By Seth Mandel
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
In the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes,
the titular characters create a game called Calvinball that has only one
permanent rule: It can never be played the same way twice. This creates a
constant reshuffling of standards and rules so that no player has the ability
to strategize from one round to the next.
Israel’s second extended operation at al-Shifa hospital
in Gaza City has proved that for much of the world, international law and
human-rights norms are a game of Calvinball, and the lack of official rules
means Israel can be held to different expectations each time it bends over
backwards to meet the previous, obviously capricious, standard set by its
critics.
Last week, the IDF went back into the Shifa hospital complex.
The site was raided earlier in the war because it housed Hamas terrorists,
Hamas transit tunnels, weapons, and hostages all with the knowledge of at least
some doctors there and international organizations.
According to the IDF updates on the current operation:
·
Out of 800 total suspects at the hospital, 500
have confirmed ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
·
170 of those who have fired on Israeli soldiers
at the hospital have been killed, including Hamas Interior Ministry Operations
Chief Faack Mabhouh.
·
Doctors accompanied soldiers to treat patients
at Shifa; food and water deliveries have continued.
Hamas has waged a fierce battle for the hospital,
reportedly firing on IDF troops from maternity wards and emergency wings, to
maximize patient danger and the destruction of medical equipment and
capabilities.
Compared to Israel’s November operation at Shifa, this
one has attracted far less press attention (aside from the usual perfunctory
stenographic work mainstream newspapers in America do for Hamas). One reason
for this is that in November, Israel had to spend time searching the hospital
after securing it and committing to the slow process of finding and
neutralizing the tunnels. This meant the world spent weeks criticizing Israel
before informed criticism was even possible, and then moved the goalposts every
time Israel revealed a Hamas war crime in the hospital complex. It was a round
of Calvinball. By the time the scope of Hamas’s use of the complex was made
clear, the press had moved on.
This time, the press had no excuses even before the
operation. Everyone already knows how Hamas turned a large hospital into a war
zone. As well, the presence of senior Hamas military commanders makes even the
attempt to spin this is an Israeli overreaction look ridiculous. Hamas has been
caught in the act, which should theoretically be a headline-dominating story
for days. There should be a tidal wave of condemnations from foreign ministries
around the world and apologies from medical NGOs and media organizations for
having—wittingly or unwittingly—aided a terrorist army’s unprecedented assault
on international law and coopting journalists and doctors into undermining the
safety and credibility of their peers in other conflict zones.
Ah, but that wouldn’t be Calvinball. The rules adjust,
and Israel must adjust with them—and as soon as it does, the rules will change
again.
“Israel’s opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic
new standard Israel has set,” writes John Spencer, perhaps
the leading expert in the field at the moment.
But of course they are; if there is no potential for a
Hamas victory, even a public-relations one, there is no story. Israel’s critics
should be overjoyed at the blueprint Jerusalem is providing for new and
creative ways to protect civilians in urban warfare. But to Israel’s critics,
international law isn’t stagnant; those were the laws of war in the last round
of Calvinball. And hey, why is Israel’s army always fighting the last war,
anyway?
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