The WCK tragedy wasn’t a deviation from IDF tactics. It was a demonstration of them.

Andrew Sullivan

Apr 05, 2024

The atrocities of October 7 — like the 9/11 mass murder of Americans — were cunningly designed to provoke an over-reaction. That’s how asymmetric warfare works. The Al-Aqsa Flood consciously mimicked Nazi tactics to inflict a psychic wound on Israelis as traumatic as any since the Shoah. The goal? To prompt an over-the-top response that could then be leveraged into further international pressure on Israel.

The key condition of the success of this strategy, of course, was Hamas’ despicable willingness to sacrifice tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children to undo the incipient Saudi-Israeli rapprochement and to provoke one more mass-casualty event which future Palestinians would be willing to avenge.

And so far … it’s worked out just as Hamas intended, hasn’t it?

The Israelis did not merely fall into the trap Hamas laid; they jumped into it headfirst, and unleashed a war of terrifying devastation on a largely defenseless population, in which Hamas was embedded. Israel did this totally understandably — given the horror of Hamas’ murder, rape, and torture of 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of 240 more. Israel had always been willing to conduct warfare against Hamas in which Palestinian deaths were overwhelmingly greater than Israeli deaths — because Hamas gave them little choice. But this time, understandably, incandescent rage was an added twist.

That’s precisely when you don’t go to war: when your emotions are in hyper-drive. But if you do go to war in such an emotionally fraught moment, when every reservist and IDF soldier is understandably filled with shock and anger, you have to be extra-extra-careful to lay out and enforce clear rules of warfare. You have to over-emphasize the need for restraint, the vital importance of distinguishing between terrorists and bystanders, if you aren’t going to blunder into self-defeating war crimes — as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the torture sites set up by Bush and Cheney.

Netanyahu’s government, of course, did the opposite. In the first few weeks of the war, Israelis appear to have loosened, rather than tightened, the rules of warfare that exist to protect the innocent. Five hundred 2,000-pound bombs were dropped on the tiny, sealed-off enclave, turning it into what looks from the photographs like a Hiroshima of the Middle East. (Last week the Biden administration signed off on sending Israel 1,800 more of these bombs, which the US dropped just once in its fight against ISIS in 2017.) And if these massive bombs were needed to penetrate Hamas’ warren of tunnels, why, one wonders, are the vast majority of them still intact?

Attempts to evacuate civilians from Gaza City were also haphazard when they existed. Allegedly safe areas for civilians turned out to be unsafe. Thousands of dead children have been dug from the rubble, “collateral damage” that was nonetheless conscious and pre-planned. “Deconfliction” zones were set up and often ignored.

The destruction of the WCK food convoy this week has to be seen in this “bomb first, ask questions later” context. I first assumed it was the kind of mistake that happens during war and at night. But we now know it’s more damning than that. Haaretz reports the IDF suspected a Hamas terrorist was in a truck that was originally part of the WCK convoy. The NYT says they mistook his bag for a gun. After a stop at a warehouse, three cars left, clearly marked, in a deconfliction zone. Here’s what happened next, according to Haaretz:

The cars traveled along a route pre-approved and coordinated with the IDF. … Some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two cars. They continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later, another missile hit their car. The third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike — in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them. All seven World Central Kitchen volunteers were killed in the strike.

One was an American citizen. To hit one car is a misfortune; to destroy three cars consecutively on a pre-approved route, not so much. The cars were clearly marked and in a deconfliction zone — but the IDF policy is to target anywhere Hamas could be present, even if some civilians were killed. As we’ll see, one dead Hamas member and seven dead civilians was well within the margin of error Israel had set for itself. So it appears they methodically took out each car to make sure they finished the job.

No, I don’t believe that Israel deliberately murdered the aid workers; but I do think that, in context, the IDF’s effective rules of engagement — strike places like hospitals and schools because Hamas is there, even though there will be many civilian casualties — made this kind of indifference to human life possible. So much other evidence points to a free-for-all in Gaza: the trigger-happy IDF has even killed Israeli hostages; and this wasn’t even the first IDF attack on a WCK vehicle. Just last Saturday,

an IDF sniper fired at a car headed to a food warehouse in the Khan Yunis area. He hit the car’s windshield, but the volunteer inside was unharmed. The World Central Kitchen immediately filed a complaint with the IDF after the incident, and demanded the army stop the fire toward its staff, and guarantee their safety when distributing food in the Gaza Strip, which is carried out with full coordination.

