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Mike Kelly has seen close-up the absolute worst atrocities humans are capable of committing. Like the underground torture chambers uncovered after coalition forces in Iraq drove al-Qaeda from the city of Fallujah in 2004. The corpses of their victims were still shackled inside. \u201cIt was unmitigated evil,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t think he\u2019d ever see worse. \u201cBut even they didn\u2019t behead babies,\u201d Kelly says, incredulity in his voice as the 20-year veteran of the Australian Army speaks of the reported conduct of Hamas on October 7.<\/p>\n
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Mike Kelly has seen the worst atrocities humans are capable of. <\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cHow does someone stand face to face with a baby, and behead them? There\u2019s been a generation raised in Gaza now taught to dehumanise Israelis. The scary part, of course, is that we\u2019ve seen it before \u2013 the Nazis did it, the Hutus did it, the Tutsis did it. I\u2019ve confronted it so often, but it never ceases to amaze me.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelly confronted it in the Somali civil war, in the Bosnian war, in the Iraq war. He\u2019s spent most of his career working to put humanity into war, including as an army legal officer, then writing a PhD on the topic, before retiring at the rank of colonel and going into federal parliament as a Labor MP. He now works for an American software firm.<\/p>\n What should we expect next, as Israel\u2019s army masses to enter Gaza City? And how can some humanity be preserved in the close-quarter killing that\u2019s sure to follow?<\/p>\n Of history\u2019s various urban wars, the closest precedent is the Battle of Mosul in 2016-17, says Kelly. An eight-nation force including Australia drove Daesh, the so-called Islamic State or IS, out of that Iraqi city.<\/p>\n The aftermath of The Battle of Mosul.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very similar scale and dynamic, almost a cut-and-paste situation\u201d to today\u2019s Gaza confrontation, Kelly tells me. Some 1.5 million civilians lived in Mosul at the outset of the battle. The US-led coalition forces warned civilians to leave the city before they began their offensive. But Daesh held tens of thousands of civilians as hostages to use as human shields, and was well dug in with tunnels and bunkers and booby-traps. \u201cHamas is doing exactly the same now.\u201d<\/p>\n The coalition prevailed. It took nine months to defeat an estimated 6000 to 12,000 Daesh fighters. At a cost of 40,000 buildings destroyed, creating ten million tonnes of rubble. Daesh demolished 15 religious sites and the coalition damaged or destroyed 47 in the fighting. About 850,000 civilians were displaced.<\/p>\n And the number of civilians killed? It\u2019s estimated to have been about 10,000. Kelly says that Israel\u2019s operation against Hamas should be swifter because of improvements in urban warfare techniques.<\/p>\n But should we expect about as many civilians to be killed in Gaza as were in Mosul? \u201cIf it\u2019s conducted as we did it, that\u2019s a very real risk. We all took great care with targeting regimes but some things are unavoidable, and there will be IDF (Israel Defense Forces) casualties as well.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be tragic, but it\u2019s been tragic for 17 years. You have to bite the bullet for the sake of the Gazans. The situation of the people of Gaza will never improve unless Hamas presence in Gaza is eliminated, and there is an opportunity to restart a peace process.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the tragedies of Gaza, says Kelly, is that billions of dollars in aid has been donated over the last decade, and Hamas has used it for its military instead of using it to improve people\u2019s lives. One example is the European Union funding of about \u20ac100 million to build water pipes for Gaza. Hamas cut them up to make rockets, and made a video to showcase their cleverness.<\/p>\n For 17 years, Israel has imposed a partial blockade on Gaza in an effort to squeeze Hamas. As we saw on October 7, it was a failure. The people of Gaza were living in poverty but Hamas was able to mount the deadliest one-day attack on Israel in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n In the likely carnage to come, Kelly offers three rules for assessing civilian casualties. And for judging culpability. These are the precautions required in attack, those governing targeting and proportionality in terms of military necessity.<\/p>\n First, he says he\u2019s frustrated whenever he sees a media outlet accepting Hamas\u2019 numbers of dead and injured as fact. The numbers are unverifiable, Hamas as a source is unreliable, and anyone blindly accepting its version is merely helping it to fight its information war.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that there are a lot of people sceptical of US intelligence reports; you should be at least as sceptical of anything from Hamas or Hezbollah,\u201d counsels Kelly.<\/p>\n Many media outlets, for example, instantly reported the Hamas version of responsibility for the explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital \u2013 it was an Israeli air strike, said Hamas. After assessing evidence, the governments of Canada, France, Australia and the US said that the Israeli account was much more likely \u2013 it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.<\/p>\n This wouldn\u2019t be the first time. Kelly points out that in a May-2021 rocket barrage, Hamas and PIJ fired 4360 rockets and mortar bombs against Israel. Of those, 680 misfired and landed in Gaza. \u201cThese misfires are estimated to have caused around 36 per cent of the civilian casualties in Gaza over 11 days,\u201d relates Kelly.<\/p>\n Second, he explains that the laws of armed combat accept that civilian casualties are sometimes unavoidable but that a belligerent must take precautions and act in proportion to the threat faced: \u201cYou need to judge Israeli actions on whether targeting is permissible based on whether they warn civilians, encourage civilians to evacuate, and, where possible, facilitate humanitarian relief.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s important that when you judge proportionality you understand the full military context \u2013 Hamas is trying to generate a pile-on so that Israel can be overrun and eliminated as a nation state. The threat to Israel is existential.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s set to be dire, which leads Kelly to his overarching advice: \u201cDo everything possible to avoid war.\u201d Dreadfully, it\u2019s too late now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n