At a social gathering the other night, I was shocked that most of those present saw a moral equivalence (at least) between the actions of the Palestinian suicide bombers and the Israeli government. In fact, the general atmosphere was hostile to Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinians. This among a group of otherwise intelligent people.
This seems to be either collosal ignorance or moral blindness of the worst kind. To me, it illustrates how our society has fallen.
The suicide bombers intentionally target innocents. They use weapons designed to create maximum suffering (for example, coating the shrapnel with rat poison to cause excess bleeding). They attempt to kill as many women and children as possible.
They are proud of this. How many of their admirers truly believe that combatants should target civilians? These same admirers usually condemn the US for accidently killing civilians in Iraq (even as many of the fondly consider WW-II to be honorable, even though the west killed millions of civilians by bombing their cities). Hypocrisy is the currency of modern moral discourse!
The purpose of these acts of terrorism are either to gain independence from occupation (if you believe the Palestinian Authority) or to drive the Jews from Palestine (the often stated goal of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the actual goal of the PA).
On the other hand, the Israelis are trying to defend themselves, while miniimizing the killing of innocents. They don’t always succeed. However, the intent of their effort is easy to determine - they use precision missiles (usually Hellfires) with small warheads to target their quarry.
If they really want to kill innocent Palestinians, they need only turn loose their artillery batteries or bombers on Palestinian towns… but they don’t - even when the Palestinians use rocket artillery against Israeli civilians. Sometimes the Israelis use telephone bombs that can only kill the target. Today they risked troops in hostile terrority, killing a terrorist leader by accurate gunfire.
Israel’s purpose is self defense - to end terrorism. No serious observer believes that the Israeli government would be killing any Palestinians in the absence of terrorism.
And yet, somehow, the Israelis are condemned.
Of course, the Israelis are condemned as occupiers, as if this justifies the intentional killing of innocents. And indeed, they did conquer the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but only after having twice been viciously attacked from them by large Arab armies bent on the extinction of Israel. Most Israeli’s, with the exception of some religious groups, do not want to occupy the territories. They rightly view it as a huge economic cost to hold a land full of hostile people. Hardly the goals of a democratic state.
But even if the Israeli’s were imperialist occupiers, would the murder of innocents be justified? Should we support Native Americans if they decide to start blowing up school buses in the US? It is *exactly* equivalent (except for the time period of 55 vs 120 years).
Had the Israelis been prescient, they might have realized that conquering the West Bank would lead to decades of conflict and terrorism. They might have been wiser to throw the Palestinians all the way back to Jordan, or to immediately return the West Bank to Jordan. But they didn’t do that - because they are not that kind of people. They are not imperialists - they just want a safe homeland.
Another excuse is that Israel kills Palestinian civilians. And, of course, they do, but not on purpose. Their targets are the terrorists who hide among the civilians. If a mass murderer hides among a large number of innocent civilians, and is surrounded by a large protective force, what sort of crime is it to target that murderer? The same laws of war which require combatants to minimize harm to innocents recognize that innocents cannot be completely protected.
The Palestinians have chosen to follow various despots. Yassir Arafat, not even a Palestinian, is worshipped like a god, even though he steals vast sums of money from them and sacrifices their lives to his personal interests. Hamas encourages children to strap on bomb vests and kill other children, and Hamas is even more popular than the Palestinian Authority. Both groups, and many others, helped by many Arab governments, continuously broadcast and print the most vile anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda, ensuring that the hatred is passed on to their children.
By any rational observation, current Palestinian society is violently insane. If it were a person, it would be locked up and kept in restraints! As a people, it should be condemned, not supported. Those who provide support to the Palestinian terrorists, especially the Arab countries and the Europeans, have the blood of many innocents on their hands.
They feel no guilt.
