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The False Equivalence of Israel and Hamas

It is only 5 days since Hamas started their huge terrorist attack on Israel. Their atrocities are leaking out in the media, and are horrific. Civilian hostages, decapitated babies, torture, children shot in the back, people burned alive- all this on top of the fact that every bit of their attack has been against civilians and civilian buildings. Now casulty totalas are being announced in aggregate, equating Israeli deaths to Palestinian deaths. 

Bernie Sanders called Israel's actions in Gaza a serious violation of international law. CBS sent a memo telling its reporters not to use the word terrorist to describe Hamas terrorists, despite the fact that that US and EU consider Hamas a terrorist organization. NPR today had a major report on the war crimes of both Israel and Hamas, which it called a militant organization.

But there is no equivalency except in today's limp, pale interpretation of international law and the laws of war. The Hague Covnentions of 1899 and 1907 forbade attacks on civilians. Germany violated this in 1940, with attacks on Coventry and London. Britain and then the US responded with a devastating air campaign justified by the fact that Germany violated the laws of war first, thus depriving itself of any rights under those laws. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a military installation, was done without a declaration of war and so was also a Hague violation. In response the US literally rained fire on numerous Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Had they not been abandoned by the German army, Paris, Rome, and Florence would have been bombed as savagely as Cherbourg, Antwerp, and Cologne.

But no one suggested that the Allied leadership be accused of war crimes. Only Germans and Japanese were tried in a series of trials, beginning with the first Nuremberg trial in 1946. Goering, in his opening statement there noted they were on trial for one reason only- they had lost. The Soviet judge in particular had no moral basis for judgment; more than 1,000,000 German POWs died in Soviet camps. German POWs in America had to work as much as 5 years more after Germany's surrender, another Hague violation. The Nuremberg indictments were even then considered ex post facto law, and their uneven application has been a subject for debate ever since. Nuremberg formed the basis for the modern laws of war regarding aggressive war and crimes against humanity. And all of this is founded on deliberately ignoring of the actions of the aggrieved winners.

Since 1949 this has changed. The West continues to write international law and apply it unevenly, but it has become positively sanctimonious about conflict and war. Any act against civilians is a war crime, and unjustified. Any civilian death is an outrage, any building damaged a horror. And it is the Western liberal press that is perpetuating these ideas, along with liberal politicians. The US government goes to extraoridnary, militarily crippling lengths to avoid civilian casualties, a nicety none of our opponents have ever thought about.

In this spirit, Israel is already being condemned. Israel has launched extended air strikes against Gaza. She has shut down water, fuel, and food access. The region's power plant is out of fuel, lights are off. The major hospital's generators are three days away from running out of gas. The only checkpoint into Egypt has been shut by an air strike; all other exits are closed. 

But these are rational responses for an enemy that is non-uniformed, commits terror attacks, and hides in civilian buildings and among civilians. This is not Iron Man, where Israel has some magical suit that lets her know who are the enemy to kill. The objective in war is to win, and in modern wars, supported by mass production industrial infrastructure, winning means crippling or destroying that infrastructure and demoarlizing the populace.

And today we get an international series of riots and attacks of and by Muslims. You don't see Jews rioting after attacks by Hamas. You have never seen Jews rioting, killing, or destroying anyone. There is no question of where the violent soul lives, where the aggression is, who is dedicated to destroying whom. Any attempt at equivalency is the worst kind of sophistry. It is the same kind of flaccid non-thought that has led the West to its own destruction and to disorder and violence in the US.

The West acts as though the magnanimity extended to our enemies in defeat is the standard by which we should fight. But that's ridiculous and impossible. Before we set up the Marshall Plan we devastated Germany and Japan. Kindness is not a path to victory, it is only possible after achieving it. 

There is no such thing as a nice war, as a war where cities are not damaged, civilians not killed, economies not crippled. War is hell, and there is no cool spot. You can't pick up a turd by the clean end.

Israel is overwhelmingly justified in its retaliation, and given the grotesque differential application of international law, and the failure of the UN to condemn Hamas' terrorist acts, Israel has no reason to pay attention to them. Attempts to make equivalence between Israel and Hamas are false morality, false law, and false thought.

Ted






T


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