This comes after the second bloody destruction of the Al Shifa Hospital. It comes after Israel has largely abandoned the north of Gaza to lawlessness, violence, and looting. It comes after Israel violated international norms, if not the law precisely, by attacking a foreign embassy in Damascus where Iranians were plotting (proof of the IDF’s capacity for surgical precision in bombing, so strikingly absent in Gaza).

And then we got reports this week of an IDF artificial-intelligence program that directed the bombings in the first part of the war, and targeted Hamas operatives in their private homes as they slept at night — targets found by algorithms. This AI program, according to +972 Magazine, went by the name of “Where’s Daddy?” No, I did not make that up. Is it possible the IDF is mocking and taunting the children it targets and kills? What sick sadism promoted this?

IDF sources told +972 they used algorithms to guess who was in Hamas and who wasn’t; and then used dumb bombs to kill them along with their families. (They calculated a likely 10 percent error rate.) As an IDF officer explained: “In war, there is no time to incriminate every target. So you’re willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it.” The only check by a human they used was to determine if the target was male or female. If female, they called it off.

The rules for civilian casualties at the start of the war were that you could kill up to 20 civilians while assassinating a junior Hamas operative and 100 for a senior one. In one case — the assassination of Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade — they decided that 300 civilian casualties were justified. (The WCK hit was well within those guidelines). And the tactics they routinely used — the use of massive dumb bombs in densely populated civilian areas — bear that kind of ratio out. This is a little different than “collateral damage” as we usually understand it. Because of Hamas tactics and the failure to evacuate civilians, the IDF knows full well in advance that it will kill innocents. It’s not an accident. It’s integrated into the plan. It has to be. And sometimes, it appears meretricious. According to another report from +972:

The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.

The basic rule was: if there’s a chance Hamas is operating somewhere, attack. Civilians will be killed because Hamas wants them to be killed, and the alternative is surrender. But once you loosen the structures this way, once soldiers become accustomed to routinely killing large numbers of civilians in urban warfare, each murder of each innocent can come to seem less awful than the last. IDF soldiers are also Israeli citizens and human beings, often painfully young. They know the polling that shows hefty support for 10/7 among civilian Gazans. Without heroic efforts to enforce the laws of war, you will end up in brutal tribal warfare where the lines between civilians and soldiers is all but erased. Hence some of the truly sickening videos we have seen of IDF soldiers mocking their victims and celebrating the destruction of mosques and buildings.

The WCK over-reach was therefore not a violation of the broader “bomb first, ask questions later” policy; it was a vivid demonstration of it. Countless Palestinians have been killed in similar incidents for months now. It’s only when foreign nationals are the object of this form of reckless aggression that we wake up to the hideous reality.

“Bomb first” also helps explain why so many aid workers have died in this conflict: after 10/7, a staggering 161 aid workers were killed in Gaza in just the last weeks of 2023. That total is larger than all aid-worker deaths worldwide in every year since 1997. Compare that total to the number of aid workers killed by Russia last year in its disgusting war in Ukraine: 15.

The logic behind all this — aided and abetted by the Israel lobby in the US for decades — is that the entirety of Gaza and the West Bank should forever be under Israeli sovereignty and increasingly populated by Jewish extremists; and this new Israel should deal with Palestinian resistance by periodically “mowing the lawn” — and family trees — to protect their own citizens and to shore up deterrence. That’s where the Israeli majority now is. It’s why they have a right-wing government.

But think of the lawn metaphor and how it reduces human lives to vegetation, and you begin to see how the West is increasingly unable to support its own core values and be good allies to Israel. If Israel continues to treat its allies, even the United States, with barely veiled contempt, and blithely ignores all entreaties to moderate, Western public opinion will continue to shift the way it already has. Israel is not just losing Biden, the most pro-Zionist president in memory. It’s not just losing the next generation. It is also losing Trump.

That is, of course, why Hamas launched their wicked attack in the first place. Unlike the Israelis, they were looking ahead strategically. Those still alive must be staggered at how successful they have been. And how this horror will become the most effective recruitment machine they ever had.

Scotland’s Police State

In America, the First Amendment mercifully stands in the way of the worst woke totalitarian impulses. But elsewhere in the West? In Canada or Scotland, for example? The logic of criminalizing “hate” is indistinguishable in practice from the logic of criminalizing speech.

