Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.
Waging war without end
There are no winners and no losers in the war in Gaza. Sure, the Israelis, fighting with massive infusions of American funds and arms, can rampage through Gaza, exterminating the hideouts, the tunnels, the lairs of the evil Hamas. No, the world won’t applaud their victory.
The Israeli campaign already has cost many times the lives that were lost in Hamas’ opening invasion of southern Israel. Sure, the Hamas behaved like war criminals, slaughtering innocent civilians, women and children, kidnapping others, holding them for ransom, for the Israelis to rescue, dead or alive.
No, the Israelis don’t deliberately mow down civilians, either by bombing them or blasting away from tanks and cannons, machine guns and rifles. Their targets are the headquarters, the fighting holes, the fortifications and the living and sleeping quarters of Hamas. The death toll of civilians is collateral damage: didn’t mean it … couldn’t be helped.
Ok, we get that. There is also no doubt the leaders of Hamas are power-crazed fanatics who knew the invasion of Israel would result in a bloody Israeli response in which thousands of their own people would die. They could not have imagined they would defeat the Israelis once the shock of their invasion had worn off.
But they didn’t care. They had to have figured much of the world would be on their side. Like the United States, Israel’s friends elsewhere may decry Hamas for opening the war, but the NATO countries aren’t lining up in defense of Israel. They’re not sending munitions and equipment for the Israeli Defense Forces as they’ve been doing for the Ukrainians in their defense against the Russians.
On the streets of the cities of Europe and university campuses, anti-Israeli sentiment is too strong for political leaders to ignore. Leaders of NATO nations prefer to wait out the war, praying it won’t spread beyond Israel, that they’ll never have to go beyond mourning the dead and praying for the bloodshed to stop.
The NATO response is a reminder of what might happen if war were to break out in Asia, if North Korea’s Kim Jong-un decided, now is the time to make good on all my threats and attack his enemies, the Americans, the Japanese and South Korea. Luckily the comparison isn’t exact since the U.S., South Korea and Japan all have formidable defenses, of which Kim is well aware.
Too bad Vladimir Putin didn’t have the same grasp on reality when he decided to invade Ukraine early last year. Couldn’t someone among his generals and ministers have told him, don’t do it? Shouldn’t he have known the terrific reaction an invasion would inspire?
But Israel is different. Aside from the U.S., who’s rushing to Israel’s defense? Is anyone out there sending in arms and supplies if not troops? Is it all up to America? In a world accustomed to antisemitism, Israel stands pretty much alone. Were it not for the U.S., there would be no Jewish state.
Israel does, however, hold some cards – aside from its reliance on the U.S. The Islamic Republic of Iran, not an Arab state, may be arming Hamas and also Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. It’s no doubt slipping funds into the overseas accounts of thoroughly corrupt Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. And it’s filling the airwaves with propaganda.
Fine, but does anyone think Iran will go to war for its clients? Like Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, isn’t stupid. He’s not asking for the Americans and Israelis to bomb his bases, maybe the complex where his engineers and physicists are coming close to building a nuclear warhead.
If Iran won’t fight for Hamas, who else will? Forget it. None of the Arab countries wants to risk lives and money for the sake of 2.3 million Palestinians stuck in a God-forsaken, devastated slum. The people of Gaza, led into war by leaders who don’t care about sacrificing them on the altar of anti-Israel hatred, can’t even count on their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank to go to war for them.
That doesn’t mean, though, that Israel is the sure winner. Will Israel, if it finishes off Hamas, be prepared to govern Gaza, and where and how will the mass of Gazans, those who survive the accidental bombing and shelling, work, survive, be happy and flourish?
If there is one certainty, it is that Hamas, or something like it, will rise again, and Israel will face the same enemies, if not in Hamas, then elsewhere. For Israel, as for the Palestinians, it’s a never-ending struggle that no one wins. Like the North-South Korean stand-off, in this war no one side, no individual, will be able to declare absolute victory.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes about war and peace in Asia.