Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (8 page)

Contrast the pleas of the Shalit family with the plea of Zahra Maladan. Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women’s magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah—the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children, and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994—Ms. Maladan was quoted in the
New York Times
offering the following admonition to her son: “If you’re not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don’t want you.”

Nor is Ms. Maladan alone in urging her children to become suicide murderers. Umm Nidal, who ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council, prepared all of her sons for martyrdom. She has ten sons, one of whom already engaged in a suicide operation, which she considered “a blessing, not a tragedy.” She is now preparing to “sacrifice them all.”

It is impossible, of course, to generalize about cultures. There was genuine joy among many in Gaza when the deal was announced and when it became evident that their loved ones, despite their terrorist activities, would be returned.

All decent people love their children and want them to live good lives. It is their leaders who prefer death over life and who make them feel guilty for not acting on that perverse preference. Democratic leaders, on the other hand, urge their citizens to act in the interests of life and see death as a necessary evil in fighting against even greater evils.

While the preference for life over death may appear to be a weakness in the ability of democracies to fight against terrorism, in the end it is a strength. It is a strength because it signals a democracy’s commitment to value the life of every single one of its citizens.

Israeli and American soldiers go into battle knowing that their countries will do everything in their power to rescue them, even if it means taking extraordinary risks. Nations that are committed to such humanistic values tend to have superior armies, as the United States and Israel do.

An important goal of terrorists is to force democracies to surrender their humanistic values. Israel, by agreeing to exchange hundreds of terrorists for one soldier, has shown the world that it will not compromise on its value system, which proclaims that he who saves one human being, it is as if he has saved the world.

16

Israel’s Right to Self-Defense Against Hamas

November 18, 2012

As Hamas continues to target Israeli civilians in their homes, Israel continues to target terrorist leaders and other legitimate military targets. Hamas has now succeeded in
killing a family of three
24
in their home. Targeting civilians, such as that family, is a calculated Hamas policy designed to sow terror among the Israeli population. Hamas supporters celebrate the murder of Jewish civilians. Every rocket fired by Hamas from one of its own civilian areas at a nonmilitary Israeli target is a double war crime that should be universally condemned by all reasonable people. Israel’s response—targeting only terrorists and Hamas military leaders—is completely lawful and legitimate. It constitutes an act of self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and universally accepted principles of international law.

There is absolutely no comparison between the murderous war crimes being committed by Hamas and the lawful targeting of terrorists by the Israeli military. Yet the Egyptian government, now controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, has condemned Israel while remaining relatively silent about Hamas. This should not be surprising, since Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. (The Muslim Brotherhood no longer controls Egypt.)

Some in the media also insist on describing the recent events in Gaza as “a cycle of violence” without distinguishing between the war crimes committed by Hamas and the lawful actions undertaken by Israel to protect its citizens against such war crimes. It would be as if the media described lawful police efforts to stop illegal drug-related murders as a “cycle of violence.” Yet J Street, an organization that persists in calling itself pro-Israel, insists on describing the situation in Gaza as a “
spiral of violence
.”
²⁵

What would Egypt do if Hamas or Islamic Jihad suddenly began to lob deadly shells in the direction of Cairo suburbs? What would any country do? President Obama was entirely correct in
defending Israel’s right
26
to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and in condemning Hamas for initiating these attacks. He is also correct in calling for Israel to try its best to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, as Israel has always done and continues to do. The targeted killing of Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari is a case in point. He and a Hamas associate were killed in a pinpoint airstrike that apparently caused no collateral damage.

There are some who argue, quite absurdly, that all targeted assassination is unlawful, since it constitutes extrajudicial killing. But all military deaths are extrajudicial killings, as are deaths caused in the civilian context by individual acts of self-defense or by the police shooting a dangerous fleeing felon. In fact, only Israel among all the countries of the world has subjected its policy of targeted killing of terrorists to judicial review. The Israeli Supreme Court has set out careful and precise criteria for when targeted killing is appropriate and which people constitute appropriate targets under international law. Ahmed Jabari plainly fits within those criteria.

Israel’s response to the Hamas rockets must of course be proportional, but proportionality does not require that Israel wait until a large number of its civilians are actually killed or seriously injured. Israel’s response must be proportionate to the threat faced by its civilian population. Indeed, the goal of its actions must be to prevent even a single Israeli civilian death.

In addition to the Israel Supreme Court imposing constraints on its military, Israeli civilians and the Israeli media also serve as an important check. When, on occasion, Israeli military actions have caused a disproportionate number of civilian deaths, Israelis have become outraged at their military and demanded a greater adherence to the principles of proportionality. This contrasts sharply with the population of Gaza, much of which applauds and celebrates every time an Israeli child is killed by a Hamas rocket. It is immoral in the extreme to compare Israel to Gaza or to compare the Israeli military to Hamas terrorists.

It would be better, of course, if a permanent cease-fire could be arranged under which Hamas would stop firing rockets at civilians and Israel would no longer need to target Hamas terrorists. Egypt could play a more positive role by trying to bring about a cease-fire instead of unilaterally condemning the victims of war crimes, as it has done.

