"What's Wrong With Us?"

Another year, another war in Gaza. As with every renewed cycle of violence in the Holy Land, Exonians took to social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to express their beliefs about the conflict. This is nothing new. What was remarkable, however, about this cycle of postings was the immense variety of viewpoints students expressed. To be sure, there were touches of radicalism; in one post which generated over eighty comments, a recently graduated senior expressed frustration at those who criticized Israel’s defense of “a land ordained by God.” Yet, by and large, Exonians seemed open to having their views challenged and ready to engage in a constructive debate about the conflict. From a black woman's perspective on Zionism to a seven-point list of things to consider before picking sides, our peers seemed to acknowledge that, regardless of their views on Israel as a state, its conduct in Gaza was at least worth discussing.

This is not so, however, for the American public at large. In a poll taken by the Pew Research Center between July 24 and 27, only 25 per cent of Americans think that Israel has “gone too far” with Operation Protective Edge. A further 35 percent believe Israel’s use of force has been “about right,” while another 15 percent hold that Israel has “not gone far enough.” Finally, 24 percent of Americans claim that they “don’t know,” which essentially means “I don’t really care.” Put together, these numbers mean that almost three-quarters of Americans are basically “ok” with the situation in Gaza.

It is important that we define what we mean by “Israel’s response.” The Pew poll was not about support for Israel in general. If support for Israel means acknowledgement of its right to exist, then I am a supporter of Israel. This poll was gauging support for Israel’s conduct during the military campaign. Not justification, or reasoning; conduct. According to the United Nations, as of August 12, 72 percent of the 1,814 Gazans killed were civilians. Even the Israel Defense Forces only accounts for 900 of the dead as combatants, leaving over 50 percent as civilian deaths. These are not abstract numbers; these are hundreds of human lives extinguished—shopkeepers and teachers, mothers and children. To put this in perspective, a tiny fraction of such destruction threw the entire United States into mourning when it occurred on Boylston Street in Boston, and the realization that death on this scale was occurring in Kurdistan resulted in public support for American air strikes against ISIS. Why doesn’t it shock us when it happens in Gaza?

Some contend that this conflict has nothing to do with us. This argument, however, does not stand up under pressure. According to an April 2014 congressional report, the Obama administration has requested over 3.1 billion dollars in Foreign Military Assistance to Israel for the 2015 fiscal year alone, as part of a 2007 agreement between the Bush Administration and Israel to provide over 30 billion dollars in military aid between 2007 and 2018. The July 16th air strike which hit four Palestinian boys playing soccer on the beach in Gaza was executed by a plane manufactured in America by American workers, financed by the taxes our parents pay. Others could attribute this lack of shock to the famed “value-action gap,” when the values of an individual do not correlate to his or her actions. The vast majority of Americans value human life and object, at least in theory, to the death of innocent people. If Americans refuse to condemn Israel’s actions, is it not simple hypocrisy?

See Rehumanizing, A5

Unfortunately, the answer is no. The American public has historically shown itself to be, if not comfortable with civilian casualties on a large scale, not expressly uncomfortable either. Most Americans are not bad people, and the same goes for most members of the American military. With a few notable exceptions, the United States has tried to steer clear of deliberately targeting civilian populations in war, a distinction which only a minority of the world’s nations can claim. The fact remains, however, that we have never internalized “minimal harm” as a core value for the wars we wage. Rather, we seem to have found a way to tune civilian casualties out. The initial phase of the Iraq War, lasting until April 30, 2003, is often celebrated as an impressively quick victory, with the speedy toppling of Saddam Hussein, before the war became an eight-year ordeal. According to Iraq Body Count, over 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by coalition forces in that initial phase, but only once 4,500 Americans were killed over the next eight years did the war lose its attractiveness. In Vietnam, too, we see that certain statistics matter more than others; surely the 58,000 Americans killed is a tragedy, but the lowest estimates for Vietnamese civilians killed exceeds 400,000. This is not to discount American deaths, but it is important to note that mainstream American opposition to war has always been more to the tune of “bring our boys home,” rather than “stop killing innocent people.”

Perhaps this is why most Americans do not actively disagree with Israel’s actions in Gaza; in Israel, we see a country that wages war much like we do. War is never pretty, modern war least of all, but that does not mean a moral compass must be abandoned. The third criteria of St. Thomas Aquinas’s “just war theory” is that governments should attempt “the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.” Unfortunately, powerful states like the U.S. or Israel have increasingly replaced “the advancement of good” with “tactical victory.” When we see Israel “mowing the grass” in Gaza, we understand that it is not dissimilar from “shock and awe” in Iraq, or “collateral damage” in Vietnam; we see a state willing to do bad things in order to achieve its goals. We like our sense of security, and by admitting this, we admit that on a fundamental level we can live with civilian casualties.

There will be other conflicts in the Holy Land. As noted by The Huffington Post columnist Ali A. Rizvi, “There are only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity. And none of them are pretty.” Next time we see pictures of rubble and dead children on our newsfeeds, perhaps we should refrain from asking “what’s wrong with Israel?” Perhaps we should ask “what’s wrong with us?”