A gazillion Gazan rockets
They fail to understand that the law of proportionality in war speaks to the way combatants conduct or respond to attacks, not to comparative casualty figures.
The general rule is this: Defensive actions must be proportional to legitimate military objectives. There is no absolute prohibition of civilian deaths. Proportionate attacks against legitimate military targets are permitted even if civilians may be harmed.
For example, Israel may not use a tactical nuclear weapon (causing huge civilian losses) to knock out a rocket launcher when a smaller, more precise munition (causing far fewer civilian casualties) would achieve the same goal. Similarly, the number of “proportionate” civilian casualties may depend on the importance of the military objective (e.g., eliminating a single soldier with an automatic weapon as opposed to destroying a launcher with hundreds of rockets).
A defending force is not required to wait to suffer harm, nor is it required to inflict only the level of casualties that it has suffered. Otherwise, the aggressor would control the conflict by deciding when to attack and inflicting only the level of damage that it is willing to absorb in response.
Protecting one’s country is not a fencing match in which both sides are required to use the same weapons. The strategy of a defensive war is to inflict heavy military losses on the other side as quickly as possible so that the enemy will stop its aggression. Continued rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population show that the IDF has not yet achieved that goal.
Indiscriminate bombing by Israel would be inexcusable. Innocent civilian deaths should be avoided wherever possible. However, the mere fact that they occur by no means proves that the IDF acts improperly in attempting to prevent otherwise inevitable attacks by terrorist Hamas. In fact, the seemingly high number of Palestinian casualties is due to Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields by locating military assets in concentrated residential areas – a war crime in itself.
In addition to the war on the ground and in the air, there is another war going on, being fought in the halls of the US Congress, in the mainstream and social media and even in the New York City mayoral race, where a leading candidate had to walk back a pro-Israel comment.
The war of public opinion influences international diplomacy, which in turn impacts the results of the war on the ground. To look at just one example, who in the Congress is prepared to argue with the false complaint that money for Israel’s Iron Dome is stolen from preschool programs for American children in the cities?
If we neglect to fight the war of negative propaganda, we may ultimately find ourselves in a losing situation on all fronts.
There are concerns over the possibility that Israel is losing the “image war” in its current conflict with the Palestinians in Gaza. The dismay has increased following the attack on the building housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera even though the building was also occupied by Hamas military intelligence and research. The UN secretary general was deeply disturbed.
Two aspects of this “story” have been largely ignored.
1) There can be no doubt that the AP and AJ staff were aware of the identity of those sharing their building and probably co-operating with these terrorists in one way or another. Israel should pursue and investigate this possibility aggressively and hold both the AP and AJ accountable for sharing domicile with a terrorist group.
2) The second aspect is more hypothetical. What would Israel need to do in order to win the “image” war? We would have to be passive and let the Hamas fire 1,000 or even 10,000 rockets at Israeli towns and civilians without response. This is the image of Jews that many of our enemies and even friends would prefer. Jews fighting back, protecting their hard-won country, does not fit in to their liberal, progressive mind frame. The only solution is to “grimace and bear it” and cultivate your true friends.
In your pages, international leaders – friends of Israel all – chime in with the worn platitude, “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
I hope that the next time a friendly nation is a victim of a terrorist attack, Jerusalem will not follow suit pathetically by stating that it too “has a right to defend itself.”
It would be useful instead for such friends to issue a clear call for Israel to continue its reaction to terror missile attacks until the destruction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. If not, the terrorist virus attacking all will find succor in their words and thereby continue to spread to the rest of the Palestinian territories, threatening Jew and Arab alike – and then beyond.
As a strategic analyst of 60 years and a retired US Foreign Service Officer who served over 13 years in Arab and other Moslem countries, I can rightly state that good strategy doesn’t work backward by first postulating that Hamas can’t be destroyed at any acceptable cost. Rather, set and define policy up-front, something that has not been done in this regard, and then task Israel’s best and uninhibited defense minds to tell us how.
“Destroy Hamas” is good policy.
No more of our precious children should be injured. No more should Israel be accused of disproportionate response to its so-called “occupied” territory of Gaza (even though Israel left it years ago).
Gaza should be granted full statehood and as such be held to the rules of statehood. All border crossings should be closed. Immediately. No electricity, gas, or goods of any kind should be allowed to be transferred in either direction.
