Extract from Eureka Street
- Home
- Vol 35 No 17
- The costs of bombing for peace
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 August 2025
In this last week we have witnessed two events related to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. The first was the Israeli attack on a Gaza hospital in which a first strike was followed by another directed against the hospital staff and reporters who rushed to help those injured. The second event was the expulsion of the Iranian Ambassador for the incitement by his Government of violence against Jewish places of worship. Australian Government ministers rightly deplored the actions both by the Israeli armed forces and by the agents of the Iranian Government.
The criticism of the conduct of war by the Israeli Government is now generally shared. The arguments offered in favour of it are also widely rejected. Although the Israeli cause of releasing captives and defending its people from violence is just, it is now evident that the goal of destroying Hamas is unattainable except through the grossly disproportionate taking of civilian lives, including children, and through the starvation and displacement of the people. The targeting of civilians and journalists at the hospital is an emblem of the conduct of the military campaign. It cannot plausibly be defended by the criteria of waging a just war. However just the cause, the ways of pursuing it have been increasingly barbarous and inhumane.
A recent response by some defenders of the Israeli conduct of its military campaign, however, merits reflection. It points to a greater and more universal threat to world peace and human survival. In defence of the Israeli conduct of war in Gaza, with its high loss of civilian lives, starvation, and unattainable goals, they have appealed to the conduct by Britain and the United States in the Second World War. These included the English firestorm bombing of Dresden, the similar bombing of Hamburg, the United States firebombing of Tokyo and the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima, all of which were designed to cause massive deaths of non-combatants, targeted civilians, and used their deaths as an instrument to force the enemy to surrender.
In attempting to justify the Israeli conduct of its military actions, the apologists have appealed to similarly drastic actions by British and United States Governments and to their defence of them. The defence rested on the argument, which is accepted by many military strategists today, that governments with a just cause for going to war can do what it takes to win the war. They are not limited by ethical considerations about the equal value of each human being but need consider only the consequences of their actions.
In the war, the English and United States authorities defended their action on the grounds that they served the greatest good of the greatest number. More lives would have been lost had the war against Japan continued than were lost in Tokyo and Hiroshima. Similarly, the civilian deaths in Dresden and other cities selected for their vulnerability to firestorms also saved more lives, and perhaps more territory denied to Russia, by accelerating a surrender. In reality, the calculus was skewed by those appealing to it at the time. At that stage of the war they were not concerned with the numbers of persons killed in different options but with the numbers of their own soldiers killed and saved. In this calculus human lives were not of equal value.
Apologists for the Israeli conduct of the military action in Gaza can argue from this analogy that it is only doing what Western democracies have done, are still doing in the bombing of Iran, Libya and other nations, and—together with their military strategists—still claim justification for.
The danger posed by this argument is not that its account of the Western justification of Dresden and Hiroshima and its subsequent actions is false but that it is true. These actions, the justification still offered for them and the appeal to them to justify the killing in Gaza, presume that the value of human beings depends on their race, nationality and the use that can be made of their life or death in winning the war. They deny that the value of each human life is equally precious and to be respected, the assumption that underlies the rule of international and national law. In this bleak view, what ultimately matters in human relationships at a personal, national and international level is power. The powerful may do what they wish, the weak will suffer what they must.
In his astringent critique of the practices that built the Roman Empire, St Augustine asked:
Without justice, are kingdoms anything but gangs of criminals on a grand scale?... If gangs make recruits among the intimidated, win territory, make a base, capture cities and conquer peoples, they then call themselves a kingdom and are recognised as such by the world, not because they become less aggressive, but because they secure impunity.
In such a world where justice, the rule of law and the dignity of each human being count for nothing, peace can temporarily be won by superior power, but it is precarious. Other ‘kingdoms’ will seek advantage by gathering stronger armies and more powerful weapons.
It is in that view shared by those who defend the Israeli action in Gaza and military analysts in the West that the force and the threat to humanity lie. When nations and their military analysts see human lives as of little or unequal value, then miscalculation, despair or rage will lead those in possession of weapons that can destroy an enemy to use them. And their enemy will retaliate in kind. If an exchange of these weapons has the capacity to destroy the world, as do the nuclear weapons now held in arsenals, and if the lives of opponents and civilians do not matter in the calculus, what will hold back their use?
Seen from this perspective, the immediate question posed by the Israeli military action in Gaza concerns the value of each human life. The larger question is whether and when the principles shared by the Israeli authorities in the war and by Western military analysts and governments will lead to the destruction of our world.
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