Gaza Is Gen Z’s First Real War

Many young people grew up believing war was passé and peace was normal.

By Walter Russell Mead - Nov. 20, 2023

Wonder Land: Hamas knew that after Oct. 7 the narrative would shift to the isolation of Israel. Images: Zuma Press/AFP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

Is Israel’s war with Hamas a war crime? At a recent (entirely civil and non-confrontational) event at Bard College, a student suggested that this was the case. After all, there have been at least 11,000 casualties since the Oct. 7 terror attack that launched the war, and the majority dead have been civilians. Thousands were children. How, the Bard students and many of their peers around the country and the world ask, could all this not be a war crime? And even if Hamas’s initial attack was itself a war crime and not a “legitimate act of resistance against an occupying power,” isn’t the larger loss of civilian life in Israel’s subsequent attacks just as bad?

I could have turned the session into a debate about the underlying merits of the Palestinian and Israeli causes or a technical discussion of the laws of war. Instead, being a professor, I turned the discussion to the history of war. One night in March 1945, U.S. planes dropped incendiary bombs over Tokyo killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians. Incomplete estimates from Japan put the total death toll from allied bombing raids as high as 500,000. All told, there were an estimated 38 million civilian deaths in World War II, more than twice the approximately 15 million deaths of soldiers in combat.

As for the treatment of enemy civilians, at the 1945 Potsdam Conference the U.S. agreed to the forcible removal of about 12 million Germans, again largely civilian and many children and elderly, from lands their ancestors had inhabited for centuries. Many of the expulsions took place in winter amid terrible scenes of hunger and deprivation, all while mass rapes of German women slowly subsided across the Soviet zone of Germany.

Lawyers and legislators can debate whether these actions constitute war crimes, but as Cicero put it more than two thousand years ago, “inter arma enim silent leges.” Roughly, that translates as the “laws go silent when armies clash.” Or as William Tecumseh Sherman put it more succinctly, “War is hell.”

One reason the news from Gaza has so massively affected the younger generation is that they have grown up considering peace to be normal and natural. The war in Gaza hasn’t merely introduced young Americans to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also has shown them the face of war.

After the horrors of World War II, Americans did everything to build a stable and at least relatively peaceful world order. This order was far from perfect. It tolerated and, in some cases, protected gross economic, social, racial and national injustices. And some of the little wars Americans fought to defend it, as policy makers at the time believed, were as brutal as the world wars of the 20th century.

But the world order prevented the eruption of global conflicts on the scale of the great wars with casualties reckoned by the tens of millions. It also permitted generations of Americans to grow up in a bubble. For younger generations, war was passé. Foreign policy henceforth would involve promoting equitable development in poor countries, extending the definition of human rights, promoting global public health, fighting climate change and perfecting the body of international law.

War has other ideas. The American-led world order is under attack abroad, even as Americans have increasingly abandoned their commitment to preserving it. The result, inevitably, is a gradual and perhaps sudden return to the lawlessness and violence that marks a world at war.

Israelis and Palestinians don’t live in the post-historical bubble. More than 300,000 Syrian civilians are believed to have been killed during a decade of civil war, and millions more have been driven from their homes. Elsewhere, an estimated 100,000 Armenians fled their homes in terror this year. Roughly six million Sudanese have done so in the current civil war. Industrial-scale slaughters of the innocent, and the flight of millions of refugees are the new normal in their neighborhood. Jihadi bands and Wagner mercenaries are sowing chaos and death across the Sahel. About 370,000 have died in the Yemen war.

Gaza introduced Gen Z to the true horror of war. In the short run, Hamas’s propaganda machine is enlisting images of suffering Palestinians to foil Israeli efforts to break its power in Gaza.

