What does the Ethnic Framing of the Gaza War Serve?  

Introduction

The framing of the Gaza war as an ethnic-religious war is blatant in the public discourse surrounding the war. For example, while Hamas called its 7th October attack "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised revenge, invoking the biblical enemy Amalek. At the same time, both supporters and critics of Israel, view its displacement of more than a million Gazan civilians to enhance the military's freedom of operation as an act that can lead to ethnic cleansing.

However, it is not clear how much the conceptualization of ethnic violence in the context of this war, especially through the lens of Israeli society, helps us understand it. According to sociologists Roger Brubaker and David Laitin, ethnic violence is a violence

perpetrated across ethnic lines, in which at least one party is not a state (or a representative of a state), and in which the putative ethnic difference is coded.by perpetrators, targets, influential third parties, or analysts.as having been integral rather than incidental to the violence, that is, in which the violence is coded as having been meaningfully oriented in some way to the different ethnicity of the target.

This preliminary definition allows us to exclude this conflict as an ethnic one. The conflict was initiated by the armed forces of Gaza, an informal state meeting key characteristics of statehood, which has long contested the blockade imposed by Israel. The root of the hostility between Israel and Gaza stems from this, not an ethnic conflict. However, the situation is exacerbated by national-ethnic motives from Hamas, particularly when it serves broader Palestinian interests, such as concerns over Israel's intentions to alter the religious status-quo in Jerusalem—a key issue that triggered a round of hostilities in 2021. In response, Israel treated the October assault from Hamas as a state under attack, with its military operations being rational yet aggressive. Essentially, this conflict involves a clash between two states.

Complicating matters further, war sociologist  Siniša Malešević argued that,

(…) ethnic and national wars generate an "imperfect market condition" where individual instrumental rationality is situationally transformed into enhanced group solidarity and as rational individuals make informed choices to amplify or downplay their cultural markers for the purpose of self-benefit, they invariably and circuitously produce ethnic or national group solidarity and cultural homogeneity.

In other words, ethnicity can serve as a mobilizing mechanism. Similarly, Brubaker argues that mobilizing resources by framing conflicts in ethnic terms is more plausible than non-ethnic framing.

Why, then, is ethnicity-based solidarity invoked in a conflict perceived by many Israelis as existential war? The nation mobilized en masse, temporarily setting aside previous contentious debates. Therefore, initial solidarity was built without the overt invocation of ethnicity. Yet, we cannot ignore the ethnic symbols and interpretations that have accompanied the war, as previously noted.

This paper does not conclusively determine whether this conflict should be categorized as an ethnic conflict; instead, it seeks to explore the purposes that ethnic framing might serve. My goal is to examine the potential benefits that various actors may derive, intentionally or otherwise, from employing such framing. This approach does not imply that actors are deliberately exploiting ethnic themes to further their interests, but rather assumes the interplay between agents and ideas.

1. Enhancing the Distinction Between Hamas and Gaza

The framing of the war as ethnic violence undermines the perception that the conflict is a struggle between two states. This framing serves as part of Israel’s system of legitimizing the war, based on the assertion that Israel does not fight the Gaza population but specifically targets Hamas. However, this distinction is problematic.

Israel is engaged in politicide, aimed at dismantling the Hamas regime and neutralizing those affiliated with it, rather than combating an ethno-religious adversary. This objective is evident in the goal to topple the Hamas regime without proposing an alternative governance structure. Politicide is coupled with domicide, entailing the destruction of physical and identity infrastructures along with community foundations. Additionally, the consequences for Gazan civilians have been severe, as indicated by the casualty ratio between civilians and combatants. As of April 20, there are approximately 34,000 reported fatalities, including over 24,000 women and children.

In sum, framing the war as ethnic violence undermines efforts to delegitimize it by validating the distinction between Hamas and the Gaza population.

2. Portraying Hamas as Irrational

The prevailing view, informed by Michael Hechter's interpretation of conventional research, posits ethnic violence as inherently irrational. People pursue a course of action regardless of its consequences, mainly the costs, or, if we return to Weber's  concept of value rationality, that is the "belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success...[and] regardless of possible cost."