But until Hamas stops terrorizing more than a million Israeli civilians, the Israeli military will have no choice other than to use its technological advantage to prevent and deter Hamas terrorism. It is the obligation of every sovereign state, first and foremost, to protect its civilian population from terrorist attacks. Israel’s decision to use targeted assassination against Hamas combatants is preferable to other military options, such as a massive ground attack that inevitably will cause more collateral damage.

But if Hamas’s rocket attacks persist, Israel may have little choice but to invade Gaza and take more extensive steps to protect its civilian population. It is up to Hamas, which is entirely to blame for the current situation, as it was when Israel was forced to invade back in 2008. The international community and the media must begin to differentiate between war crimes committed by terrorists and legitimate acts of self-defense engaged in by a responsible national military. Failing to emphasize that distinction encourages terrorism and erodes the moral basis of the important principle of just warfare.

17

The Palestinian Leadership Is Responsible for the Continuing Israeli Occupation of the West Bank

December 10, 2010

The decision by the Obama administration to stop pressuring Israel to end the West Bank settlements in order to get the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiations table should not obscure the following sad reality: the fact that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has not ended is largely, if not entirely, the fault of the Palestinian leadership. This may sound counterintuitive, since it is Israel that is continuing to occupy the West Bank, but it has been the Palestinian leadership that has repeatedly refused to accept Israel’s offers to end the occupation. It was recently revealed that in 2008, the Israeli government again offered to end the occupation, and once again the Palestinian leadership failed to accept the offer. This is what the Associated Press reported on November 27, 2010:

Since leaving office, [Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert has confirmed that he made Israel’s most far-reaching offer to the Palestinians, proposing a Palestinian state on close to 94 percent of the West Bank and offering the equivalent of the final 6 percent of territory in a land swap.”

Olmert said yesterday that the Palestinians never responded to his offer, made in the final months of his term in office.

“I think that they made a mistake.”

Yasser Arafat made the same mistake in 2000 and 2001 when he refused a similar offer from Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and United States president Bill Clinton.

In 2005 when Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon completely ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip, Hamas responded by showering thousands of rockets on Israeli civilian targets.

And now in 2010 the Palestinian leadership is refusing to sit down and negotiate with the Netanyahu government unless Israel accepts preconditions.

This reminds me of what Abba Eban famously said after Israel won a decisive war started by the Arabs in 1967:

“This was the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.”

It is no wonder that so many Israeli citizens are skeptical about whether the Palestinian leadership is willing to make, or capable of actually making peace with Israel. This skepticism has been fueled by a recent article on the official website of the Palestinian Authority claiming that there is no hard evidence of any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. Instead, it claims that “this wall is the place where the Prophet Muhammad tethered his winged steed, Buraq, during his miraculous overnight journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in the seventh century.” The Palestinian Authority article asserts that “the Al Buraq Wall is the western wall of Al Aksa, which the Zionist occupation falsely claims ownership of and calls the Wailing Wall or Kotel.” In other words, the Palestinian leadership expects Israelis to believe Muslim theological claims over Jewish archaeological evidence.

Moreover, the Palestinian Authority refuses to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and refuses to end the repeated incitements against Jews that are a staple of the Palestinian Authority–controlled media.

It is also no wonder that many Israelis have concluded that the Palestinian leadership has marginalized the Palestinians. What can the PA now offer Israel in exchange for the end of the occupation and the division of Jerusalem? Not peace in the north, which is controlled by Iran’s wholly owned subsidiary Hezbollah. Not peace in the west, which is controlled by Hamas, another Iranian surrogate. All the Palestinian Authority can now offer Israel is peace on the relatively quiet eastern border. And it would be an uncertain and incomplete peace even with the PA, since there is no assurance that the Palestinian Authority will retain control over the West Bank, and even if it manages to isolate Hamas in Gaza, there is no guarantee that terrorist groups will not use the West Bank as a launching pad for rockets and other forms of terrorism.

The Palestinians have employed two weapons as alternatives to actually sitting down and negotiating a two-state solution. The first was the violence incited by Arafat after he rejected the Barak-Clinton offer of 2000–2001. Instead of continuing to negotiate, Arafat ordered the beginning of a second Intifada with its suicide bombings and the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. This tactic got the Palestinians nothing but bloodshed and the continuing support of the hard left. It lost them the support of the Israeli peace movement and drove many Israeli moderates to the right.

Following Arafat’s untimely death—untimely in the sense that if he had died a few years
earlier
the Occupation would have ended by now—the Palestinian Authority shifted from guerilla warfare to guerilla “lawfare.”

Under this tactic, the Palestinian Authority has taken advantage of the United Nations’ biased machinery of international “human rights” to push Israel into the dock as a criminal state, accusing it of war crimes every time it takes any action in defense of its citizens, whether it be building a security barrier against terrorists, treating terrorists as combatants and targeting them for military attack, or defending its civilians against rocket attacks. This “lawfare” tactic is also backfiring. It is making it more difficult for Israel to end the occupation, because many Israelis fear that leaving the West Bank will bring the same violent response that followed the end of the occupation of Gaza: namely rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. And if Israel were to seek to protect its civilians, as it did in Gaza, it would be accused of war crimes and hauled in front of the International Criminal Court.