Getting some perspective on the War in Gaza
Regarding the costs of war, just to put things in perspective [translated from a piece by Brigadier General (res.) Shuki Shichrur, a former chief of staff of the Israeli Northern Command]:
Fallujah lies 70km west-north-west to Baghdad. In 2004, it had between 200 and 300 thousand residents. From early 2004, it was under control of Jihadist extremists related to Al-Qaeda. The city exported terrorism all around it and so was the target of a large US operation which ended, after severe pressure from the local Iraqi government, in an unofficial ceasefire. This ceasefire was used, as all ceasefires in this region are used, to arm up and deepen the attacks against coalition forces as well as tighten the Islamist’s grip over Fallujah.
On the 7th of November 2004, at dawn, the Americans officially got tired of it, and started a large scale operation which lasted till 23/12/04. Americans operated 3 divisionary battle teams whose size and number are similar to the number of forces Israel is currently employing in its current operation in Gaza, and fought against an estimated 3,000 Islamists.
Approximately two thirds of the residents of Fallujah escaped when fighting started. When the fighting ceased, the city had, according to US sources, 6,000 dead civilians, some 2-3% of the city residents, approx 85% of the total dead, in addition to 1,000 terrorists. Between 9,000-10,000 houses of the total of 50,000 houses in Fallujah were completely destroyed as welll as 26,000 houses which needed repair to some degree. Among the destroyed buildings there were 65 mosques out of a total of 200 mosques in the city, 60 schools which were used according to the Americans as weapons caches and shelter from American fire. 77 soldiers from the army, the marines task force and the 82nd airborne, some of the best of the US has, died in battle, 30 of them by the 16th day of fighting.
The operation is considered by the Americans a success and a milestone in the long war in Iraq, even though no one from Fallujah fired, even once, a rocket on an American school or kindergarten and even though American soldiers were fighting 10,000km from home and not 10,000m like IDF soldiers.
I don’t remember criticism in the world regarding Fallujah.
The IDF is fighting in Gaza against a force of some 16,000 Hamas combatants, organized in 6 divisions, trained for urban warfare and with capabilities far superior to those of the Fallujah Islamists.
According to the Palestinians, some 900 people have died from IDF fire which represent 0.0007% of the 1.4 million residents of Gaza. Most, at least two-thirds of them, are indeed combatants, and only as much as a third of them, even according to the Palestinian figures, are civilian casualties.
As far as we know, the IDF has destroyed so far 10 mosques, and even in the worst case estimates, the number of houses destroyed in Gaza is significantly lower than the number of houses destroyed in much-smaller Fallujah.
Fallujah is not an exceptional case of densely populated urban warfare.
The stories from the Casbah in Algiers of the late 50s or Grozny the capitol of Chechnya in 1999 are many times worse, but they can serve to illuminate us. They can give us some perspective: to the complexity of the warfare undertaken by the IDF today in Gaza; to the unavoidable cost civilians ultimately pay in such situations; to strengthen the claim that the IDF today is indeed a surgical precision army, under terribly complex circumstances, as professional as can be; and that the IDF or Israel do not need to justify themselves to any foreign army or society who under similar circumstances would be doing orders of magnitude worse.
Whoever peers deep into the second Fallujah battle, whose American Army’s pride rests upon, cannot help being awestruck and amazed by the IDF in Gaza, considering the proportionality involved.
Tagged as 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, 4gw, cast lead, civilian casualties, fallujah, gaza, hamas, idf, international law, Iraq, Israeli-Arab Conflict, proportionality, shuki shichrur, Terrorism, urban warfare, War + Categorized as Current Events
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israeli: a major victory
[...] (Reply to this) telecart 2009-01-17 03:35 pm UTC (link) You appear to be hopelessly naive. Few people here take pleasure in innocent Gazans dying. It’s heartbreaking. But it’s an unfortunate outcome of Gaza being ruled by a fanatic Jihadist organization that refused to extend the ceasefire. We really tried our best to avoid this conflict, but we have no illusions of our place in the region.I suggest to get a greater perspective on the complexity of urban warfare. [...]
It is very well written.
Unfortunately it is not that Israel is doing anything worse than other countries, but rather that other countries have not yet fully comprehended that this is not 1947 and in fact, we don’t need their permission. The hypocritical attitude toward Israel’s policy which is by far more humane and caring than any other country that finds itself in war situation makes me as always sick.
I offer another option to the “spectator sport” theory, people watch our little region so they wont have to deal with the horrific awful awful goings on in Africa, ironically brought about by our greatest criticizers.
Hey, thanks, I didn’t write it, I only translated it.
There’s a certain fetishism about the Israeli-Arab conflict which no single explanation I’ve heard ever fully satisfied me.
You’re right about one thing though, it sure ain’t 1947. With today’s pomo sensibilities, no way would the UN approve the establishment of Israel. The very idea of the nation state isn’t considered politically correct these days, even though most states in the world are in fact nation states, and have ethnocentric citizenship laws.
The notion of ownership of land is something that has somewhat changed since the days Israel was established. Generally speaking, throughout history most borders of most states were determined through either impassable natural boundaries or war. This is undisputed. Only in very recent history has the notion that indigenous people have rights over land beyond war has become acceptable. Moreover, the notion that land cannot be gained through warfare is also now unacceptable. But these ideas have become popular only in very recent history, and even then, have been excused for some parties while not for others.
Furthermore, the accepted notion in 1947, or at least in 1917 when Balfour made his famous declaration, was that the Jews had anyway the most right to claim being aboriginal to the land they called Palestine. And besides, it is British land, legally acquired by war, and they can do with it as they please.
I think Balfour’s remark form 1920 is very telling of the prevalent attitude:
Basically, the British and the League of Nations are “kind” enough to allow Arabs self rule – a first in many hundreds of years – and that all they ask in return is that they accept a solution to the Jewish problem in their land – which Jews have been trying to reach for millennia, but only since emancipation could they seriously consider achieving.
Great post.
Thanks =]