The real question, though, for the future of America and the world isn’t whether hot-headed college students will march for Hamas. It’s whether as they mature, they come to understand how fragile and important peace is and take up the task of defending it. If not, war won’t be something they see on cellphones and spout slogans about. It will be the force that shapes and determines their lives.-

About: Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead — Opinion Columnist, Global View at The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)

Gaza Is Gen Z’s First Real War - WSJ

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Two takeaways from an intense mission to the Middle East

21.11.2023 Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission

HR/VP Blog -?During the last?days,?I?went to Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan.?Back to Brussels, I?would like to share two main takeaways: on the one hand, a sense of absolute urgency,?particularly due to?the dramatic situation?in Gaza,?and on the other, a sense of tenuous hope?about a?shared desire to work?towards a lasting peace in the region.

It has been?five very?busy?days.?In Israel,?I met?President Herzog,?Foreign Affairs?Minister?Cohen,?Minister Ganz, members of?the?Israeli Defence?Forces, two groups of?family members of hostages?held in Gaza and leading figures from civil society. I then travelled to Ramallah, headquarter of the Palestinian Authority,?where?I met?President Abbas,?Prime Minister?Shatyyeh?and?Foreign Minister?Malki, as well as leading figures from?Palestinian?civil society. I?also?discussed?with?the?UN?agencies?working in the West Bank and Gaza.?

During the following days,?I?participated?at the Manama Dialogue?in Bahrain, where I?met?Saudi Foreign?Affairs?Minister?Prince Faisal?Bin Farhan,?Bahrain Foreign Affairs?Minister?Al?Zayani?and?many?regional?and?international?actors.?I then travelled to Qatar, where I met the?Prime Minister and?Foreign Affairs?Minister?Al?Thani?and finally to Jordan?where I was received by?King Abdullah?II.

I?am?not going to report on each of these?activities?in this blog.?Instead,?I would like to share with you?two?main?takeaways?from?this trip.?On the one hand, a sense of absolute urgency, and on the other, a sense of tenuous hope.?

Absolute urgency for the civilian population in Gaza

In terms of?absolute?urgency,?representatives of UN?agencies?and the Palestinian Authority?informed us?in detail?of?the dramatic situation of the civilian population in Gaza regarding?the?lack of water, food,?medical assistance, and shelter resulting from the siege imposed on?the enclave?at a time when rain and cold are arriving.?

They?also?presented?us?with?the?figures?of?death and?destruction brought by the?bombing and the?military operations.?More than 40 % of the housing has been demolished?in Gaza?and more than 12 000 persons have died according to Gaza health authorities, of which nearly 5000 were children.?The?information received on the?situation on the ground in Gaza?unfortunately confirmed?the worst fears we could have had on this subject before our departure.?

The Israeli military?explained?to?us?their plan to create?a?small?safe?area?along the?sea?in the southern part?of Gaza?to concentrate there the civilian population?in order to?carry out ground operations in the south of the enclave.?This did?not reassure me about the future course of events,?if we?fail to achieve a rapid?and durable?de-escalation of?the?military operations.

Very moving meetings with families?of hostages

My two meetings with families?of hostages?were a very moving moment during this trip. It?made fully understandable the shock that the Israeli society suffered from the Hamas attack.?For many of them the?memory of the?Holocaust?resurfaced?again: “they did it to us just because we are jews”.?

Some?families?reported about the health problems from which many?hostages?suffer. This?underlined, if necessary, the absolute urgency of moving forward on their release to have a chance of returning them alive to their families. They asked me to do all?that?I?could?to?help?release them. I have raised the issue?with all my interlocutors during this trip.?

I?also?visited?the kibbutz of?Be’eri?where?we?witnessed, particularly in a school, the destructive violence deployed during the terrorist attack perpetrated on October 7. The?Israeli armed forces showed us?also some of?the barbaric videos recorded by Hamas terrorists during that day.

One horror cannot justify another

There is?of course?no doubt that many actions carried out on 7 October?by Hamas?were?war?crimes;?however,?as?I?told?my Israelis interlocutors,?one horror cannot justify another.?The?respect for human life is what?makes?the difference between a civilised society and terrorist actors.?