Scotland’s new hate-crime law ascribes a criminal penalty to someone who might communicate or behave in a way that “a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting.” So, to take a salient example, to argue that a trans woman remains a biological man would doubtless be regarded as insulting by many reasonable trans women. So, is saying so now a crime in the country that helped give us the Enlightenment?

The law also encourages ordinary citizens to report other citizens for “hate speech.” Within 48 hours, in a mass Salem-style event, around 4,000 accusations were leveled. The speech involved includes words uttered in private homes. Can you imagine how many teenagers have already reported their parents to the cops? The Scots have created their own version of the Stasi. And think of all the Chinese children who condemned their parents during the Cultural Revolution.

How enforceable is it? JK Rowling — peace be upon her — instantly challenged it by posting on Twitter her views sex and gender. And the cops said she wouldn’t be prosecuted. So we know it will apply only to those less prominent, which is the way cancel culture truly works — from below. Lose a feisty debate over a few drinks with a mate on whether sex trumps gender or vice-versa? Call the cops on your debating partner! The goal of course is to enforce by law the precepts of critical gender and queer theory — which dictate that there is no difference between men and women except our treatment of them.

The term for that is soft totalitarianism. Resist!

New On The Dishcast: Neil J. Young

Neil is a writer and historian. He used to be a contributing columnist at The Week, and he now co-hosts the “Past Present” history podcast. His first book was We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics, and his new one is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on when the Postal Service snooped on gay men’s letters, and Trump’s growing support among gays and lesbians. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s episode with Danny Finkelstein on his Holocaust memoir, as well as a continued thread over my talk with Richard Dawkins. Plus, more readers sound off on noise pollution and rescue dogs, with pics!

Money Quotes For The Week

“Blinken says that Ukraine will be joining NATO. Under Article 5, this means that an attack on Ukraine will be considered an attack on the United States. If you want World War 3, vote Biden in November,” – David Sacks.

“I was told [by ESPN execs], ‘You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script’ … To the word. Every single question was scripted,” – Sage Steele on her 2021 interview with President Biden.

“Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins,” – Tom Stoppard.

“Not only was [Nex] Benedict’s story not a tale of transphobic ‘hate’ and ‘bullying’ leading to suicide, it was something like the opposite: an example of how for troubled teenagers, ‘gender identity’ can be a mask for much deeper forms of psychological trauma that cannot be addressed through hormones, surgical interventions, or using the “right” bathroom,” – Park MacDougald on new revelations over Nex’s suicide — deeply tragic, but, like the facts about Matthew Shepard and the Pulse shooting, not demonstrations of transphobia or homophobia.

“New long-term study from The Netherlands finds the desire to be the opposite sex in adolescence is common, temporary, and declines with age,” – Christina Buttons.

“What’s the wound to lesbianism really, if the category of women is expanded to include trans women? … How are they actually suffering? It seems to me that what they’re suffering from is a kind of hatred or phobia that is overwhelming to them,” – Judith Butler.

Yglesias Award Nominee

“It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements. I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond,” – Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law.

Dissents Of The Week

A reader writes:

Your piece on Joe Lieberman left me in shock. I have no problem with your disdain for Netanyahu, the ugly political coalition he leads, or the settler fanatics he either tolerates or encourages. But when you refer to “real compromise with Palestinians,” I wonder who you think the Palestinians are with whom Netanyahu (or any Israeli prime minister) should compromise. Rabin tried to compromise with Arafat. Arafat declined. Olmert tried to compromise with Abbas. Abbas declined.  Sharon ended the occupation of Gaza.

And your comparison — twice — of Israel’s campaign in Gaza to Putin’s destruction of Grozny was particularly obnoxious. Faced with the unique circumstance of a foe who doesn’t merely hide among urban innocents, but operates in havens far underneath them, what exactly do you think Israel should have done? If your answer is to put more Israeli soldiers and fewer Palestinian civilians at risk, say so. I wonder how that argument would have played to the American public in August 1945. Alternatively, if your argument is that Israel should have left Gaza to fester and instead built better defenses at home, I wonder how that would have played to the American public after 9/11.

