Israel Has a Duty to Defend Its Citizens
As long as Hamas remains a threat to Israel, the fighting will continue in Gaza.
When the Jews of Israel say "never again," they mean it.
“The fog of war” is a metaphor of choice for war’s blinding physical and moral confusions, its half-truths, lies, ambiguities, distortions and deceptions. They all characterize the perceptions of the war between Israel and Hamas. Israel is a democratic country that wishes to live in peace with its neighbors, but cannot escape a duty to defend its citizens. The other is a terrorist group whose whole reason for being is genocide. It is dedicated not just to the diminution of the state of Israel but to its extermination, not just to fight Israeli soldiers, but to the extinction of all Jews whom it refers to as “inherently evil” and “responsible for all the evils in the world.” Hamas lives by the charter of Allah issued in 1988, which declared, “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad. The initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.” And this is the organization that is now allied with the supposedly moderate Fatah, the Palestine Authority it brutally expelled from Gaza in a coup.
Let us remember that Israel withdrew all of its citizens, uprooted its settlements, and completely disengaged from Gaza in 2005. It wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help it economically, the Israelis left behind 3,000 working greenhouses. They also disassembled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank – a sign that they wanted to live peacefully, side by side with Gaza. And how did the Palestinians respond? They demolished the greenhouses, elected Hamas, and instead of building a state, says Charles Krauthammer in the National Review Online, spent most of the last decade turning Gaza into a massive military base brimming with weapons to make endless war on Israel.
Even more menacingly, Hamas built miles and miles of intricate, underground tunnels to hide weapons and extended these tunnels into Israeli territory so it could carry out surprise attacks against Israeli citizens. Since then, Hamas has indiscriminately launched over 2,900 missiles against Israel. The rocket program is one that Hamas could have stopped at any time and ended the current conflict.
But Hamas has a different measure of victory. It is in the court of public opinion. Hamas has a sophisticated media strategy. Former President Clinton captured it well. Hamas, he told an Indian television audience, has a strategy designed to force Israel to kill its own (Palestinian) citizens so the rest of the world will condemn Israel.
Hamas operates by creating grief and then exploiting it. It places missile batteries next to its playgrounds, private homes, and mosques – inviting retaliation. It uses United Nations Relief and Works Agency facilities as weapons depots. Israel uses its arms to protect its civilians. Hamas uses its civilians to protect its weapons. The shameful tactic is to callously use women and children as human shields while Hamas military leaders hide in their deep tunnels and their leader Khaled Meshal plots from his sanctuary in Qatar. Other senior Hamas officials deliberately shelter among civilians and in hospitals. At the Gaza City Shifa Hospital, Hamas sacrificed the Palestinian people for its ideological cause. The attack was specifically designed to produce images of dead and injured Palestinians for television.
Gaza is a nightmare alike for the two peoples held hostage by Hamas. The Israelis, exposed to murderous assault from rocket fire, can defend themselves from death and destruction only at the cost of death and destruction for the people of Gaza. This lethal symmetry is, of course, exactly as its terrorist masters planned for the war they started. They reckoned that sacrificing human shields will attract more money and weapons from their chief sponsor, Iran, and from the new young Emir of Qatar, a financial sponsor of the underground Terror City.
Israel has no choice but to destroy the Hamas terror tunnels and its thousands of rockets and launchers. The Israelis do it as carefully as humanly possible, using the latest technology. They warn. They plead with people to leave dangerous areas. They hazard the lives of their young soldiers – more than 50 have been killed by Hamas gunmen emerging from tunnels, booby traps in houses and mortar fire.
We have done the same when we have been at war. In World War II, some 378,000 German civilians were killed in British air raids, compared to only 62,000 British civilians that were killed in German air raids. In the Pacific theater, over 2.6 million Japanese were killed, including 580,000 civilians. Recently the U.S. sent drone attacks into Pakistan, killing 13 people in one strike just last month. Of course, just having more dead on your side does not make you right. It didn’t make Japan or Germany right. But the minute Israel responds to the rocket fire from Gaza, radicals in the West take to the streets and scream about Israeli bloodletting. In Paris, anti-Israeli demonstrators take images of charred bodies from the civil war in Syria and circulate them under the hashtag “GazaUnderAttack.”
It was not occupation that led to the current conflict, as some keep saying. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, only to have it taken over from the Palestinian Authority by Hamas, which turned it into a terrorist enclave. In fact, the Israeli ending of the occupation of Gaza seems to have escalated the conflict. It is clear the Israelis are not fighting the Palestinians; they are fighting radical Islam. Other Arab countries realize this, countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the moderates in the Arab world and the main rivals to the Muslim Brotherhood that controls Gaza. Their leaders have accused Hamas of taking unreasonable and irresponsible steps.
