When Did the Deaths of Civilians in War Become a Fetish?

The atavistic desire for revenge blots out the light of reconciliation and cooperation.

Dresden, Germany, 1945. 772 heavy bombers from the Royal Air Force and 527 from the United States Army Air Force dropped some 4000 tons of high explosives on the city center, destroying 1,600 acres. Twenty-five thousand civilians were killed, with estimates three times as high. The wounded totaled four times the death toll.

Colone, Germany, 1942. 262 separate air raids took place in one year. One sent over one thousand bombers in “operation millennium” to destroy the city and “damage morale.”

Hamburg, Germany, 1943. Operation Gomorrah killed over 37,000 people and wounded 180,000 more; the nighttime raid destroyed over sixty percent of the city. The bombing was so intense that a firestorm tornado rose 1,500 feet in the air. Literally, the oxygen burned in the atmosphere and civilians died from suffocation.

The Italian Peninsula, 1943-45. Over 60,000 civilians were killed in bombing raids over a dozen Italian cities, including Rome.

Tokyo, 1945. In what the Japanese call “Night of the Black Snow,” over 100,000 civilians were actually incinerated in a relentless bombing that destroyed sixteen square miles of Tokyo. Over one million were made homeless as the resulting firestorm destroyed wooden homes.

Hiroshima, 1945. One atomic bomb left 70,000 dead immediately and over the ensuing decades, far more.

Vietnam. The U.S. bombing campaign took the lives of between 30,000 and 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians.

Iraq. It is impossible to say for sure, as there are so many different metrics (i.e. violent deaths vs. excess deaths). But it is safe to say it is no less than 180,000 violent deaths resulted from the US led invasion.

Afghanistan. The low estimate for the U.S.-led war is 70,000 civilian deaths. 

I think it is thus fair to ask why and when did everyone in the democratic West become obsessed with civilian deaths? I don’t think Vladimir Putin is, I doubt Xi Jinping is, and we haven’t heard much from African leaders. The list of civilians killed in their endless atrocities of heavy conflicts in the last two decades takes a few minutes to scroll through on a Wikipedia page.

War is a nasty business, and as the world has seen from the Hamas operation, Al-Aqsa Flood civilians were not spared but targeted.

The upcoming battle for Gaza should operate as all the other battles of WWll and beyond have: with each side putting in maximum effort to destroy the other. There is nothing bloodthirsty in this, nothing unusual, just a military objective that each side sees as necessary to prevail.

Holding back from victory is seen as more costly down the road. For Israel, the “mowing the grass” strategy clearly did not deter Hamas. For Hamas, the five mini wars and their rocket fire did not deter the Zionists from isolating the Gaza strip. So now, we are in the escalation phase.

Of course, this is a terrible outcome. Death, dismemberment, destruction, and violence of all kinds are immoral. It seems unfathomable that in an age of science and the globalization of trade, humans would inflict hurt and pain on each other. It seems a throwback to a prehistoric age.

Sadly, it is not. The slaughter, the blood, the mutilation of bodies, and the rape of girls was celebrated in Gaza. The atavistic desire for revenge blots out the light of reconciliation and cooperation.

Since this barbarism mimics times like the Crusades, let me propose a solution that the Islamic leader Suleiman the Magnificent often utilized to spare civilian lives.

Let the civilians of Gaza give up their Hamas leaders to spare their own destruction. Have the Israelis give a list of the Hamas leaders they want and give the Gazans a few days to round them up for delivery to the IDF. When they do, the lights come back on, food reappears on the table, and the hospitals can resume their functions. The rebuilding can begin.

If they refuse… well, Suleiman had a solution for that. Best I do not describe what he did; it might trigger pain in Western minds and the graphic details of the atrocities are sure to upset us. Just be aware: his tactics were effective and he overcame the Western invaders and expelled them from the Levant. They did not return for centuries.

Let war be war, and let the IDF do what armies do.