Campus Protesters Miss the Mark on Israel’s Right to Self-Defense

Image of George Washington University protests — GWU Anti-Israel Protest © Ted Eytan (Licensed under CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

With October 7 approaching, campus protests against Israel cannot be too far behind. We’ve already seen a few.

For example, “Protesters return to Columbia University as the fall semester begins.” Emerson College in Boston was the starting point for a pro-Palestinian march throughout the streets of that city. Students for Justice in Palestine organized a march at Ohio State, calling for divestment in Israel.

To be sure, thanks to a new bit of backbone on the part of university leadership, based on political revulsion at what occurred last spring, these protests are less incendiary, many have been moved off campus, and the overnight “tent cities” have disappeared.

However, according to Rania Batrice, a Palestinian-American Democratic strategist: “This isn’t going away. We’re not going away. Young people and their pursuit of justice and equity everywhere is not going away.”

Israel has widely been accused of and castigated for a “disproportionate” response to Hamas’s attack on Oct 7, last year. But proportionality is only apropos for punishment—the punishment should fit the crime—not for defense, which the Israeli military is now engaged in.

Punishment must be proportional to be just. “The punishment should fit the crime” is one of this discipline’s hoariest and most well-established principles. If the punishment does not fit the crime, justice will not be achieved. This principle alone cannot determine an actual number of years in jail or any other specific penalty for any particular bout of lawbreaking, but it can serve as an overall guideline to righteousness in this realm.

For instance, the penalty for murder should be more serious than that for rape. When the baker in the movie Godfather asked the latter to kill the rapist of his daughter, the former was quite right in refusing and insisting that a severe beating would be much more apropos.

In contrast, in very sharp contrast indeed, proportionality must be banned from any discussion of self-defense. If I am coming at you, knife raised, with blood in my eye, yelling that I am going to kill you, so far, I have only issued a threat. What should be the chastisement for such a threat? I cannot say with any degree of specificity. But I know that it is far less than if I accomplished this intended foul deed of mine. Certainly, the death penalty should not be imposed upon me for a mere threat. That means, if it means anything at all, that if you may punish me for that threat, you may not kill me—e.g., you may not impose the death penalty upon me.

But to say that in such a situation, you are not entitled to plug me with a bullet right in the heart is abject nonsense. If you have a right to self-defense—and you do—then it wouldn’t be a crime at all for you to kill me. What other options do you have? You could try to run away, but I’m faster than you, and you wouldn’t dare turn your back on me. Moreover, you have the right to ‘stand your ground.’ While escaping by running away might be preferable to taking a human life, even one as worthless as mine in this case, you should have no legal obligation to do so.

There is, of course, the issue of gentleness. If you are sure you can render me harmless with a rubber bullet or pepper spray, not 99 percent sure, then you would be obliged to engage in this more moderate means of self-protection. Human life is still precious, even that of murderers and would-be murderers, such as myself, in this hypothetical case.

Where does Israel stand with regard to Hamas? The terrorists are criminals. If anyone in the history of the universe could be called lawless, these individuals qualify without question. At the time of this writing, has Israel fully captured Hamas? They have not. Hamas fighters remain at large, and they continue to hold Israeli hostages, threatening to kill them if Israel does not comply with their demands. In other words, these criminals are, at this very moment, engaging in the act of threatening murder. They are just as much attempted murderers as I was when I charged at you with that knife.

Should Israel respond to this terrorist provocation proportionally? Absolutely not. Hamas members are still at large; they are not prisoners who deserve proportional punishment. Instead, they are in the midst of killing innocent people and threatening to kill even more, in addition to the hostages they already hold.

Therefore, Israel may properly do to Hamas what you may do to me when I run at you with a knife aloft, threatening to kill you: shoot me down like a rabid dog.

Suppose, now, that in my run at you, I am carrying my two year old baby in front of me in a child carrier. If you shoot me—with a lead bullet, the only weapon you have—you necessarily kill not only me but also my innocent toddler. Are you now a murderer? Are you in the wrong? A thousand times, no. Rather, it is I, solely me, who is responsible for the death of my progeny.

If Israel is to root out Hamas, as they richly deserve, there must, of necessity, be collateral damage. This would be true even if these scoundrels did not embed themselves among innocent Gazans and use them as shields. Whose fault would be these collateral deaths? The buck stops with Hamas, as it did with me when I attacked you with my baby plastered to my chest. To aver, as campus protestors are now maintaining, that Israel should cease and desist from destroying Hamas due to these unfortunate deaths is to say that Israel has no right to defend itself. This is an obvious fallacy. Everyone has the right of self-defense, even, dare I say it, Jews.

Where does gentleness come in? Israel has employed this civilized practice to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other country on the face of the earth all throughout history. The IDF drops leaflets here, telling people to go there. Then, as in Rafah in the south of Gaza, they drop leaflets again, telling potential victims to go back north and/or anywhere else they can.

Israel is by far the most civilized country not only in the Middle East but throughout the globe. Says H.L. Mencken: “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” Says me: Israel is attacked on prestigious university campuses for merely defending itself demonstrates only how far from intellectual acuity these institutions have gone.