Follow us on social

Israel's conduct in the war will consume us all

Israel's conduct in the war will consume us all

Netanyahu used a sledgehammer when a scalpel was the right tool — now everyone is paying the price

Analysis | Middle East

Hamas terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 1,139 Israelis – mostly civilians – on October 7, 2023. The Israeli government was fully within its rights to bring the terrorists to justice.

But nearing the one-year mark of Israel’s resultant war against Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may now be an impediment to peace rather than providing a path to it.

No one can question Israel’s right to seek justice for Hamas’s bloody massacre on 10/7 and few challenge Washington for providing military support to Israel as it seeks to punish Hamas. Yet it is entirely reasonable to question how Israel is conducting its operations, especially if it becomes apparent the Israeli government pursues a course of action that is ineffective — or worse — is making Israel less secure.

I have argued, as far back as November of last year on CNN that Netanyahu has been using military power to pursue a political objective that cannot succeed: the total elimination of Hamas. The reason is simple: one cannot kill an idea with bombs and bullets.

Israel unequivocally has the single most powerful military in the Middle East. In the aftermath of suffering a terrorist attack that caused large scale civilian casualties, it is an understandable and seductive temptation to use that military power to crush one’s enemy. But using a hammer to do a job more suited to a surgeon’s knife was always going to produce results that were anywhere from ineffective to outright self-defeating.

The task facing the Israeli government following 10/7 was monumental: how to bring justice to the political and military force of Hamas (numbering somewhere around 30,000 fighters) who were interwoven within a civilian population of approximately 2.3 million? Taking no action was never an option, so the only question was how best to conduct lethal military operations to justly degrade Hamas.

Doing the job right would have been costly to the Israeli Defense Forces in terms of both time and troops lost. Generally, the IDF could have cut the Gaza strip into sections, isolating one from the rest. They could have screened and then temporarily relocated all the civilians into other secured areas, and then methodically moved through the cordoned area to either capture or kill all the fighters. Once an area was cleared, the civilian residents could have returned, and the IDF would move to the next cordoned area.

Collateral damage would have resulted everywhere Hamas fighters chose to stand and fight, but it would have been limited. Once an area had been cleansed of terrorists, the area would be secured by other troops to limit other Hamas fighters from returning. Meanwhile the civilian population would then be allowed to return and have a safe place to live.

As the U.S. Army did with mixed success in similar scaled urban operations in Iraq, the IDF could have prioritized protecting the civilian population, keeping them supplied with internationally provided relief supplies, and sought their help in identifying and removing Hamas. If the people were given motivation in helping to eliminate Hamas and given a legitimate path to even limited self-governance with a new political entity, it is possible the Palestinians could have made the IDF’s job less difficult.

That’s what Israel could have done; that’s what using a scalpel would have looked like.

What the IDF chose to do instead, however, is to use a sledgehammer to systematically destroy virtually everything inside the Gaza strip. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been directly killed by IDF operations and hundreds of thousands more suffer from injury and disease; virtually the entire population is now at risk of famine. However many actual Hamas fighters Israel has killed are likely dwarfed by the number of Palestinian males who now hate Israel and desire revenge for the death of loved ones.

I observed firsthand in both Iraq and Afghanistan how U.S. military operations that inadvertently killed innocent Afghan and Iraqi citizens always produced more enemies for us to face. The last decade of the Afghan war — including the surge and a total of 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops supporting over 350,000 Afghan security forces — saw the number of Taliban fighters against us explode from an estimated 20,000 in 2014 to over 75,000 by 2021.

The number of men willing to take up arms against Israel today is likely many times more than the 30,000 it was last October.

The damage done to Israeli security interests over the past 11 months has been incalculable. We likely won’t know for years to come just how much damage has been done. But before any more harm is done, before Netanyahu’s sledgehammer strategy produces even worse results, Washington should demand a change of course and a genuine effort to find a ceasefire — or be willing to use our leverage and withhold major weapons and ammunition deliveries.

There remains an uncomfortably high chance the war escalates and blows up into a regional conflagration that could draw the U.S. into a direct role — strongly antithetical to our interests. American, and even Israeli, interests are best served by limiting the damage done thus far by Hamas’s terror attack last October and Israel’s counterproductive response by seeking an immediate ceasefire to allow the possibility of a long-term solution to be formed.

There will be no quick solution and no painless, cost-free ways to end this war; it took decades to get to this point and it will take decades to solve it. But things are at least manageable today. Failure to show firm U.S. leadership to bring the fighting to an end and start the long, laborious diplomatic process could result in America inadvertently getting sucked into a regional war.


A photograph, taken during an embed with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and reviewed by the IDF censorship office prior to publication, shows Israeli soldiers guarding a tunnel in the Tel al Sultan area. Credit: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa via Reuters Connect

Analysis | Middle East
Trade review process could rock the calm in US-Mexico relations
Top image credit: Rawpixel.com and Octavio Hoyos via shutterstock.com

Trade review process could rock the calm in US-Mexico relations

North America

One of the more surprising developments of President Trump’s tenure in office thus far has been the relatively calm U.S. relationship with Mexico, despite expectations that his longstanding views on trade, immigration, and narcotics would lead to a dramatic deterioration.

Of course, Mexico has not escaped the administration’s tariff onslaught and there have been occasional diplomatic setbacks, but the tenor of ties between Trump and President Claudia Sheinbaum has been less fraught than many had anticipated. However, that thaw could be tested soon by economic disagreements as negotiations open on a scheduled review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA).

keep readingShow less
Trump Rubio
Top image credit: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) is seen in the Oval Office with US President Donald Trump (left) during a meeting with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein in the Oval Office the White House in Washington DC on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. Credit: Aaron Schwartz / Pool/Sipa USA via REUTERS
The US-Colombia drug war alliance is at a breaking point

Trump poised to decertify Colombia

Latin America

It appears increasingly likely that the Trump administration will move to "decertify" Colombia as a partner in its fight against global drug trafficking for the first time in 30 years.

The upcoming determination, due September 15, could trigger cuts to hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral assistance, visa restrictions on Colombian officials, and sanctions on the country's financial system under current U.S. law. Decertification would strike a major blow to what has been Washington’s top security partner in the region as it struggles with surging coca production and expanding criminal and insurgent violence.

keep readingShow less
Trump Vance Rubio
Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

The roots of Trump's wars on terror trace back to 9/11

Global Crises

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.