Sunday, October 29, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
Since the many protests recently are calling Israel immoral, let's talk about morality.
A nation's highest obligation is to protect the lives of its citizens. That is the contract that every citizen has with his or her nation: pledge allegiance in exchange for protection.
Even though Hamas has made its genocidal intentions clear from its founding, up until this month Israel treated the de facto rulers of Gaza with the assumption that they are also interested to some extent in their own wellbeing and that of those under its rule, and that Hamas could be managed by a combination of carrots and sticks - carrots in loosening up imports, exports, travel and work permits, sticks in the occasional limited military action that was meant to teach Hamas what it could lose if it shot rockets or engaged in terror.
That was a fatal error.
On October 7, Israel - and the world, if it was paying attention - learned that Hamas' highest aspiration was to slaughter Israelis, even at the expense of its own people, whose lives had been steadily improving over the past couple of years by every metric.
Hamas showed that its genocidal charter was not lip service, but the actual core of its existence.
With this knowledge that Israel had badly misestimated Hamas' true nature, there is no higher moral purpose than to eradicate Hamas and its terrorist allies, from the jihadist Islamic Jihad to the socialist PFLP and DFLP, all of whom participated and supported Hamas' bloodbath.
And the goal of destroying Hamas is not just a moral and ethical imperative, but one supported by international law. Utterly defeating a genocidal enemy is fully supported by the Geneva Conventions and every other instrument.
What about civilians?
While civilians must be protected as much as possible, if there is no way to get them out of the way, their being on the battlefield does not stop Israel (or any combatant) from attacking the enemy. This is also both moral and international law. It has to be this way; otherwise the enemy can simply use the civilians to act with impunity - to shoot rockets from behind them, to build their weapons caches underneath them, to convert mosques and hospitals into military headquarters.
Which, as we know, Hamas does routinely.
If Israel can attack the target effectively while warning the civilians - and the terrorists - to get out of the way, ut must do that. If the terrorists themselves are the target, then it cannot give warnings, because that would give Hamas a "military advantage" that Israel is under no obligation to give in wartime.
Of course Israel must try to minimize civilian casualties. But every single one is Hamas' fault. Every person Hamas tells not to move, everyone scared off by Hamas (yes, Hamas) bombing the exit routes to go to the South, all of their deaths are Hamas' responsibility both morally and under international law.
To put it bluntly, if (God forbid) Israel's destruction of Hamas means killing every single Gazan because of Hamas' policies of using them as pawns and human shields, it does not detract from Israel's obligation to destroy Hamas one bit.
In the final analysis, Israel has every right to do whatever it takes to destroy Hamas. Even though Hamas is said to have four months of supplies underground, Israel is allowed to block all aid (if iit chooses) to starve out Hamas, even if it also starves the Gaza civilians, if there is a likelihood that Hamas will steal the aid supplies and use it for war rather than for its civilians. (Even the US Army laws of war manual says this, explicitly.) It sounds unbelievably harsh - and this is why Israel is trying to divide Gaza to allow civilians to flee to the South and allow aid only there, at least for the first stages of the war - but the overriding imperative to destroy Hamas means that any Gazans who starve because Hamas steals their food and fuel is the responsibility of Hamas, not Israel.
Moreover, Egypt's decision not to allow any Gazans to flee to the relative safety of their neighbor is its own responsibility. I am unaware of any nation ever hermetically sealing its border from neighboring civilians taking refuge during war. Egypt has allowed hundreds of thousands of other refugees into its borders over the years. It is astounding that no Western nation is condemning Egypt for blocking the most likely path to safety for Gazans in mortal danger.
Where are all those who scream for the rights of refugees to flee war zones and find safety elsewhere?
Of course, Gazans who don't want to flee can choose to stay. Israel doesn't want to annex Gaza and it is not trying to "repeat the nakba" as those pretending to defend Egypt's immoral decision say. At any rate, let Gazans make their own decisions as to what is best for them; it is not for Egypt or Jordan to tell them that their being stuck in Gaza is for their own good.
Israel doesn't have an option. It has the moral obligation to destroy an entity whose only goal is the destroy Israel. All of this is backed by international law. And the responsibility for the civilians is solely Hamas's, as well as the Arab countries that refuse to save the lives of any Palestinians while blaming Israel for doing what it must.
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