Wars have consequences. Many more Germans were ejected from homes they had occupied for centuries in the Sudetenland and East Prussia in 1945 than Palestinians who fled or were chased from what is now Israel in 1948. Are their descendants still creating maps that show what was, instead of what is?

A couple of points. If Hamas had the capacity to carpet-bomb Israeli cities night after night, as the Nazis did to British cities, I would accept the analogy. But they have nowhere near that capacity, which has to change the moral equation.

Or take the terror wrought by the IRA. Would it have justified the Brits doing to Londonderry what the Israelis have done to Gaza — with tens of thousands of dead civilians? The IRA used psychologically potent attacks: they nearly killed half the cabinet, including the prime minister; they murdered the Royal patriarch Lord Mountbatten. But the Brits did not turn Derry into a wasteland because of it. They viewed even terror-supporters as citizens and human beings, understood that an act of such devastating revenge would turbo-charge terrorism, cut Britain off from the US, and become a dark stain on British honor. Netanyahu, emboldened by decades of unconditional US support, decided to risk all of that — without even a plausible end-game. That’s why he’s still in his murderous quagmire months after the original attack.

And, yes, the American public demanded a similar response after 9/11. I did. But we were wrong! Hundreds of thousands died, and the US lost its standing in the world, just as Israel is taking a huge hit right now.

Another writes, “I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it too”:

You wrote, “Hamas’ desperate attempt to regain relevance by the hideous, Nazi-style crimes” — and then go on to describe what Israel is doing is “Grozny-style” obliteration. So instead of comparing Israel’s response to Hamas to the US response to Nazi aggression (bombing of Dresden), you use Putin’s aggression in Grozny to describe Israel’s self-defense war to bring down Hamas. Please pick a single metaphor for the Israel war in Gaza and not try to compare Israel to Putin’s aggression.

As we saw this past week, after Israel cleared northern and central Gaza and Al-Shifa Hospital a few months ago, they were forced to go back into the hospital and fight Hamas and PIJ from waiting room to operating room. Not a single patient or employee was injured in the hospital, while 700+ terrorists were killed or apprehended. While Hamas was hiding among the patients and literally firing from emergency rooms, Israel was evacuating the patients to safety.

The Nazi metaphor is appropriate, since Nazis just like Hamas did not care for their own people and used them as cannon fodder. To Hamas, a dead Palestinian is a martyr, so they embed themselves deep in the population and even in hospitals. And yet Gazans still support 10/7 by big majorities. So please, don’t toss out a sentence on how bad October 7th was for Israel and then spend numerous paragraphs comparing Lieberman and Netanyahu to Putin. It is at best disingenuous or at worst malicious.

I address most of these points above and in my column. But you know why they had to go back to Al Shifa hospital? Because they left northern Gaza unpoliced and ungoverned, just as we did in Baghdad. Chaos begets chaos. And chaos makes war crimes more likely.

As always, please keep the the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Mental Health Break

The late great Leslie Nielsen:

Sully Unplugged (And A Bit Stoned)

Two nights ago, I joined the Fifth Column for a long podcast convo.

In The ‘Stacks

• Park MacDougald doubts that Biden’s latest “red line” to Bibi will amount to much.
• No Labels is a no-go.
• The bubble is starting to burst for Truth Social already.
• Barro draws attention to the deficit — and how it’s going to cost you. Both parties don’t care.
• Jay Kuo contends that “Florida just upended the election” with three court rulings on abortion and cannabis.
• Christina Buttons points to “groundbreaking study” showing that puberty blockers shrink your balls.
• Glenn and John debate Keith Ellison, the nemesis of the dubious documentary Fall of Minneapolis. Fantastic pod.
• A cop explains neck restraints.
• Taibbi tussles with Briahna Joy Gray over censorship and which party needs more pressure. Mickey jumps in.
• People increasingly want Florida Man as their neighbor.
• Noah Smith tackles the “perverse incentives of euthanasia.” This 28 year old is scheduled to die for mental health reasons.
• Louise Perry argues that cancel culture is mostly a feminine problem.
• Why was Mike Tyson never cancelled?
• Does the MSM have a racial double-standard when it comes to mass shootings?
• The woke prophecies of Titania McGrath are uncanny.
• Copyranter raves over these moronic ads.
• Discover ‘stacks around the world using this globe. And Nellie toasts a new series, to your health!

The View From Your Window Contest

Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a View From Your Window book or two annual Dish subscriptions.

See you next Friday.