This assumption of irrationality allows even the Israeli left to support the war or mitigate its potential opposition. For example, sociologist Eva Illouz, a leading voice in the Israeli liberal camp, disputed Judith Butler's description of the October attack as "armed resistance." Illouz argued that

Palestinians, like Israelis, are torn apart by internal conflicts between fundamentalists and pragmatists, between those who worship the land and those who want political compromise, between those who are ready to fight to the death and those who still hope the two peoples can live side by side. To call bloodthirsty fundamentalists "resistance fighters" is to erase any distinction between these two camps of people. It is to legitimize the actions of those who have committed a crime against humanity and who have acted with total indifference to their people.

Illouz thus reinforced the irrationality argument by questioning Hamas' rationality in resisting Israel's indirect control over Gaza. Her views resonate with many Israelis, prompting a shift in criticism from their own government to Hamas, thereby "disillusioning" them about the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This portrayal of irrationality helped Jewish leftists to avoid resisting the war and thus not being blamed for lack of patriotism. Instead, anti-war sentiments have been redirected towards demanding the prioritization of releasing Israeli hostages held by Hamas above all other considerations. Consequently, since October 2023, the Israeli Jewish peace camp has been largely inactive.

3. Overlooking the Context

Relatedly, the ethnic framing obscures not only the motives but also the historical context of Hamas' attacks. Such framing portrays Hamas' motivations as ethnically irrational and historically contextless. This perception is reinforced by certain narratives that deem any mention of historical context—often highlighted by European and American intellectuals—as justifying Hamas' actions, thus delegitimizing the context itself.

In contrast, historian Avi-Ram Tzoreff called for a reintroduction of historical context to the discourse surrounding the events of 7th October. He pointed to Israel's role in shaping the demography of the Gaza Strip since the creation of the refugee problem in 1948, and its economic suppression of Gaza since the 1990s.

This disregard for context was starkly highlighted by its opposite. In April 1956, shortly before the Suez War, Israeli Chief of the General Staff Moshe Dayan delivered his famous eulogy at the grave of Roi Rutenberg, a settler killed by Palestinian gunmen on the Gaza border. In his speech, Dayan acknowledged the deep-seated enmity between Israel and Gaza:

Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we declare their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate.

Gradually, Israelis have tended to deny this source of enmity, moving away from the honesty of past leaders. This shift was highlighted by Slavoj Žižek in his controversial speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the Gaza war in October 2023.

To further contextualize the attacks of Hamas, sociologist Lev Greenberg simply remarked that what collapsed on 7th October was the illusion of the "Gaza prison": "the nonsensical belief that, with enough military might, it would be possible to hold more than 2 million people under an endless siege without it leading to an explosion." Grinberg and Tzoreff thus restored the context that had been obscured by ethnic language.

4.  Legitimizing Killing

Ethnicity plays a significant role in the mainstream of Israeli militarism. Military sociologist Martin Shaw argued that Israel's extensive bombardments in Gaza were underpinned by a genocidal logic. These actions aimed to debilitate Gaza's society, which supports Hamas, rather than merely transferring risks from Israeli troops to Gazan civilians. Shaw thus describes the war as imbued with ethnic motives.

The concept of risk transfer, which Shaw has developed extensively, is implemented through standoff attacks using artillery, aircraft, and drones. This tactic sacrifices precision in distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants in order to minimize casualties among own soldiers. Militaries tend to prefer this tactic over more discriminate methods that require closer engagement with the enemy and would increase risks to ground forces.

While risk transfer is fundamentally a tactical approach, in this conflict, it is bolstered by an ethnic-nationalist rationale for revenge, which has moved from the nationalist margins to the center of discourse. This shift is vividly illustrated by the invocation of Amalek, the first tribe that attacked Israel following the Exodus from Egypt. Due to this sin, God commanded that Amalek and his name be completely obliterated, sparing neither women nor children. By comparing Palestinians to Amalekites, they are effectively dehumanized, a sentiment echoed by troops who assert that “there are no uninvolved civilians” in Gaza. This attitude relaxes not only the rules of engagement—or their interpretation at the tactical level—but also undermines any discourse that advocates for troops to assume greater risks to protect the immunity of noncombatants. In essence, the practice of tactical risk transfer is intensified by ethnic symbols.