No Gazan workers should be allowed into Israel; they are neither wanted nor needed. Humanitarian as well as all goods transfers should go to and through Egypt, a Gazan ally. Egypt will of course be responsible if items later be used to attack Israel are found to have crossed its border.
If Gaza or a Gazan creates a financial liability to either an individual Israeli (Arab or Jewish), reimbursement should come from any monies destined to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, the official governing entity of Gaza.
If hostilities continue to emanate from Gazan territory, it should be considered an act of war between states. Gazans should be advised that they should leave Gaza with the first offensive act and Israel should obliterate Hamas.
And does the Israeli public trust the Israeli media? I personally skip over certain Post op-ed writers because of their blatant leftist bias. How many of your news columnists are constantly writing “Analysis” columns and try to predict the future? How much print space has been wasted on the “reported” comments regarding elections or forming a new government? How many times have the media rushed to publish news that turns out to be incorrect? Are you not duping the public?
If the lives of Israelis will saved, then the hell with duping the media.
US senator Tom Cotton says the Associated Press “has ‘uncomfortable questions to answer’ for sharing Gaza building with Hamas.”
We are in the midst of a war with a terrorist organization that deserves the Nobel Prize for duping the media. Kol hakavod to the IDF and its Spokesperson’s Unit!
The overwhelming majority of us could not care less that the media has “lost trust” in the IDF. After all, we lost trust in the media long ago.
We care that the IDF is performing at its optimum. If it means fooling a persistently off-course media, so be it.
Al Jazeera people may be “outraged” (May 16) but that does not give them the excuse to call themselves journalists.
Rather they are (well-) paid shills for Qatar – a terrorist supporting, slave-owning dictatorship, where journalists are frequently imprisoned.
So the Biden Administration “reminds” Israel that protecting the safety of independent journalists is of paramount importance. I don’t recall any similar statements being sent to Hamas in 2014 when journalists were bullied into not reporting on Hamas’ using the people of Gaza as human shields.
In 2014, Hamas confiscated equipment with which journalists were documenting Hamas terrorists’ preparing to fire missiles from schoolyards and banned journalists from entering the lower level of Shifa hospital where Hamas had located its command center.
Can journalists be said to be “independent” when their reports from Gaza are, in fact, part of Hamas’s effort to demonize Israel and charge it with having committed war crimes?
Regarding every article involving the IDF, police, ambulance medical and fire services – thank you, Jews and Arabs alike, for defending this country, protecting and serving the people at great risk to yourselves, courageously and selflessly.
Sheikh Jarrah: Shaky justice
A subsequent appeal confirmed that decision.
The Israeli holding company offered them a deal to remain in the house if they acknowledged it was not theirs, and paid rent. I believe they originally accepted this, but later rejected the offer, possibly due to PA pressure.
The PA still has laws prescribing the death penalty for anyone selling/giving property to Jews.
These facts make a significant difference.
To me this is a textbook case illustrating how justice is denied because of the endless time it takes for cases to wind through the judiciary. It should never have taken anywhere near 50 years to adjudicate this rather simple property dispute. I feel truly sorry for the Arab families that were undeniably duped by their leadership and the Jordanian government. They may very well have believed that their property “rights” would be recorded and enshrined in the law. But they were not. At the same time, the facts of the property having been purchased and owned by Jewish owners were real and indisputable.
Even with the law on the Jewish owners’ side, the courts delayed and delayed and finally decided to ignore justice and allow the Arab families to stay in the buildings – on the condition that they would just pay rent. They had, after all, been basically squatting in the homes, paying at best only nominal rent for so many years. But they did not comply with the court order to pay rent. So even if we call these people “tenants,” which inaccurately depicts them as living there with the owners’ permission, this is a very simple matter of evicting non-paying tenants.
If the law says that the property was legally bought by Jews and stolen from them by the illegally occupying Jordanians, it would be a severe injustice if it is not returned to the rightful owners.
Interestingly, he buttresses his case by quoting from the Torah, “justice, justice shall you pursue,” which he then moderates by quoting a conversation from the Talmud which is not relevant to this situation. He would have done better to have noted that the quotation does not say “mercy, mercy shall you pursue.”
It is necessary to declare openly and fearlessly that decisions of the courts, which are based solely on law, must be accepted by all sides. Failure to do so will endanger every similar legal claim to land by Jews in Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem, just as the ongoing violence, which started with a riot on the Temple Mount, is the result of previously surrendering the installation of cameras there, as it showed the Arabs that if they make sufficient trouble they can get their way.