A Different Perspective On Israel’s Right To Defend Itself — Quality Reporting or Anti-Semitism (Cont.)
A Different Perspective On Israel’s Right To Defend Itself — Quality Reporting or Anti-Semitism (Cont.)
By
Ken Eliasberg
Picking up where I left off last week, let’s just finish with the notion of Israel’s having used excessive force in its retaliatory response in Gaza, i.e. its response was “disproportionate.” Along the lines of proportionality, Thomas Sowell, a Hoover Institute scholar for whom I have great respect, in a column for Townhall.com entitled Pretty talk and Ugly Realities, 1/13/09 made the following observation which is not just relevant but right on the money:
“ Today, so—called ‘world opinion’ not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is “proportionate.” By this reasoning, we should not have declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. We should have gone over to Japan, bombed one of their harbors — and let it go at that. Does anyone imagine that this would have led to Japan’s becoming peaceful today as it has become after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or is the real agenda to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at somebody else’s expense? Those who think ‘negotiations’ are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an ‘issue’ that can be resolved amicably around a conference table.”
While this observation seems to impart a fundamental truth and a self-evident reality, it is a truth and a reality that is clearly beyond the intellectual reach of professor Shaffer.
On the subject of Israel’s failure to use “proportionate” force as a sign of “Judaeo (sic)-fascism,” I am always amazed to observe how lefties — particularly “anti-Israel” (typically code for anti-Jew) lefties — have so little difficulty in establishing some sort of “moral relativism” when they wish to dump on Israel. Thus, in the present case, the good professor has no problem whatsoever in completely dismissing years of a rocket bombardment aimed exclusively at civilians, while, at the same time, jumping to the absurd conclusion that Israel’s response was insufficiently measured and thus an act of terror. As a consequence of failing to respond in a manner that the professor deems appropriate, Israel has not just become the aggressor, but it has now become fascist and, as a consequence, Jews must forfeit their right to say “never again” to the holocaust. To somehow suggest that there is some sort of equivalence here between Israel’s retaliatory response to the terror that has been consistently visited upon her in Gaza over a prolonged period of time — no matter how over the top one might think that response might be (and I don’t think it over the top at all) — and the genocide of 6,000,000 Jews is an act that, as I previously observed, goes well beyond either stupidity or sheer lunacy!! To so characterize Israel’s retaliatory response is maliciously vindictive and not just the result of abominably bad judgment.
In short, there is no moral equivalence between the acts of a terrorist operation willfully targeting women and children, on the one hand, and a vigorous, forceful, and overwhelming retaliatory response on the other. And there certainly is no moral equivalence between Israel’s response to Hamas (no matter how one views it) and the holocaust.
Perhaps a word about the realities of war might help to put Israel’s conduct in perspective. War is not a ping pong match; it is a brutal, vicious, horrible endeavor, the only purpose of which can be to win it by defeating your enemy in the most cost effective manner possible (and here, when I refer to cost effective, I am certainly including the cost of human life). And to win it, you do not appeal to your enemy’s better angels (I assume that course of action has already been taken and failed); what you endeavor to do is to destroy his will to fight, and you do it by letting him know that he will pay a terrible price for taking liberties with your citizens and/or your sovereignty. In the language that a Chicago politician can understand (since it was taken from the movie the Untouchables, which dealt with Chicago politics and Chicago’s criminal element (unfortunately, the 2 are frequently indistinguishable)), “when they put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue.” In the case of war, you wish to put as many of the enemy in the morgue as possible in order to remind him that he best discontinue pursuit of the endeavor. If we fought WWII the way the good professor would like, we would still be fighting it (if we hadn’t already lost it). We won that war by devastating Germany, and by dropping 2 atomic bombs on Japan, thereby destroying each country’s will to continue the struggle (indeed, in Germany’s case, the devastation was so vast and so complete that, not only was their will to continue destroyed, their capacity to do so was destroyed as well). War is not about a Marquise of Queensbury confrontation; it is about killing enough of the enemy to encourage his unconditional surrender. Apparently, the good professor does not believe that Israel has the right to defend itself, or possibly, because of his feelings about Jews, they are not deserving of a defense. And, by the way, war is all about terror; it is the technique utilized to win it. And why I took issue with the professor with respect to his “innocent civilian” piece re 9/11, is because the U.S. had no idea we were at war until the attack (and, according to Obama, the war is over; we’ll deal with that preposterous assertion in a later column).
Summarizing then, even if one were to view Israel’s retaliatory response as “disproportionate” (and, as noted, I do not), war requires real “disproportion” if it is to ever be won.
So much for Judeo-Fascism, let’s take a look at Mr. Bayer’s view of the “settlement” problem on the West Bank (which, by the way, is no longer a problem and was not at the time Bayer’s piece appeared in this paper, because Netanyahu put an end to further “settlement” construction almost as soon as he took office months ago, see Caroline Glick’s column at Jewish World Review on 8/21/09 entitled Et tu, Netanyahu, in which Ms. Glick, a superb analyst, quite appropriately takes Netanyahu to task for preemptively surrendering on the issue before discussions with Obama had even been undertaken and thus getting no quid pro quo for Israel in the process), which I find almost as harsh and just as absurd as Shaffer’s “Judaeo (sic) fascism” piece. Shaffer believes that Israel should be punished — and punished severely — for failing to immediately respond to Arab pressure on the U.S. and the U.N. to restrain Israel in its effort to provide room for growth for its “settlers.” (to be continued).