DAVID BENATAR: A reality check for Leslie London: Gazans are being used as human shields

Leslie London is right about one thing — words can be fatal. That is exactly why one has to be careful about what one says (“Israel is hiding behind a ‘human shield’ smokescreen”, January 16). Prof London does not exhibit such care.

He was responding to an article in which I noted that those critical of Israel’s continued military response to the Hamas attack of October 7 focus only on Israel’s role in causing civilian casualties. They ignore that the reason Israel’s assault on Hamas is causing civilian casualties is because Hamas is hiding behind human shields.

Moreover, I noted, hiding behind human shields is “categorically, straightforwardly and unequivocally a war crime”, whereas causing the deaths of civilians is “permissible if these are the unintended (but foreseen) effects of legitimate military strikes”. 

Prof London’s response is to say that “there is no evidence that Hamas is ‘using human shields’ in this conflict to the extent that all 22,000 people who have died were human shields”.

There are two possible claims being made here. The first is that “there is no evidence that Hamas is using human shields”. At times, London does seem to be making this claim. He dismisses the assertion that Hamas is using human shields as “Israeli propaganda”. However, there is ample evidence that Hamas is doing exactly that.

This is not to say that every claim made by, or on behalf of Israel, is either true or devoid of spin. Healthy scepticism is entirely reasonable, but it must be exercised with even more vigour in response to claims by Hamas, given that unlike in Israel there is no free press in Gaza to investigate official claims. Moreover, there is a difference between reasonable scepticism about specific claims and denialism about generalities.

In addition to being selective in his scepticism, London is guilty of such denialism. Indeed, it is hard to know what would count as evidence for him. He casually denies that the warren of military tunnels Hamas has constructed directly under and linked to civilian infrastructure, and from which it fights, constitutes evidence of Hamas using human shields.

In support of this denial, he says that “the use of tunnels for purposes of war is not new and stems back to ancient times”. That is a non sequitur. That the practice is ancient says absolutely nothing about whether it constitutes using human shields.

Whether it does or does not depends on the facts. London has a poor grasp of these. For example, his implicit comparison of Hamas to the Jewish resistance fighters who “made use of tunnels in Warsaw... during World War 2” is grotesque. Jews facing indiscriminate extermination by Nazis is no comparison with a terrorist organisation using tunnels to hold citizens of other countries hostage, and to pursue their genocidal agenda.

Yes, before the Israelis called for the civilian evacuation of Gaza City it “was one of the most densely populated cities in the world”, but there was no reason for Hamas to have built a subterranean military city, accessible only to its fighters, or to launch the October 7 attack.

Israel had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005 and posed no threat to Gazans had Hamas decided to start building a flourishing Palestinian state there, rather than constructing a staging ground for attacks on Israel, which it brazenly admits it seeks to destroy. Hamas placed its own civilians at risk by building terror tunnels beneath them and connected to them.

The second possible claim London could be making is that though Hamas is using human shields, this does not explain all the Gazan deaths. Precisely because he denies that tunnels under (and with access shafts in) hospitals, homes and mosques, firing from schools, or using ambulances for military purposes constitutes evidence of the use of human shields, this more charitable reading is unlikely to be the correct reading. However, we can assess it on its merits.

London denies that “all 22,000 people who have died were human shields”. I agree — even if we set aside the uncertainty about this figure, given its provenance, namely Hamas itself. London, like most of the media, endlessly and uncritically repeats the running total, without attention to some relevant constituent facts. According to Israeli calculations, about 9,000 of all Gazan fatalities thus far have been Hamas fighters. That number needs to be deducted from the total.

Furthermore, if we are considering the “collateral deaths” caused by Israeli fire, we also need to subtract those Gazans killed either by misfired Palestinian rockets or by Palestinian “friendly fire”, a very common phenomenon in the “fog of war”. A significant proportion of Israel’s own soldiers have mistakenly been killed by Israeli Defence Force fire and other accidents. There is no reason to think Hamas is avoiding this problem.

Even by conservative estimates that leaves a surprisingly low collateral death rate in a battle ground so densely populated by civilians. That is certainly indicative of Israel going to great lengths to avoid civilian harm, as I had previously noted.

Of course, even a single innocent’s death is tragic, and there should be no underestimating the horror Gazans are facing. That is not in question. What is in question is the respective justifiability of (a) using human shields; and (b) causing collateral deaths when fighting a legitimate target.

My original answer still stands — using human shields is obviously wrong, but whether causing collateral deaths is wrong is a far more complex matter. London, in addition to lecturing philosophers on their areas of expertise, now purports to have military expertise as well.

More specifically, he feels able to tell us from his armchair that there is “no logical connection between that scale of destruction above ground and any purported intent to neutralise underground tunnels used by combatants” and that “bombing as it pleases is exactly what Israel is doing”. How would he know? Is he privy to all the military and other intelligence on the basis of which the IDF is operating?

When he does provide some purported evidence, he makes unwarranted inferential leaps. For example, he says the “fact that three Israeli captives were killed when attempting to surrender to Israeli forces in Gaza is the clearest indication of the willingness of the IDF to dispense with restraints on civilian injuries”. That explanation is, of course, at odds with the IDF having previously taken as prisoners dozens of Gazans who successfully surrendered without being shot by the IDF.

A far more plausible explanation of the mistaken IDF killing of the escaping hostages is either the “fog of war” or individual negligence. It would be surprising to me if Israeli forces never made mistakes, or never took less care than they should have. After all, they are human.

It will thus always be possible to point to individual cases in which any one side of an armed conflict is guilty of wrongdoing. The real question is which side of the Hamas-Israel war is overwhelmingly in the wrong. The answer to that should be obvious — Hamas. When it comes to the deaths of Gazan civilians we must ask the old and revealing question: Cui bono? Who benefits?

Certainly not Israel, which is excoriated internationally even when those deaths are necessary to defeat Hamas. Israel has an overwhelming interest in destroying Hamas and freeing those who are held hostage (and psychologically, physically and sexually abused) by Hamas. Some of those hostages have been held captive in Gazan households, further erasing the line between battlefield and Gazan civilians.

Any international pressure arising from civilian deaths that leads to an early termination of the war threatens Israel’s goals. By contrast, Hamas benefits not only from the deaths of Israelis but also from the deaths of Gazans, not least because millions of people like London will not see the wood for the trees, will use those deaths to voice support for a fundamentalist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, terroristic, repressive regime, and will put all the blame on the those trying to defend themselves against it.

Gazans are experiencing an awful tragedy. The party most responsible for this tragedy is Hamas. London will not recognise this in part because he denies — despite all the evidence — that Hamas has launched attacks from civilian positions, thereby making those positions legitimate (but tragic) targets.

Gaza should be free. It will not be free until it is free of Hamas.

Benatar is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town.