Despite the fact that in the mid-20th Century Japan was never an existential threat to the United States, its attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military installations in the Hawaiian Islands created such anger among Americans that the destruction of the Japanese Empire became a U.S. national interest. On the road to victory in the Pacific theater, the U.S. armed forces showed little care for the safety of Japanese civilians caught up in the fighting, and eventually adopted a total war scenario in which it specifically targeted Japanese civilians for destruction, killing hundreds of thousands by firebombing their cities, and eventually using two atomic bombs against population centers. This finally drove Japan to surrender unconditionally.
In U.S. experience, the way to win a war is to fight it with all necessary force, whether or not the threat to America is existential, and this they did in the Pacific.
In contrast, Arab opposition to the State of Israel, and particularly Hamas’s most recent barbaric attack of October 7, 2023, which it vows to repeat until all Jews everywhere are dead, is inarguably an existential threat to Israel and to the Jewish People. Israel, with its very existence at issue, has much more at stake to win this war than the United States had to defeat Japan, and yet the current U.S. administration is siding with the barbarians of Hamas and telling Israel to stop its operations against Hamas in Gaza in the south, and to refrain from offensive warfare against the much greater threat of Hezbollah to its north, in southern Lebanon. Instead of fighting to destroy these existential enemies, the administration is pressuring Israel to negotiate terms with them. But no Israeli government would last for one day after agreeing to leave Hamas free to rebuild and rearm in Gaza, or to cede its sovereignty in northern Israel to Hezbollah, as the U.S. administration is demanding.
Japan was never an existential threat to the United States because it had neither the industrial base nor the resources to force its American enemy to withdraw its demand for unconditional surrender. Although Japan had stolen the oil and other resources it needed to continue the war, from 1942 to 1944 the American armed forces sank almost the entirety of the Japanese merchant fleet. In the face of this onslaught, Japan became unable to transport resources and food home from what it termed its “Southern Resource Area” to enable it to continue the war.
Further, there was never the least possibility of Japan mounting an invasion of the United States, or even of Australia, and both its naval and governmental leadership knew it. Japan never had the logistical capability to do so.
Even though Japan was never an existential threat, in 1944–45 the United States intensified its war on Japan’s civilian population in an effort to convince a reluctant Japanese military government to surrender unconditionally. In August, 1945, this strategy succeeded.
In contrast, in 2023–24 Hamas is a true existential threat to the State of Israel, to all Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli citizens, to Jews world-wide, and eventually to all of Western civilization.
The failure of the United States to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2728 was evaluated succinctly by a CBN News analyst reporting from Jerusalem on March 25, 2024 with the headline of “Breaking Hostage Update as US Throws Israel `Under the Bus’”; see the excerpt below:
So they’re [the Security Council] just saying Israel needs to stop fighting, which is the same as saying Israel needs to give up and lose, and Hamas wins. I mean, there is no difference. Now, the United States had the power to veto that resolution, and they didn’t do it. They backed away from vetoing this resolution, which means they did not stand with Israel here. They didn’t vote for the resolution, they just abstained. Which is like saying, ‘I’m not really here, we’re just going to pretend we’re not here. We’re not going to take a stand.’ When you refuse to take a stand, you are taking a stand. And that stand is cowardice, and that’s exactly what the Biden administration did today. They took a cowardly stand against Israel and refused to veto this resolution in the UN. . . . What Israel pointed out was that every step they take making it harder for Israel makes it easier on Hamas.
Even in the face of this existential threat to its existence, Israel, as always, does more to protect non-combatant civilians than required of it under international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict. More, in fact, than the armed forces of every other nation have ever done in wartime. But when the threat is clearly existential, Israel must succeed in its war aim to destroy the Hamas leadership and infrastructure in Gaza and to bring home those who were kidnapped and held hostage, and to destroy Hezbollah, which has made northern Israel unlivable. Israel has over 100,000 displaced civilians who cannot return to their homes, and the U.S. administration is trying to make this permanent.
The most effective way to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza and in the north, is for Israel to use all necessary force within international law to win the wars on both fronts as soon as possible. The U.S. administration’s siding with Hamas and Hezbollah to stop Israel from winning this war immediately, and to protect its sovereignty and its citizens from destruction, is not only cowardly, as CBN opines, but is also immoral, and all Americans, through their elected representatives and directly to the White House, should tell them so, again and again.
Michael S. Goldstein is Arizona State Director of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. He is a 30-year veteran of the United States Navy and of the U.S. intelligence community. His articles appear in American Thinker.
Image: Public domain.