Some people who think themselves pro-Palestinian will defend Hamas despite Hamas's own repeated violations of decency. The smear tactics they will use — not against Israel but against those of us who would reject the legitimacy of Hamas as long as it continues to target people who committed no wrong except being born in Israel — apparently know no bounds. I'm going to review a few I've seen over the last day or so here.
Israel kills innocent people too.
Of course it does. To deny it does would be pointless. Israel has killed innocent people in pursuit of its enemies in the past and it will continue to do so in the future. I have written over and over again that Israel should respond to the military or terroristic threats its faces with greater respect for the principle of proportionality and, in fact, have insisted repeatedly that it would be in Israel's best interests to end the occupation unilaterally and return to the pre-June 1967 borders. Finally I have stated that in unilaterally disengaging from Gaza, Israel still has the responsibility to not put Gaza under siege, as this itself is an act of war against a population that did nothing more than vote in very bad leadership.
Nothing, on the pro-Hamas side, however, will convince these people that what Hamas has done in the past and, indeed, what it continues to do, is wrong. These people are ideologues with no sense of fair play or that they impose double standards on Israel. They are unreasonable and as fanatical as they claim people like me are. They key difference is that people like me aren't fanatical; we're realistic.
You say you support Israel's policy of "targeted killings." Thus you support extrajudicial execution, the death penalty, and the killing of innocent people.
Along with the principle of proportionality, there are other principles that govern just war ideology. One that goes hand in hand with proportionality is what is called "distinction," i.e., distinguishing between military and civilians and only targeting military.
Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian terrorists, while it does violate the idea of due process, does not violate the principle of distinction; in fact, it honors it and, provided a one-ton bomb isn't dropped on an apartment building to kill one Hamas leader, it also honors proportionality.
Why? Because, to give just a single example, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was not an innocent man, nor was he a civilian, nor was he even a duly elected official of any government. As spiritual leader of Hamas, he directed the suicide bombings of hundreds of Israelis. This made him, in the sense of any reasonable person's reckoning, a perfectly legitimate military target. Was he blind? Yes, he was. Were Ariel Sharon blind would we have heard fewer people calling for war crimes charges against him? Somehow I doubt it. Was Yassin in a wheelchair? Yes, and so was FDR, and I'd be interested to know whether that kept Hitler or Tojo from trying to take Roosevelt out. I somehow think not.
Just because you don't pull a trigger doesn't mean you don't have blood on your hands. So I find it perfectly reasonable for Israel to take revenge for the Munich massacre or the killing of civilians at the Lod airport by killing members of Black September or PFLP. I don't think a car bomb is the right way to go about doing it, but I do think sending the future Prime Minister to Beirut in drag is. Call me crazy, but if you think you're going to help plan a terrorist act and this is not going to make you a military target, then you need your f*cking head examined. I don't care if you were also a poet or a novelist. You were also a murderer who gave no due process to those whose murders you arranged.
Yes, in a perfect world, Israel would abduct these people and put them on trial and, ideally, not execute them either. But it was not Israel that declared itself at war with these organizations, and in situations of war, different rules apply, and not to realize that is to be irretrievably stupid. If killing a man who has declared himself at war with you while he sleeps is going to save innocent lives, then particularly within a declared-war scenario, it's the preferable action to take.
But innocent people still get killed in such situations.
Yes, they do, and that's the price that gets paid on both sides when a war happens. Both sides should endeavor to minimize the number of innocent people who die. What the Hamasniks refuse to admit is that Hamas has NEVER tried to reduce civilian casualties on EITHER side of the conflict.
You're applying a double standard.
No, I'm not. It's you that's applying the double standard, but I've already covered that. Let me state this clearly, because I stated it elsewhere and it reaped the response of chirping crickets:
As long as Israel continues its occupation of the Palestinian Territories, the Palestinians have every right to consider Israeli soldiers to be fair targets.
So I'm not committing any kind of double standard. I just have a problem with innocent people being killed in any conflict. That I blame a PFLP member himself more than I blame the Israelis for his daughter's death is a judgment on how that PFLP member chose to live his life and thus endanger his family. Shalhevet Pass was an Israeli infant who was killed by Palestinians at the beginning of the current Intifada. While I certainly hold the people that shot her responsible, her parents should be locked in a mental ward for raising children in occupied territory. It is they that hold the greatest responsibility for their child's death for not having provided a safer home for her. Indeed, they willingly brought her up in a place where she was a target.
So did our dead friend from the PFLP with his daughter.
In short, if you want your family to be safe, you probably shouldn't arrange the killings of other people's families. Otherwise, all you can do is cry out, "Stop hitting me back!"
Don't get me wrong: Dead children are dead children, no matter what their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, and it is an unspeakable tragedy when a child dies because, by the very definition of being a child, children are innocent.
But you'll pardon me for noting that pro-Hamas fanatics weep and moan over dead Palestinian children and not for Israeli children living inside the Green Line.
I weep for both. So you'll pardon me while I hold myself morally superior to you. Don't like it? I don't care.