Open Letter to My Students 72: War and the Murky Middle

“No one likes middles: reaching middle age, for example, or watching our own body middle expand.” So said the late (and great) Rabbi Dr. Michael Signer, bemoaning the unpopularity of his own area of expertise: the Middle Ages. 

In ethical quandaries too, rather than occupy the uncomfortable middle, we prefer doubling down at one extreme, and then demonizing the opposition, which is doing its own double-down on the other. But by definition,  a quandary contains some truth on both sides. It helps, sometimes, to temper our certainty (on either side) with a viewpoint from the murky middle. 

The war in Gaza is such a quandary. I am a rabbi for whom Jewish Peoplehood is a theological, moral, and spiritual reality; I feel called upon to sustain Jewish peoplehood for the benefit of the world — to be (in biblical terms) a blessing to humanity. In addition, I have lived through enough history to know the necessity of a Jewish State. 

But equally, I know the excesses that ethnic states are capable of; and I am an Enlightenment universalist who seeks that elusive (and probably illusive) quality we call world peace. 

As to the war, the precipitating factor, the October 7 Hamas butchery, has indelibly seared my soul. I know too that if they could, Hamas, Hezbollah and a host of fellow travelers would slaughter every Jew in sight. How, then, can I not support military attempts to eradicate this ongoing threat to the Jewish People? But equally, I cringe at the killing of innocent civilians, so how can I not support moderating the military on humanitarian grounds? 

That is the Jewish quandary of our time. Desperate to avoid the troubling middle, people plunk for one side or the other with every ounce of moral certitude they can muster. And Jews, as they say, are news; so unlike ongoing wars elsewhere, “Israel at war” generates daily headlines that both sides read to confirm or deny their respective position.

Take, for example, the New York Times analysis of December 26, 2024.  

Whether true or false, the Times has often been perceived as biased against Israel. But whatever its editorial policy, Times reporters are exceptional journalists who cannot easily be discounted. What, then do we make of this extensive background piece with the headline, “Israel Loosened its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians in Israel’s Bombing Strategy”?

To be sure, the report suffers from limitations imposed by the question it seeks to answer: whether Israel has been bombing civilians excessively. It doesn’t inquire about the war generally: the hostages, for example.  

But even so, its findings are troubling in the extreme. The Times reports a “severe” weakening of Israel’s “system of safeguards” meant to protect civilians, by expanding “the circle of accepted casualties.” In addition, instead of limiting attacks to those plotted by Israel’s central command, Israel, this time round, empowered field officers to determine bombing targets; and not all such officers operated with the same moral scruples as their superiors. At times too, Israel used heavy tonnage bombs that guaranteed the destruction of entire apartment blocks. In the past, Israel had warned apartment dwellers by “roof knocks,” exploding small charges on the roof before leveling the building, and in this war, such warnings were not always given. So yes, the bombing in this war has been particularly devastating.

But there is another side to things. The report substantiates the carnage of the October 7 attack that Israel understandably saw as “unprecedented,” in scale. It confirms also the fact that Hamas “militants hide among civilians in Gaza” with an “extensive tunnel network” underneath heavily populated areas.

Traumatized by what Hamas had done and promised to do again, Israel felt obliged to uproot Hamas entirely. It therefore widened its military targets to include not just the  Hamas chief planners, but ordinary Hamas fighters and even financial operators who move money back and forth to obtain war materiel. But that required overcoming the Hamas use of human shields. As the report puts it, “The group embeds itself in the civilian population, firing rockets from residential areas, hiding fighters and weapons inside homes and medical facilities, and operating from underground military installations and tunnels.” Israel bombed particularly heavily at the beginning, because it wanted to neutralize Hamas before Hezbollah opened up a second front from the north. 

As to roof knocks, consider Shaldan al-Najjar, an Islamic Jihad commander who had orchestrated many attacks on Israel. Israel had tried to kill him in 2014, but failed, because when it warned innocent neighbors to leave beforehand, al-Najjar escaped as well. This time, they issued no warning and succeeded – but with collateral damage.

In sum, the bombing, though not indiscriminate, was horrific. It did not target civilians deliberately, but enormous civilian casualties resulted. It expanded the circle of acceptable collateral damage but there was at least an ongoing existence of such a circle. Israel’s war was understandably severe but the severity took its toll. 

So back to the murky middle. Those like myself, who accept the attempt to dismantle Hamas must also reckon with Israel’s policies that increased civilian casualties.  

Those who champion the Palestinians should meet me in the middle, by at least acknowledging that if Israel has killed citizens who happened to be in harm’s way, it is the Hamas policy of using human shields that put them there in the first place. Hamas bears the blame for beginning the war in a particularly heinous manner, and then waging it in such a way that Israel would have to kill civilians in order to defend itself.

If the reporting is honest, however, the accompanying headline is not. Instead of “Israel Loosened its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians in Israel’s Bombing Strategy,” it might equally have been, “Hamas Fighters Embed War Machine among Civilians, Causing Israel to Expand Casualties.” 

But perhaps that is misleading on the other side. Newspapers of the Times’s stature should avoid headlines that lure either side away from the middle. Imagine the same story introduced by the heading, “Complexity of War Revealed: Civilians Suffer From Hamas Human Shield Strategy and from Israeli Expansion of Bombing Regulations.” 

I have other misgivings as well. If Hamas has been virtually destroyed by now, why is Israel still bombing in the Gazan north? And even if the Gaza strategy is not a case of ethnic cleansing, the West Bank settler movement is; if the settlers have their way, they will transport their ideology to Gaza as well. 

But equally, how is it that Hamas still retains Jewish hostages (truly civilian innocents)? And as to the Times, I would love to see other background pieces of the quality of this one: not just the Israeli failures but the cruelty and genocidal rationale of Hamas as well. 

Meanwhile, I am left with occupying the murky middle. Taking sides with certainty might feel good, but it does not do moral justice to reality.