Yes, civilians get caught up in war. Israel is engaged in a legal and lawful defensive operation. When Hamas stops firing rockets to kill Israeli citizens, Israel will stop bombing Gaza. Just think, Israel is coordinating aid and goods to Gaza and set up a field hospital for Gazans.
Furthermore, Israel has accepted five cease-fires since the conflict began. Hamas rejected all the cease-fires, even its own, continuing to fire even as it spoke. Every time the international community calls for a cease-fire, Israel ceases and Hamas fires. This is a fight that could have and should have been over. But Hamas rejected the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, the U.N. humanitarian truce, the Red Cross humanitarian truce and rebuffed the U.N. request for a truce to allow the residents of Gaza to prepare for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
The controllers of Gaza have had the undivided land for nine years, and we’ve seen what they’ve done with it. The excuse, espoused by Hamas apologists in Europe and notably The Guardian newspaper, is that they have not been able to build a flourishing Gaza because of Israel’s restrictions. That is hypocrisy on stilts and deserves to have 600,000 tons of cement dropped on it, the amount that Hamas diverted into tunnels instead of building roads, hospitals, and homes. The perpetual warfare by Hamas has renewed Israeli fears that withdrawal from the West Bank would have the same result as the withdrawal from Gaza.
The American public is on tricky ground judging Israel on how it treats Palestinians, because we don’t have Palestinians threatening us. We can’t possibly know how we would cope with rockets, kidnappings and neighbors preaching annihilation. You cannot be harried, critiqued, disowned, attacked by radicals, boycotted, slammed and cajoled without it having an effect as it does in Israel. Yet Israel at heart remains a liberal nation, and we must ask ourselves what we would do under a situation like this, living in a very small territory and with the constant threat of annihilation.
This is not an abstraction to the people of Israel. In fact it is the core reason for the formation of that state, for the Jews of Israel learned in the most barbaric way imaginable that the price of being too strong is not as high as the price of being too weak. When the Jews of Israel say “never again,” they mean it.
- Christopher Klemetson · Top Commenter · Aviation Career AcademyI would agree Israel has a right to defend itself, but does NOT have the right to illegally occupy land forcing its citizens to move! The U.N. needs to set sanctions against Israel till it stops these illegal actions! Israel has forgotten how it was allowed to become a state as a handout from the U.N..
- Steve Wang · Top Commenter · Columbia UniversityMort Zuckerman makes an excellent case when he says Israel's response is Legal, and it is unfair to Israel to impose the idea of "disproportionate" response. Indeed, he writes, it was considered perfectly OK "In World War II, [for] some 378,000 German civilians [to be] killed in British air raids, compared to only 62,000 British civilians that were killed in German air raids." And Mort Zuckerman very rightly points out that Israel absolutely and positively has the indubitable right to defend its citizens. Mort Zuckerman writes, "When the Jews of Israel say “never again,” they mean it." Just as another commenter said, "The opinion of stupid people who look at the carnage without any context is far, far less important to us than the blood of one Israeli soldier..."
So we know the Israelis stand resolutely. Trouble is, the Israelis may be missing the Big Picture, which for Israel is... survival. The clear truth is Israel is losing the war for the hearts and minds of Christians and moderate Muslims (if there truly are many "moderate" Muslims where Israel is concerned) and, more and more so, Americans, who are considering Israeli killings of Palestinians as barbaric. Unless Israel figures out how to disengage from all this killing -- and soon -- Israel will have lost the battle at Gaza. And, unfortunately for Israel, she can win a dozen wars, but lose only one battle, and Israel faces being overrun and losing the entire war. The stakes are too high for Israel to risk so much. Israel, unfortunately, cannot -- except rarely -- go "All-In". This is a place where Israel needs to concede and back away, and re-group.
The clear truth is... Muslims and still many Christians have not evolved away from their evidently ingrained distrust and dislike of Jews. Over the past several thousand years, they have been continually trying to kill off Jewish people through Inquisitions, Pogroms, Holocausts, Jihads, etc. While Christians may have mostly evolved away from this idea, Muslims (who came 700 years after Christianity), evidently, still have a ways to go. There are now only about 12 Million Jews left in the world (half in America and half in Israel), compared to Chinese (who also have a calendar that is also about 5000 years old), for example, who now number 1.6 Billion.
