Israel Attacks Hamas

RISHON LEZION, Israel — The Jew­ish state is finally mad as hell, and it’s not going to take it any­more:

Waves of Israeli air­craft swooped over the Gaza Strip on Sat­ur­day, fir­ing mis­siles at Hamas’s secu­rity head­quar­ters and killing more than 200 peo­ple, bring­ing the high­est death toll in Gaza in years in a crush­ing response to rocket fire by Hamas against Israeli towns.

It is easy for the casual observer to view this lat­est esca­la­tion of the con­flict — if not the Mid­dle East con­flict as a whole — as a chicken-and-egg sit­u­a­tion. Israel is seem­ingly upset that Hamas keeps fir­ing rock­ets at Israeli civil­ians, and Hamas is report­edly angry that Israel refuses to open the bor­der and let items like food and med­i­cine into the ter­ri­tory. But the real­ity is far more simple.

As the Times arti­cle notes:

But while rocket fire did go down dras­ti­cally in the fall to around 15 to 20 per month from hun­dreds per month [dur­ing a cease-fire that just ended], Israel said it would not per­mit trade to go back up until the rock­ets actu­ally stopped, and because Hamas con­tin­ued to smug­gle weapons through desert tun­nels from Egypt.

All Hamas needed to do was to stop fir­ing rock­ets into Israel. But that would have been too much for the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, which is ded­i­cated to the destruc­tion of the Jew­ish state. More than sev­enty rock­ets were fired into south­west­ern Israel on Wednes­day alone. Still, if the only jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for rocket fire is the fact that Israel is not open­ing the bor­der, then Hamas should have been attack­ing Egypt, which has always trapped Gazans as well:

Egypt, wor­ried about pos­si­ble efforts by Pales­tini­ans to enter the coun­try, has set up machine guns along the Gaza border.

The rea­son is that Arab gov­ern­ments – most of which are cor­rupt, author­i­tar­ian despots – do not mess around. As much as Israel is crit­i­cized for its mil­i­tary responses, the Jew­ish state shows remark­able restraint. If Hamas fired rock­ets towards Cairo, Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak’s response would likely make Israel’s actions today seem like a hip­pie love-fest. Hamas attacks only Israel because the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion hates the Jew­ish coun­try and knows that inter­na­tional opin­ion forces it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

Another crit­i­cism of Israeli action is that its response is dis­pro­por­tion­ate. As of this moment, more than 200 peo­ple in Gaza have died while one Israeli has died from rocket fire from Hamas. As I wrote in a prior post, one’s eth­i­cal judge­ment of this sit­u­a­tion depends on whether one val­ues inten­tions over results, or vice versa:

If one argues that results are what make an action moral or immoral, then Israel is clearly in the wrong sim­ply because more inno­cent peo­ple have died as a result of the country’s actions than those of Hamas. Israel’s sol­diers and air­craft also cause more widescale destruc­tion than the com­par­a­tively smaller Qas­sam and Katyusha rock­ets fired by Hamas. Those who value results over inten­tions believe in the prin­ci­ple of pro­por­tion­ate war­fare (and they crit­i­cize Israel for vio­lat­ing it): If you throw one punch at me, I can only throw one punch back at you.

How­ever, if one believes that inten­tions trump results, then the moral­ity of the issue is murkier. Hamas intends to kill Israeli civil­ians. Israel, however, only intends to kill the ter­ror­ists who are attack­ing the coun­try, and any civil­ian causal­i­ties are unin­tended con­se­quences. Hamas, as I dis­cuss later, intends to put civil­ians in harm’s way. If one argues that inten­tions are what make an action moral or immoral, then Hamas is clearly in the wrong.

As is obvi­ous, I value inten­tions over results, and I blame Hamas for the ongo­ing con­flict — includ­ing the deaths of inno­cent civil­ians on both sides. Hamas fires from civil­ian areas and stores weapons in civil­ian areas.

At this moment, how­ever, there seems to be a pause in the fight­ing. I grew tired of watch­ing the news in Hebrew and Eng­lish, so now I am watch­ing “Neil Young: Heart of Gold,” a musi­cal doc­u­men­tary pro­duced dur­ing a con­cert in Ten­nessee last year, on tele­vi­sion. Tomor­row might bring a ground inva­sion into Gaza, so I can use some relax­ing music — par­tic­u­larly because a friend of mine arrived in Israel from Rus­sia yes­ter­day for a month-long vacation.

She is cur­rently dodg­ing mis­siles with her fam­ily in the city of Ashkelon.