The first major allegation against Israel is that its response to Hamas’ rocket fire was criminally disproportionate. “Proportionality,” in and of itself, is an extremely problematic concept because there is no objective way to define what is proportional and what is not. Those who criticize Israel on this basis understand that a disproportionate response is hard to define but, to paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, claim to know it when they see it.
But do they? What, exactly, constitutes a proportional response to a terrorist organization that fires indiscriminately at Israeli towns, bombarding populous communities such as Be’er Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod? While Hamas’ rockets cannot cause mass civilian deaths at this point, they do have the capacity to dictate the terms of existence throughout Israel’s southern region, preventing its citizens from living any semblance of a normal life. Hamas has demonstrated that its rockets can reach halfway to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, and more than halfway to Tel Aviv, its most populous city.
Hamas’ rocket campaign, therefore, is not merely an annoyance, as many of Israel’s detractors have portrayed it, but a fundamental assault on the Israeli government’s ability to defend its citizens within its internationally recognized boundaries — a casus belli by any definition. In such circumstances, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel has the right to act in the defense of its citizens, and the responsibility to do so by the most complete means possible. If, tomorrow, the Cuban regime began peppering every American city south of Charlotte and east of New Orleans with low-tech conventional missiles, who would expect the Obama administration to respond in some vaguely “proportionate” manner? We would demand that our government use all necessary force to stop the attacks and deter future ones — and we would be right to do so.
Anti-Semitic crackpots aside, most serious critics of Israel understand that Israel was provoked by Hamas’ rocket fire. They argue, however, that the IDF’s response recklessly and wantonly targeted civilians. They point to the death toll — a shocking and tragic 1,330 Palestinians killed, and estimates that between 600 and 940 of the dead are civilians. These numbers, however, have less to do with the war that Israel waged than with the tactics utilized by Hamas, who sought to fight an asymmetric war against the far more powerful IDF by taking advantage of the crowded nature of Gaza. For Hamas, using civilian neighborhoods, mosques and schools as munitions dumps and mortar sites served two ends. First, it made those military assets more difficult to locate and second, the civilian casualties that would necessarily result from Israeli attacks on those sites promised to swing international opinion in the Palestinians’ favor. The latter has certainly happened.
Yet it is hard to argue defensibly that Israel is to blame for hitting non-military targets when Hamas wittingly placed weapons-smuggling tunnels, rocket launchers and supplies of missiles in those places, as confirmed both by eyewitnesses and secondary explosions triggered by Israeli airstrikes and shelling setting off Hamas’ munitions stashes. Neither international law nor common sense dictates that the IDF is so culpable. According to Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, nearby civilians “may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.” While the proximate cause of death for the unfortunates of Gaza may have been Israeli missiles and artillery shells, the ultimate fault lies with the Hamas militants who elected to fight and store military assets amidst the population. Indeed, holding Israel culpable for the deaths of civilians caused by Hamas’ tactics ultimately provides excellent incentive for Hamas to continue using women and children as cover and camouflage. It also causes the deaths of more innocents.
Other arguments alleging Israel’s lack of jus in bello are also questionable. To be sure, Israel had some level of obligation to allow for medical assistance and humanitarian supplies to reach the wounded, as well as other Gazan civilians. To an extent, the IDF did not meet this obligation, especially in the aftermath of the tragic shelling of the Samouni family complex in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Certainly, Israel ought to have been more cooperative with the Red Cross and other agencies that were treating injured civilians. At the same time, given the nature of its enemy, it can be argued that Israel largely did what it could. For example, Israel granted a series of three-hour humanitarian truces which Hamas promptly broke by using the respite to shoot more rockets into Israel. In addition, during the ground campaign, it was not easy to break off close action against Hamas gunmen to allow the ambulances in, especially when that meant holding fire against an enemy that demonstrated little inclination to respect the white flag.
Likewise, many condemn Israel on the basis that Gazans were trapped in the Strip, with no way to leave, making civilian casualties unavoidable. This is largely true and unfortunate, but there is little Israel could have been expected to do about it. Was Israel to allow for a mass exodus of Gazan refugees into Israel proper before getting on with the business of going after Hamas? That notion is ludicrous — an open invitation to Hamas to infiltrate Israel. Within Gaza, in fact, Israel did drop leaflets to warn Palestinian civilians in neighborhoods where strikes were to occur, to the detriment of the IDF’s ability to utilize the element of surprise. While these efforts clearly did not prevent many civilian deaths, it is possible that the toll might have been appreciably worse had Israel not attempted to warn Gazans. In the final analysis, however, Israel’s primary obligation was to the defense of its own citizenry. It was Hamas, knowing that its constituents would have nowhere to flee to one of the world’s most densely populated areas, who blithely went to war with a far superior military power and consigned Gazans to the position of fish in a barrel.
I do not mean to assert in this article that the IDF is infallible, or that Israel never commits immoral acts. Certainly, I deplore Israel’s occupation and settlement infrastructure in the West Bank. I believe, as I indicated earlier, that the IDF could have done more in this war to ensure prompt care for wounded Palestinian citizens. If, as some have alleged, the IDF utilized white phosphorus in civilian areas, it should be condemned. As accounts of questionable acts by the IDF in Gaza surface, I expect the Israeli government to investigate them fully and impartially. I believe that Israel should provide compensation payments to Palestinian civilians who were caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas. Due to the scope of the assault and how it has been portrayed, I am concerned that Cast Lead has dimmed the chances for Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian negotiations in the near future.
At the same time, there has been no question that many in the international community have been too quick to convict the IDF of acting with intentional malice against civilians, especially in certain infamous incidents in Gaza. In all likelihood, the shelling of the Samouni compound and the UN school were instances of either miscommunication or simple human error — we are talking about extremely close-quarters fighting by an army whose average combat soldier is not much older than the typical Amherst sophomore. That does not make the results any less tragic, nor the pain any less raw to those affected, but there is a difference between targeting innocents and killing them by accident, just as law draws a distinction between shooting up a mall and drawing a gun in self-defense and accidentally hitting the neighbor instead of the murderer.
Ultimately, it is understandable and right to sympathize with the civilians of Gaza and to recoil at what has befallen them. While sympathizing, though, ask yourself what you would do in the place of the Israeli government. Would you permit a radical terrorist group firmly committed to your destruction to place a large proportion of your citizens in peril on a daily basis, making daily life all but unbearable in a considerable chunk of your country? Would you allow your execution of an effective response to be dictated by a nebulous standard of proportionality that changes at the whim of those who invoke it? Would you permit your freedom to strike the enemy’s forces, weapons and infrastructure to be held hostage because the enemy holds its own people hostage as human shields for its military assets?
No leaders placed in the position of Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni would submit to those restrictions, nor should they. To expect Israel to adhere to these unreasonable restrictions reflects not a little naïveté and concern for the security of the Jewish State on the part of the so-called champions of human rights.