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“The issue in Gaza is not only to deliver enough humanitarian aid to allow the civilian population to survive for some more days, but to avoid continuing to endanger their lives.”

?The issue?in Gaza?is?indeed?not only to deliver enough humanitarian aid to?allow?the civilian population?to survive for some more days, but to avoid continuing to?endanger their lives.?As some of my?interlocutors?told me,?it?is?of course?necessary to provide food, water?and?medicines?but?it is even?more important to reduce?the?risk of?being killed?the next morning.?

Inacceptable violence against Palestinians in the West Bank

Our?sense of urgency?was further heightened?by what we heard from?UN?agencies,?Palestinian Authority leaders and civil society representatives in Ramallah regarding the situation in the West Bank.?They?presented?us the dramatic increase in violence against Palestinians by settlers, who have been given weapons by the government,?the growing number of evictions of entire villages, the army incursions,?the economic disaster triggered by the?revocation of all work permits in Israel?and the very negative consequences of the massive cuts in the PA budget decided by the Israeli government.?Since the beginning of the year, more than 400 Palestinians have died in the West Bank,?about half of them?since 7?October.?And?more than 35 villages have been emptied from their Palestinian population since then.?

It?is creating tremendous tension,?which?probably?cannot be contained?for long, despite the efforts of the Palestinian Authority to prevent escalation.?US President Biden?as well as several European leaders?have?already?required?the?Israeli?government to?stop the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.?

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“A race against the clock is on to bring about a de-escalation of the military operations in Gaza and of the violence in the West Bank, failing which the conflict could easily degenerate and spread.” ??

?A race?against the clock?is obviously on to bring about a de-escalation?of the military operations in Gaza and?of the?violence in the West Bank, failing which the conflict?could easily?degenerate and spread. ?

Israel cannot avoid?to make?peace with the Palestinians

On the?tenuous hope?side of the?medal,?although?it is?not?yet recognised by the leaders of the country, the events of the last weeks have started to?challenge the dominant idea in the Israeli society that, thanks to strict security measures and rapprochement with Arab countries, Israel could avoid making peace with the Palestinians.?Israel is understandably going through a period?of intense emotions and tensions but there are still forces inside Israeli society?already?willing to?search?for a lasting peace with the Palestinians.?I?was very moved?in particular?by a video message of a young woman, survivor of the?Be’eri?kibbutz that we visited,?asking with?much?conviction for a political solution to?the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In?the end,?only peace can?indeed?provide?real and sustainable?security?to Israel.?

“In?the end, only peace can provide real and sustainable security to Israel."

The Palestinian Authority?showed?a?firm?resolve?and readiness?to take over the management of Gaza once the military operations?ended. However,?to do so, this authority will need?a lot of additional support in the coming months. It?will?also?need?to?be re-legitimised?in due time?by organising elections throughout the internationally recognised Palestinian territory: Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. ??

A widely shared desire to avoid an escalation of the conflict?

On the side of?the neighbouring countries, the desire to avoid an escalation of the conflict is?also?strong and?widely?shared?by the leaders?from the Gulf region and from Jordan, as is their?commitment to?help?solve the?crucial?hostages’issue. All the people I spoke?to in the region?shared our concern that this war should be the last by finding the means?to finally put?in place the two-state solution that the international community has been advocating for decades. ?

?“This war should be the last by finding the means to finally put in place the two-state solution.” ?

?Despite the huge challenges and urgencies mentioned earlier, there?may be?a window of opportunity to advance towards peace?between Israeli and Palestinian and?in the region.?We must?of course?first?find ways to?free the hostages and?protect the lives of the civilian?population in Gaza, but?in?parallel, we need to?seize this opportunity?before another crisis diverts the world's attention once again. The EU is ready to take its?full?part of this?very challenging?work.?

Two takeaways from an intense mission to the Middle East | EEAS (europa.eu)

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