.

      It appears Israel has the power to destroy Gaza and to kill or expel all the Palestinians there. That’s not propaganda. Those are the grim facts happening before our eyes. Israel has already killed more than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, including more than 5000 children. Is that “propaganda”?

      I deplore the 10/7 attacks by Hamas on Israel and the killing of approximately 1200 Jews. But this terrorist act does not justify the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza. Must Israel kill 10 times as many Palestinians, or 100 times as many, for “justice”?

      Dead people, whether Israeli or Palestinian, are not “propaganda.” They are the grim facts of war. And unless we end these wars, all we’ll see is more dead.

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      1. Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Yet Hamas’ has announced their plan to repeat the October 7th massacre a 2nd time, a 3ed time, a 4th time, as long as it takes to destroy Israel & kill all the Jews. I agree with you that Israel needs to do much better in protecting & avoiding the killing of Palestinian civilians, especially women, children, & the elderly. By propaganda I meant I did not feel you were as evenhanded in your original narrative. Your reply to me did a better job of addressing the unprovoked attack & the slaughter of Israeli civilians, especially families, babies, young children, & women.

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    2. We have to make distinctions between insane rhetoric such as Hamas enunciates versus the reality that Israel holds a vast power with the 6th largest military in the world while being backed by the largest military in the world, the U.S.. To take Hamas at their word, this tiny insurrectionary force, as if it can seriously threaten Israel, is totally absurd. The real threat to Israel is that it is self-destructing, from a moral and ethical perspective. It is fast losing support from its previous friends all over the world with this utter destruction (ie bombing of civilians) which is shown on tens of millions of screens and to hear of the children being killed and the indifference of Israel’s right wing leaders, who show a complete lack of empathy at the destruction that is being wrought.

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