Unfortunately, all this reminds me of a famous poem, where the protagonists are slaughtered needlessly, a tragedy that tugs at the heart strings because they faced their tragedy with brave countenance and resolute action... but so needlessly: The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson, which goes in part:
"'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."
I hope that Israel doesn't charge into the valley of death, letting Chutzpah and Hubris get in the way of doing the right thing... which is to survive until Muslims and Christians evolve away from their hatred to Jews. Because only at that time can a lasting and honorable peace be truly accomplished.
As an heir to East Asian culture (and neither Christian nor Muslim nor a believer in any God of Abraham religion), I am completely at a loss to understand the history of over a thousand of years of continual programs to eliminate Jews all over the world (except East Asia) by Christians and Muslims. Would somebody explain... why, how come?- Tom Dewire · Top Commenter · Ottawa Hills, Ohioif our country had neighbors launching rockets continuously, i'd hope that our military would address the issue and tell the bystanders to either shut up or volunteer to be human shieldsReply · · August 15 at 9:25pm
- Eric Tremblay · Top Commenter · Coupeville, WashingtonMortimer Zuckerman's must be doing his part in Bibi's sophisticated media strategy by buying into the "human shield" BS.
The Citizens of Gaza's safety is Israel's Responsibility as long as Gaza is under Israel's occupation (by blockade).Israel has been grossly negligent in its attacks on civilians. There are two key principles of international law that apply in assessing charges of war crimes in the military cations in Gaza: distinction and proportionality.
The IDF fails miserably on both counts.- Scott Brown · Top CommenterTo say that Israel occupies Gaza or is responsible for it because of the blockade makes no sense whatsoever. If Israel was controlling Gaza, Hamas wouldn't be using it as a base to launch hundreds of rockets at Israel or build tunnels from Gaza into Israel for the sole purpose of launching raids. Gaza's misery is the responsibility of Hamas; they are the ones who turned Gaza into a base for attacking Israel all the while doing nothing to meet the needs of the people they claim to represent.
- Tom Dewire · Top Commenter · Ottawa Hills, OhioScott Brown agreed; there's money for weapons; money for tunnels; manpower and motivation for each of those endeavors; it seems like they can import all sorts of weaponry thru Israeli security, but humanitarian items are effectively blockadedReply · · August 15 at 9:23pm
- Harvest McCampbell · Top Commenter · Mother EarthIsrael, as part of its self defense, should pressure Hague and the International Criminal Court to investigate Hamas war crimes.
http://www.theguardian.com/law/ 2014/aug/18/ hague-court-western-pressur e-gaza-inquiry - me (signed in using yahoo)Why the need to lie? The Gaza greenhouse smear has been debunked so many times that clearly Zuckerman' s repetition of it has to be deliberate mendacity.
The real record:
’JERUSALEM – After months of intense negotiations recently culminatin¬g in a deal allowing for the transfer of Gaza's high-tech Jewish greenhouses to the Palestinians, several former Jewish residents who briefly returned to their farms told WND they were shocked to find most of their produce has died because Israel turned off the water in the area.’
http://www.wnd.com/2005/08/32030/
’The Palestinians invested millions of dollars to repair the greenhouses shortly after the Israelis left, and had an excellent crop in the winter of 2005 and 2006. But they were unable to export their produce to Europe, the main market, because Israel kept Gaza’s main crossing for goods closed for weeks at a time, citing security concerns.’
http://tinyurl.com/l74rung
The greenhouse project collapsed because of the arbitrary closure of the crossings. Ask James D. Wolfensohn, who was president of the World Bank for 10 years (1995-2005¬) and then spent 11 months as the Middle East envoy of the Quartet
"The issue of the greenhouses is especially painful to Wolfensohn because of his personal contribution to them (half a million dollars). "Everything was rotting because you couldn't get the fruit. And if you went to the border, as I did many times, and saw tomatoes and fruit just being dumped on the side of the road, you would have to say that if you were a Palestinian farmer you'd be pretty upset.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/ all-the-dreams-we-had-are-n ow-gone-1.225828 - Tom Dewire · Top Commenter · Ottawa Hills, Ohiohow does Israel block the potential shipping of produce into Egypt or via the Mediterranean? not to sound doubtful, but weaponry gets there somehow, how is it that goods can't get out of there?Reply · · August 15 at 9:18pm
- James West · Top CommenterUnder this same logic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine would be completely justified.
- Scott Brown · Top CommenterI guess I missed the part where Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russia and threatened to destroy it.Reply · · August 8 at 8:37pm
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