Gaza - A Proportional Response
With the current situation in Gaza propelling the Israeli-Arab conflict again into the headlines, I offer the following ideas about it.
PROPORTIONAL RESPONSE NOT POSSIBLE
A standard operating paradigm of civilized governments for dealing with military harms done to its goods, soldiers, or civilians is to deal back a "proportional response." Civilized nations do not pour out Armageddon every time they suffer harm: they deal back punitive harm proportional to the harm done. "An eye for an eye," rather than a village for an eye.
Israel cannot deal back a proportional response to Hamas - because to do so would mean Israel lobbing inaccurate rockets on a daily basis into civilian areas of Gaza, and intentionally killing non-specific people at random. The entire world condemns such actions (except when they are aimed at Jews).
1. There is no situation conceivable that justifies Hamas's Gazan rocket launching actions: the lobbing of inaccurate rocket propelled bombs into civilian areas in hope of killing enough civilians to make a political point about regime change. Also, there is no situation in history in any country offering any precedent for deeming such a course of action anything other than crimes against humanity; however, much of the world on an emotional level really does not consider Jews human, and therefore does not consider Jews worthy of the same protections actual humans like the Palestinians deserve.
2. Israel faces an enemy committed to the above actions as long as those actions are possible. So - Israel's only available courses of actions are (a) to convince by diplomacy that such actions should cease, or (b) act militarily so as to make such actions of harm against Israeli citizen impossible for Hamas to commit. On political track (a) above, Israel has traded land for the promise of peace and permitted political elections: both of which were specific demands of the Palestinians in order to stop terror. The result has been for the Palestinians to turn Gaza into a staging ground for military actions against Israeli civilians, and to elect by a 61% majority Hamas (with its platform of annihilation of Israel) as their government of choice. Israel's concession of land was with the specific condition that such lands not be used as staging grounds for violence against Israel. So - in sum, Israel is left only with option (b): the Palestinians have elected a government that has defined itself as in a state of war against Israel. Israel Since the world will always condemn Israel for doing anything to protect itself, Israel should stop trying to please the world, and wage actual war against those who have declared war.
3. If the same situation happened anywhere else: if Native Americans were lobbing rockets daily into Kansas City and randomly killing women sipping coffee in restaurants in protest against the American government's seizures of Indian lands, if Mexicans in Tiajuana angered over the American acquisition of formerly Spanish California were lobbing rockets into the suburbs of San Diego, you can be sure America would not be idle for three years (as Israel has patiently waited for Gaza to see the light) and allow the slaughter of civilians to go on out of fear the miniorities of the world would condemn mighty America for flexing its military muscles against the poor, weak residents of Tiajuana. America would take care of business, and far more brutally than has Israel. An Afghan-based terror group blew up two American iconic business buildings - and we waged full-blown war on the entire country on the premise that those who host terrorists are, in fact, also terrorists as accomplices before or after the fact. The "Bush Doctrine" of guilt by active or passive hosting is extremely significant in the Gaza matter, since the Gazans hosting Hamas as their elected government of choice insist on being seen as hapless victims. More on that further down.
WHAT THE WORLD DEMANDS OF ISRAEL, IT DEMANDS OF NO ONE ELSE
Lost and harmed Israeli lives are not an acceptable sidebar to whether or not Hamas et al get to live in security no matter what harm they do. The internationally ratified condition for Palestinians to have back Gaza from the Israelis (who legally took it during Israel's defense against Egypt's 1967 attack) was that Gaza not be used to launch attacks on Israel. Gazans elected Hamas as their government, with its chartered position of declared war against Israel in order to destroy it. Insofar as international law is concerned, if Israel destroyed ALL of Gaza and retook it, it would be perfectly legal. An aggressor who loses the war he starts does not get back the land he loses to his victim: the world always adds an unwritten, ubiquitous codicil to that law: "unless the victims are Jews."
Israel has had Gazan rockets falling on Israeli citizens for 3 years. The last Israeli wounded by these random, untargetable rockets was an infant. An infant. CNN et al show no interest because the infant was a Jew. Christiana Amanpour seems incapable of describing any wounded Israeli, infant or otherwise, as anything other than "slightly injured." How injured does a Jewish infant need to be in order to have its wounds matter to Christiana Amapour (who functions as the de-facto international spokeswoman for the Palestinian cause)? Plenty of "slightly wounded" Gazan women and children are paraded on the video news as "a humanitarian crisis" – while Jewish civilian blood pours into the sand with little or no notice.
JEWS MUST SEE TO JEWISH SECURITY BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL
Jabotinsky was right: Jews must see to their own security and let the world rail, which it always does. The world is rushing now to condemn an Israeli artillery unit for shelling a school. The world does not care that Hamas was launching rockets at Jews (according to CNN) from "ground adjacent" to that school - in other words, a few yards from it, which Hamas knew the Israeli-return fire radar would not distinguish well enough to keep some of its return fire from impinging on the school. Hamas does these things deliberately to create martyrs. Better in the world's view that hundred-thousands of Jews continue to be in harm's way than the attacker be inconvenienced or harmed.
GERMANS ELECTED HITLER, AND GAZANS ELECTED HAMAS
The Arab population that elected these Hamas butchers now wants to be treated as innocent bystanders. Did America accept such a view of the German nation that elected Adolf Hitler into power? Were American bombers condemned for their attacks on German cities containing Nazi headquarters and war factories for military operations because there might be (and was) collateral damage of civilians? Was Berlin declared off limits to attack because German non-military citizens lived there? Certainly not. The Germans chose a Nazi government. They supported the Arayan war machine. They paid the price for so doing.
The New Jew made alive by Jabotinsky and Begin does not sit around waiting either to be killed or permitted to live by the largesse of the world around him. The New Jew affirms, "I have a right to exist securely, as does any other human being, and I have the right to defend that existence, as does any other human being." The New Jew does not apologize for defending himself.
The readiness of the world to treat randomly inflicted civilian Jewish deaths and dismemberments as conditions Jews must accept as a "normal" facet of Jewish daily life - and the world's readiness to defend the attackers of Israel whenever Israel raises its fist after long restraint to defend its citizens' lives - is morally disgusting. Benyamin Netanyahu had the strength to say it directly to the American Senate a few years back: in Europe and much of the world, nothing had changed since the Nazis were defeated. Antisemitism is alive and well - and any life is more valuable in the world than a Jewish one. Enough. Enough of Jewish lives being the LAST priority in the political world.
The world wants to make itself feel better about the Holocaust by proving in at any opportunity that Jews are wrongdoers. Every time a Jew defends himself, it is treated as an opportunity to prove Jews are as bad as Nazis - and therefore, the world can feel better about itself for having permitted the horrors of the Shoah.
Enough.
The Jewish State lives - and Jews live - not by permission of others - but because existence is the right of every human being - and Jews are human beings.
It was quite a relief to see the US President, President-elect, Senate and House of Representatives all say the same thing: Israel has the right to defend itself. Now - if we can only get the rest of the world to agree: either by verbal assent, or by the same kind of silent cooperation the Nazis now give to that idea: they are dead or powerless to inflict their agenda. Better if diplomacy should be the tool - all civilization agrees. Yet, when your enemy has a loaded gun aimed at your head and is in the process of pulling the trigger, the only argument that will stop him is if your bullet arrives first.
The Jewish State does not need permission to defend its citizens.
And in this case - it is not asking for any.
G-d save the State of Israel, its leaders and citizens.
G-d help the Hamasniks to find their way to the truth: because only the truth will set them free.
7 January 2009 © Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen