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Jewish Timeline: Israel and the Theory of Just War


May 11th, 2011 · Israel and the Middle East, Law and Legal Affairs, World Affairs

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Israelis — who are addicted to news reports, for obvi­ous rea­sons — under­stand these facts along with those reporters and pun­dits who are neu­tral and intel­lec­tu­ally hon­est. So I can under­stand the frus­tra­tions that Israelis feel when they endure the inter­na­tional con­dem­na­tions that occur when­ever they strike Gaza or south­ern Lebanon in self-defense.

When Israel launched the Gaza War in late 2008, I was relax­ing with friends in an Israeli pub. A few days later, a friend of mine was there and read­ing an Israeli news­pa­per with reports and pic­tures of anti-Israel demon­stra­tions in nearly every Euro­pean cap­i­tal in response to the war. She was on the verge of tears. “Why does every­one always hate us?” she asked me. I did not have a good answer at the time.

Now, I may have a rea­son. As I men­tioned above, pol­i­tics today has become hyper-partisan. Peo­ple increas­ingly align them­selves with the left or right “camp” and adopt the same, homo­ge­neous world­views. If you are on the left, you must hate Israel, Chris­tian­ity, guns, reli­gion, and cor­po­ra­tions. If you are on the right, you must hate Euro­peans, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, evo­lu­tion, uni­ver­si­ties, and Islam. (See: “A Cen­trists Party: Why There is a Need Today” and “Under­stand­ing Pol­i­tics and Par­ti­san­ship.”) And Euro­peans tend to more on the left than average.

How­ever, it also comes down to jour­nal­ism and the news judg­ments that edi­tors and pro­duc­ers make. If Hamas fires a few rock­ets into Israel one day, it will be a short brief on page A47 of the New York Times — if it appears at all. If Hamas launches a cou­ple more the fol­low­ing day, it will be even less sig­nif­i­cant because it is no longer “news.” After a few years of these events, peo­ple in the West will for­get about it com­pletely — even though Israelis live with the real­ity every day. From 2001 to 2009, more than 8,600 rock­ets were fired into Israel, a coun­try that is the size of New Jer­sey. But only those who fol­low the Mid­dle East intensely will real­ize this fact.

And when Israel finally responds to the con­stant rocket-fire one day with a large-scale bar­rage on missile-launch sites through­out the Gaza Strip, it will sud­denly be on the front page and nightly news in every coun­try in the world. As a result, the oper­a­tion will be per­ceived to have come out of nowhere to every­one who had not been aware of the daily rocket-fire from Hamas (as in, most peo­ple) — and Israel will be viewed as the aggres­sor. Hence the protests in Europe.

But, as the facts show, Israel is the side that always has the moral high-ground and oper­ates in accor­dance with Just War prin­ci­ples in its con­flict with Hamas. The sit­u­a­tion with the ter­ror­ist group will end only when the orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nizes the right of Israel to exist as a Jew­ish state (though its even­tual bor­ders as far as the so-called 1967 lines have yet to be deter­mined) that peo­ple can visit on Jewish-Israel tours and vaca­tions in Israel.

Ear­lier: Let­ters from Israel, The Mean­ing of Israel, The Israeli-Palestinian Con­flict, and All About the Pales­tini­ans

Arti­cle Pages: 1 2

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  • John H

    You have given us a Jew­ish time­line. It is exactly that and there­fore gives only the Jew­ish or Israeli view­point and posi­tion. If you or I were to present that of Hamas this arti­cle would be totally dif­fer­ent. As you say, “most issues are mul­ti­fac­eted and rarely sim­ple”. There­fore, that “The bul­let points above are state­ments of fact” can be so only in the eyes of those who hold them. Many would be hotly con­tested by any­one who had looked more deeply into what has actu­ally been happening.

    Fur­ther, the claim that “Israel is the side that always has the moral high-ground and oper­ates in Just War prin­ci­ples” is noth­ing short of laugh­able. A major part of its ratio­nale is “pun­ish­ing peo­ple who have done wrong”, for example.

    I recently wrote a let­ter to my local paper on this issue of the cred­i­bil­ity of var­i­ous gov­ern­ments or move­ments. I cited Israel and Hamas, the US and
    Al Quaida and said we think there are good guys and bad guys, but in fact all of them are bad guys, and that there are no good guys, as all have com­mit­ted heinous acts.

    It is dan­ger­ous to assume our side is the knight in shin­ing armor and our oppo­nents are only ter­ror­ists. The truth and the facts are much less clear-cut and we owe it to our­selves to re-examine our glib assump­tions and do some thor­ough home­work to find out what is and was really happening.

    • Samuel J. Scott

      John, thank you for your comment.

      The def­i­n­i­tion of a fact, in part, is some­thing on which all sides can agree (and on which all suc­ces­sive argu­ments and opin­ions are based).

      In the bullet-points I out­lined at the begin­ning of the post, which ones are not 100% accu­rate? And what are the facts that, say, Hamas would present?

  • John H

    Samuel, your response is appreciated.

    In my last para­graph I men­tioned both truth and facts. These are quite dif­fer­ent. Facts are con­fined to what is stated, whereas truth fills in the many blanks, includ­ing other facts, and tells the full story of why these events hap­pened. Facts that omit other rel­e­vant facts are there­fore inad­e­quate and mis­lead­ing, and may well lead to false conclusions.

    Your time­line, for instance, omits Jew­ish pres­ence over thou­sands of years, and Herzl and Bal­four, with­out which cur­rent Israel may not even exist.

    The bul­let points, like the time­line, do not begin at the begin­ning. The Hamas rock­ets are part of a con­tin­u­ing story and did not hap­pen out of noth­ing. The facts con­cern­ing the year up to Cast Lead show it was Israel, not Hamas, who broke the cease­fire that had worked very well, and then refused to extend it when asked.

    The facts Hamas would present would have sim­i­lar­i­ties but their view­point would be dif­fer­ent.
    That is how we all oper­ate; com­pare World War 2 his­tory as pre­sented by Britain and Rus­sia, or China and Japan.

    Retal­i­a­tion and vengeance have become bywords in the Israel-Palestine con­flict. Even the old ques­tion, which came first, the chicken or the egg, remains con­tro­ver­sial, because each party has a dif­fer­ent begin­ning point.