It's just the same old rhetoric...
5 Flaws in the Critiques of Israel…
Below I expose the fallacious thinking that underlies these popular misperceptions and replace each one with reason and common sense applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
1. THE WEAK SIDE OF THE CONFLICT IS SOMEHOW MORE MORAL OR RIGHTEOUS – This myth is perhaps the most pervasive and, at the same time, arguably the most erroneous. Much of the public feels a natural affinity toward the weak and views their cause as more deserving. As a result, this same public sides with the weak party and condemns the strong.
In sports, cheering for the weaker team (the underdog) often makes sense. A match in which the victory of the stronger team is a foregone conclusion is without suspense and no fun to watch. Dirt poor lottery winners are a more satisfying outcome than a multi-millionaire who holds the winning ticket.
However, the weaker side of an international conflict is not inherently the more worthy, moral or deserving claimant.
2. A SIMPLE COUNT OF THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS – The number of victims on each side of the conflict makes headlines. It is a simple enough summary statistic to fit into a headline and everyone can understand it. Yet it is an annoyingly simplistic number that masks more meaningful measures and, worse still, distorts incentives. First, a total body count does not categorize the number of victims by terrorists, soldiers and civilians. The extermination of a terrorist just about to detonate an explosive device in a crowded area or launch a rocket aimed at an urban center would be considered a blessing in most folks' accounting.
Second, counting bodies encourages ruthless regimes that care little for their people to make no effort to protect them. More perverse still, the public's reliance on this misleading statistic encourages Hamas to place Palestinian men, women and children in the line of fire. Aware that inflated victim tallies draw public outrage, Hamas and the Hezbollah are infamous for launching their missiles at Israel from local schools and crowded residential neighborhoods and placing children on rooftops of building in which Hamas operatives hide. In this way, any attempt to take out the rocket launcher or the operatives ensures civilian casualties.
On a more basic level, counting victims ignores entirely who initiated the conflict and who are the good guys and the bad guys. No one would think it unjust or recoil upon learning that 5.5 million Nazi soldiers died in World War II compared to fewer than 500,000 British soldiers and civilians.
3. DISPROPORTIONATE FORCE – Israel is regularly charged with exercising disproportionate force in response to its enemies' terrorist attacks. I truly don't have the faintest idea how to deter terrorism without relying on "disproportionate force" either in the quality or quantity of the response.
Criminal law operates on the basis that to deter crime the punishment must exceed the criminal's benefit from the crime; otherwise, crime pays. Deterrence of terrorism is no different. To induce Hamas terrorists to end their attacks on Israel, the cost the terrorists incur must exceed their benefit from successful terrorist operations.
4. CYCLE OF VIOLENCE – Critics charge Israel with perpetuating the cycle of violence whenever Israel responds to terrorism or a flagrant violation of its sovereignty. These critics apparently anticipate Israel to take it on the chin. Against a terrorist organization whose declared and revealed mission is to achieve your elimination, taking it on the chin is not a viable long-term strategy.
The implied message permeating the cycle of violence argument is that whenever Israel defends itself, it is to blame for entering a spiral of interminable death and destruction. Yet Israel's peace with Jordan and Egypt shows that the cycle of violence can be broken. These two Muslim nations ended the cycle of violence with Israel when their leadership accepted the fact that Israel exists and abandoned the Arab mantra of "pushing Israel into the sea". Only when the Palestinian people demand of their leadership to recognize and respect Israel will the cycle of violence stop.
5. GENOCIDE – This charge is a red flag. Anyone who claims that Israel is or has in any of its previous conflicts attempted genocide is either ignorant of the meaning of the word – direct them to a dictionary and point out that Hamas' targeting of densely populated civilian centers does fit the definition – or hopelessly full of hate and a toxic ideology directed at Israel. Don't waste your time trying to change this person's mind. No amount of logic, reasoning or facts will succeed. Your opponent only continues to rely on bombastic claims, loaded words, slogans and personal epithets.
This is a justified war and I hope that Israel sees it through until Hamas is removed from power. My own criticism of Israel (about which I've also written at length in the past) is that this initiative comes nearly four years too late.
In 2005, Israel uprooted its remaining settlements in the Gaza Strip and turned over Gaza's keys to the Palestinians. Notwithstanding, within hours of Israel's complete withdrawal, Palestinian rockets continued to land on sovereign Israeli land. Israel ignored the rocket fire. Not surprisingly, the rocket fire continued unabated until, more than 3,000 Kassam rockets PER YEAR later, the government decided that too many was enough.
Israel's mistake was not to respond to the very first rocket. Its lack of response encouraged the next 10,045-plus rockets. Terrorism, like any other behavior, only exists because it is tolerated.