THE FOGHORN OF WAR: Intended Targets

There is no such thing as "collateral damage"

“It has been more than 60 days since Israel ordered a halt to all humanitarian aid entering Gaza — no food, fuel or even medicine.”

That’s the opening line from one of two staggering New York Times stories that should’ve gone viral last weekend … but didn’t.

One was a detailed visual investigation of the IDF's massacre of 15 Red Crescent medics. If it wasn’t clear before, it certainly is now … the IDF’s ambush and rolling execution of one properly-flagged aid worker after another is, like scores of attacks on aid, relief and medical workers, a war crime according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on War Crimes:

(iii) Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;

The soldiers’ “intention” was made manifest by their hasty burial of the medics with their bullet-scarred vehicles … a.k.a. “evidence.” They quite literally covered-up a crime and, in so doing, demonstrated consciousness of guilt. The IDF’s disingenuous investigation found “no attempt to conceal the event” and reprimanded the commanding officer for failing to follow procedure.

The second story reveals the brutal reality of “roughly two million people trapped inside Gaza,” cut off from humanitarian assistance and, therefore, are victims of another potential war crime:

(xxv) Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions;

That’s basically the scenario the Times details … and it’s not just food, it’s medical supplies and potable water … and it’s the wholesale destruction of everything:

(iv) Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

Water, sewage and electric systems have been intentionally targeted and destroyed …and entire neighborhoods have been demolished. You’ve probably seen the pictures and the drone footage showing block after block of collapsed or hollowed out apartment buildings, chunks of concrete kinetically re-arranged into massive piles that look like the mounds of stone one might find in a Neolithic graveyard.

That’s not too far from the reality, because many of those piles now harbor the decaying corpses of men, women and children who couldn’t be pulled from the remnants of their former homes.

According to one recent estimate reported by the UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs, up to 11,000 dead Gazans may be buried in rubble. The UN also estimates that “approximately 436,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged as a result of continuous bombardment.” When they zoomed out from just homes, the UN found that “Israel has destroyed over half of all the structures in Gaza Strip.”

But Israel didn’t stop there.

The IDF has literally destroyed entire nuclear families … and even wiped-out some extended families. An AP investigation published in June of 2024 examined 60 families that lost scores of members to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign. Reuters followed AP’s lead with a deep, analytical dive and found that the IDF has “wiped out” 1,238 Palestinian nuclear families by killing married couples and their children.

Although Israel has managed to eliminate families, they haven’t eliminated Hamas. That, in and of itself, is a mindboggling fact. Then again, UN Human Rights Office Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani pointed to a possible explanation in France24 report on resumption of Israeli airstrikes:

"Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people," she told reporters in Geneva.

"In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children," she said.

The unavoidable conclusion is the bombs—which in pure tonnage equals the destructive power of six Hiroshimas—haven’t really missed their target. Rather, the war is doing what it is designed to do. It’s collective punishment, not a targeted effort to cripple Hamas with exploding beepers. Instead, the explosions have injured or maimed at least 25,000 children and left behind 17,000 orphans. They, along with their traumatized, malnourished and undereducated peers, will cripple Palestinian culture and society for generations to come. It’s as if the IDF’s campaign is systematically destroying the fabric of Palestinian society at the familial level.

One could claim that it’s an unintended—but unavoidable—consequence of urban warfare and, because of Hamas’s cruel indifference, the “collateral damage” is particularly acute.

Or is this the logical outcome of marrying wide open rules of engagement (ROE) with a Biblical justification for wiping out the modern equivalent of the Amalekites?

Simply put, the IDF's “rules” encourage killing non-combatants. Indeed, the ROE functionally eliminates "non-combatant" as a category. Every Gazan, regardless of age or affiliation or access to weaponry, is a viable "military" target based simply on their proximity to a suspected member of Hamas. Not armed fighter. Suspected member.

If you are near a suspect, your death instantly becomes a military necessity … whether it’s one guy who may be in the basement of an apartment building, or a guy who might have entered a hospital or school or a tent in a refugee camp, or its an ambulance being driven by a male of fighting age … all of these possibilities immediately flag the building, the vehicle, or the camp as military targets regardless of the ensuing projectile’s impact on non-combatants.

That’s why it’s ominous when Netanyahu promises to “finish the job" of eliminating Hamas. He's talking about killing every last member of Hamas. That goes well beyond a military defeat on a battlefield. It’s not a military objective. It’s a purge or a cull. And it’s in keeping with Israel’s longstanding position that Gazans are “grass” that periodically needs to be “mowed.”

Now Netanyahu wants to pull up the sod. That’s the upshot of his new “intensified operation” to “conquer” Gaza. Per Axios:

Plans for the operation call for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to flatten any buildings that remain standing and displace virtually the entire population of 2 million people to a single "humanitarian area."

Essentially, Israel intends on dislodging and concentrating the population into a massive camp … and that would also be a war crime:

(viii) The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory;

Once Gazans are deprived of what’s left of their homes and forced into what will be the world’s most densely populated refugee camp, Israel will control the distribution of humanitarian aid and will do so by employing US contractors. Again from Axios:

The compounds are to be managed by a new international foundation and private U.S. companies, though it's unclear how the plan will function after the UN and all aid organizations announced they won't take part.

What is clear is that Netanyahu’s starting to implement Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Strip of its Gazans. It is, of course, no coincidence that Trump is about to swing through the Middle East. Trump teased a big announcement in the coming days. It could be the long-awaited “normalization” between Israel and Saudi Arabia, or it could be one or more nations committing to accept dislodged Gazans.

Or could even be a new ceasefire and hostage deal.

To wit, the first wave of stories about Netanyahu’s “Conquer Gaza” plan framed it as something of a ploy … a Hail Mary Pass using Trump’s trip as leverage. The apparent message was “release the hostages or I will commit these crimes against humanity and foreclose the future of Gazans in Gaza.”

It’s something of a hollow threat in so far as the war has been a series of war crimes inflicted on Gazans and their suffering hasn’t yet moved Hamas. But, like Israel’s bombs, Hamas may not be Bibi’s only target. Maybe it’s the entire population of Gaza he is trying to move by presenting them with a future of flattened homes and a sprawling concentration camp where access to the essentials of life are controlled by the people who killed your entire family … and distributed by the people who gave them the bombs to do it.