Moreover, the Lavender AI system, which identified 37,000 suspected Hamas or Jihad militants, facilitated immediate actions early in the war, such as bombing buildings housing suspected militants. Revenge motivations were also evident, as indicated by intelligence sources.

Revenge, an emotional rather than rational perception, has traditionally been excluded from the legitimization system of using force, including in Israel. However, revenge often includes a significant ethnic element, primarily due to its association with dehumanization. As demonstrated by the Lavender case, even a seemingly rational and detached system can reflect motives of revenge.

Pushing one step further, once a quantitative goal was established—targeting 37,000 militants—body count emerged as a metric of success, as indicated by the military's routine progress reports during the war. This approach goes beyond the Vietnam-era style, where traditional metrics for evaluating combat success were elusive, thus making body count, rather than strategic objectives achieved, the primary indicator of success.

In the context of the Gaza war, body count serves not only to reflect instrumental rationality, measuring the outputs of the means used to achieve the goal, but it also embodies value rationality. It becomes a component of the ideology that demands victory in a war perceived as total, necessitating mass killing, as Malešević elucidates in his analysis of body count practices in Vietnam. The melding of body count with dehumanization is part of the ideological underpinnings that justify warfare and a reluctance to compromise with an enemy deemed of low human worth. The very act of counting bodies commodifies the deceased, justifying their death in pursuit of a quantifiable goal. This results in an implicit encouragement to kill, frequently observed among Israeli troops. Furthermore, when fatalities are represented merely by numbers rather than personal details, the discourse of body count not only reflects dehumanization but actively promotes it.

In sum, the Israeli military was able to transfer the risk from its own troops to Gazan civilians, evidenced by the relatively lower number of casualties than expected, by utilizing the ethno-religious discourse.

5. The Self-Benefit of the National Ultra-Orthodox Camp

Returning to Malešević’s argument, cultural markers are often amplified or downplayed for self-benefit. Over the last 20 years, and more noticeably since 2016, the military supreme command has faced challenges from the national ultra-Orthodox camp and an uprising by blue-collar soldiers following the Elor Azaria affair. In this 2016 incident, the right wing vehemently opposed the military’s decision to prosecute a conscript filmed executing a wounded and immobilized Palestinian combatant in the West Bank city of Hebron. These challenges share a common goal: reshaping military culture to be less restrained and more warlike.

In the current conflict, ethnicity, intertwined with religious symbols, enabled the national ultra-Orthodox camp to reinforce its already strong military status. This was particularly reactive against what could be seen as the significant contributions of their secular middle-class adversaries to the war effort. These contributions were exemplified by the unequivocal mobilization of middle-class reserve pilots, many of whom had suspended their volunteer service before the war, pending the abandonment of the rightist government’s judicial reforms.

In response, the national ultra-Orthodox sector radicalized its tone. Its external social networks and unprecedented internal military voices, amplified by social media, promoted a discourse of revenge, advocated for erasing noncombatant immunity, criticized restraint, called for the renewal of settlement projects in Gaza, and endorsed actions like placing mezuzahs on homes of displaced Gazans. While blue-collar soldiers from other origins displayed similar behaviors, such as filming themselves mocking Gazans during property destruction, their actions reinforced the organized rhetoric of the national ultra-Orthodox camp.

This sector seemingly declared, "We operate under different codes," in an attempt to reshape the army's character. They envision an army that strives for victory without restraint, shows no mercy towards Gazan civilians, disregards international law, and whose troops use violence and seek revenge without any shame, an army erasing the humiliation of the 2005 evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza. Religious ethnicity thus became a powerful symbolic resource for the national ultra-Orthodox sector.

In Conclusion

So, what does ethnic framing serve? It supports the war's legitimization system and the price it exacts from the Gazan side. It weakens efforts to delegitimize the war and reinforces the power of those seeking influence within the army and society. Therefore, framing the war as an ethnic or religious conflict should raise critical suspicions.

Yagil Levy is a professor of public policy and political sociology at the Open University of Israel. His recent book is Whose Life Is Worth More? Hierarchies of Risk and Death in Contemporary Wars (Stanford University Press, 2019).

1 This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the opening session of the annual convention of the Israeli Sociological Society in Jerusalem on April 17, 2024.