This is not what “winning the moral level of war” looks like:
Israeli snipers kill scores of Palestinians and wound 2,400 as 35,000 protesters rally against the US Embassy opening in Jerusalem overseen by Trump’s Middle East envoy Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka.
A 14-year-old was among 52 shot dead along the Gaza border on what is already the deadliest single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since a 2014 war between the Jewish state and Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas.
At least 2,400 more have been injured with hundreds of them by live bullets, according to Gaza officials as the Palestinian government accused Israel of committing a ‘terrible massacre’ and Amnesty International called the bloodshed an ‘abhorrent violation’ of human rights.
Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is the right thing to do. It is not the responsibility of the US government to decide where a nation’s capital is located. But whatever Israeli general is responsible for handling the protesters is making a complete hash of it. If Israel was looking for foreign support in its desired war-by-proxy against Iran, this is most certainly not going to help.
I don’t know why Israel hasn’t established a separate gendarmerie for handling the West Bank and Gaza, because military history strongly suggests that using soldiers as police tends to fail as brutally as using police as soldiers does. And, as Martin van Creveld has repeatedly observed, one-sided war tends to have a demoralizing effect on the winner.
And, of course, it is reprehensible that so many New Israelis should be treated so violently when all they are seeking is a better life for them and their children on the other side of the fence. Especially when the Israeli economy would benefit so greatly from embracing 35,000 new citizens.