A particular objection that has been voiced in opposition to Israeli counterattacks in Lebanon three years ago and in Gaza today is a version of the following:
Rocket attacks by Hizballah or Hamas are not comparable in force to Israeli military capabilities, only a few Israelis, or non at all, have been killed by those rocket attacks. Therefore Israel had no rights to retaliate in counter strikes and to put Palestinian civilian life in danger, or to indirectly cause their death (because Israel knew already that Hizballah’s and Hamas’s policies in hiding their military facilities among civilian population)
I’m sure we all have heard this repeated many times by now. Here, I want to take this objection seriously and study its logical consequences:
We all know that Hizballah or Hamas have been deliberately launching Qassam rockets into Israeli civilian centers, including schools and hospitals. What the above stance is demanding is that Israel should not take actions to end such attacks because the rocket attacks are usually ineffective. Nevertheless it is clear that if such deliberate attacks are allowed to continue, sooner or later israeli citizens, women and children will be hit and killed. This means that the logic of this position ultimately prefers possible Israeli deaths due to the continuation of such attacks in the absence of an Israeli response to possible Palestinian death from such an Israeli response. Let me emphasize this again:
The logical consequence of such a stance is that Israeli deaths are preferable to Palestinian deaths.*
But it is actually more than this:
They expect Israel to have the same preference. In other words, they expect Israel, a sovereign nation state responsible first and foremost for her people’s safety, to effectively prefer the death of her citizens to the possible death of a those who have elected such thugs in power that launch rockets, even if relatively ineffective still potentially deadly rockets, on her soil to kill those citizens. Even more than that, when Israeli fails to share their preference, they feel justified to go all the way to question or even justify crimes like the Nazi Holocaust. Again we have unfortunately already witnessed examples of this by people in this very website.
Let me make the above analysis more concrete by taking a hypothetical example. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Saddam’s Iraq did not invade Iranian territory first, but started the war by launching week after week Qassam rockets into Iranian cities and villages near the Iraqi border. Suppose that for several weeks, no Iranian citizen were killed, but that rockets kept falling hospitals, schools and residential areas. Would you approve of a similar stance as explained above? Would you expect the Iran to refrain from counter attacks to end the rocket strikes. Would you think Iran had no rights to attempt a counter strike until “enough” Iranian civilians are killed by those rockets? What number would qualify as “enough Iranian civilians killed” to justify an Iranian response for you? And further more, would you expect Iran to limit herself to launching similar Qassam rockets into Iraqi border towns and villages only to be a “proportionate” response? Even though it is clear that such a policy will have zero deterrence capability and will do nothing to prevent the inevitable death of Iranian civilians since the Iraqi side will continue her own rocket assaults as before? If Iran fails to act by this rather insane policy and decides to take action hard enough to end the rocket assaults, would you consider your country to be a demonic force engaging in crimes similar to the Nazis? My question to all of you is simple:
Would you really approve of such a stance?**
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*This observation also places a clear question mark in front of the true motives of the proponents of such a stance when they claim they care for the life of both sides. This is hard to believe because they without exception chose to remain silent and indifferent while the hamas or Hizballah rocket assaults were going forward prior to an Israeli reaction. Why? Why didn’t they speak up with the same amount of fervor to put a stop to Palestinian attacks in order to prevent an Israeli response and save the lives of both sides? The answer I think should be clear by now.
** If you are not impressed with hypotheticals, you can still take a look at the link by Darius Kadivar:
http://iranian.com/main/news/2008/12/21/iraq-k…
Should we be in any way surprised that none of the loud proponents of such stance when it comes to Israel seem like they couldn’t care less when it comes to the regime of Iran and the Kurds?
