By Walter E. Block
First a look at the past:
It was good that the IDF held off as long as it did on house to house fighting in Gaza. The Israeli army is only more efficient than its despicable Hamas counterpart by a relatively small multiple in this milieu. Every Jewish soldiers’ life is precious, and some have already died fighting for justice. Instead, stick to your comparative advantage: high tech, where there is a large multiple differential in effectiveness. Borrow a leaf from the Americans vis a vis the Japanese; they did not invade that country until it became a mopping up operation only.
Now, for a hypothetical:
Suppose Hamas or some such future enemy threatened to murder one of their Jewish hostages for every use of a missile or airplane attack against them by the IDF. In chess, pawns are often sacrificed. Sometimes, even the queen, if that is the only way to win the contest. The only first world country in the Middle East must borrow a leaf from the world of the royal game. Difficult as it is for all civilized people, it must harden its heart at this eventuality.
The entire state of Israel, with its some seven million Jewish citizens is at stake in the present “game” that Hamas or Iran or some other such enemy might one day in the future foist upon it. It dare not lose any such war. It must prevent the next one too, if the future is not to resemble the past. If Israel succumbs to this threat, many more hostages will be taken and used in the same manner in the future. Yes, this sounds harsh; even unduly harsh. But war is hell and Israel, not at all of its own devising, would be at war once again stipulating this scenario.
These world-class abominations promise to publicize their executions of Jewish and other hostages, and the Jewish state (or any other innocent country subjected to this sort of premis) must be entirely willing to take them at their word in this matter. Israel must announce that for every hostage murdered, they will execute one hundred Palestinians. That is a nice round number. They should start with all the terrorists now in Israeli jails. The death penalty should long ago have been meted out to these villains in any case. To be sure, this sounds offensive, but is entirely justified. When Israel runs out of such prisoners, it must deal with Palestinian civilians in the same manner. This is of course an awful business. But who started it? Hint: it would not bethe Jewish state.
In what order should innocent Palestinians be executed, if need be, due to Hamas actions? First, inhabitants of Gaza. They, after all, voted for Hamas. Second, anyone caught celebrating, dancing in the street, when they learned of this recent horror. Women and children should come a long way last, despite the terrorists’ practice to the contrary.
Do not blow up the houses of terrorists. They are composed of brick, mortar, wood. Those objects are entirely innocent of any crime. Instead, kill the perpetrators and banish all connected with them, on the ground that they aided and abetted these evil perpetrators.
The essence of any civilized political philosophy is the non-aggression principle: do not physically harm innocent people. How, then, can we justify the killing, perhaps the murder (unjustified killing) of totally innocent people? It would be done on the basis of self-defense. This is the only way to stop Hamas or its ilk from murdering further innocent Israeli hostages. If Israel does not totally obliterate this type of barbaric enemy, future innocent Jews will perish.
So who is more innocent and less deserving of death? Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails? Gazans who overwhelmingly voted for Hamas? (We must full well realize that with a secret ballot, not one person, individually, can be indicted for this crime.) How about Arab citizens of Israel, who danced in the streets and gave candy to children in celebration of Hamas’ initial acts of mayhem? Or totally and completely innocent Jews? Obviously, the latter, and in that order.
But that is a short run, superficial analysis of the matter. Looking at it from the more basic long run, Israel, in order to safeguard its very existence and that of all its citizenry, must necessarily deal severely with the Gazans. They are in great danger if Israel adopts the semi-pacifistic suicidal stance often urged upon it by. Let Israel’s response be “disproportionate” to the atrocity perpetuated on them by its all too many enemies.
Nor can we lose sight of the fact that there are several other enemies waiting in the wings to see how Israel would deals with this type of threat.
Hamas was not only using the captured Jews as hostages. They were also using their own people in this role. They have placed their rocket launchers nearby schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc.
We wish the entire country G-dspeed in this terrible ordeal. Never Again!
@EvRe1
“…those convicted of murder are shahids when they die.”
Go after their families. Gloves are off.
Also, I’m amazed that when Hamas/Hezbo has a funeral for one of its own that the IDF does not bomb the funeral mob. That’s where you will find easy piockings of terrorists (and future terrorists) that need to go. The funeral for Nasrallah was a missed opportunity. I read that IAF planes buzzed the occasion…for what??? to show a middle finger? That mob should have been bombed.
The war between Israel and the Islamic fundamentalists who are a death cult is an extremely uneven contest. The terrorists not only want to murder as many Jews as they can, they also are willing to die in the process. Not only that, they use their own people as human shields so that many (potentially) innocent people will have to die in order to kill the men who are intent on murdering so many Israelis.
The author points out one way that Israel can be more effective in the war effort by executing people already convicted of murder on a 1 to 100 basis, one hundred convicted terrorists for every hostage murdered.
That sounds reasonable except that I don’t think the Hamas terrorists care that much, because those convicted of murder are considered Shahids when they die. It only adds to their prestige in the community.
I think the current war needs to be prosecuted without negotiating with terrorists at all. And of course there should be no release of terrorists from prison. Both of those things make Israel look not only extremely weak, but also foolish to Islamists.
In addition, they should lose territory every time they commit murder against Israelis. I think the IDF should basically take territory from one end of the strip to the other until Hamas has lost all of Gaza permanently.
In addition, if the Islamic terrorists in Judea and Samaria try to or achieve murder of innocent civilians, that territory too should be gradually taken and held by military force, and if necessary until it is all under Israeli military control.
Ideally this should be done in concert with the US arranging for Palestinians to be deported to Muslim countries who should HAVE TO take back the people they have created for the purpose of terrorizing Israelis. The surrounding Arab nations actually created the Palestinian problem of Jew hatred, they kept it going and they keep getting international donations for keeping it going. Thus all of them who signed the “3 NOs” should be dividing the Palestinians between them.
Or perhaps Muslim nations further away can take them, but they should not be Israel’s problem anymore.
I think it is time that Israeli politicians begin to normalize deportation of the Palestinians who are basically all in alignment with Hamas whether they live in Gaza or J&S. I am referring to polls done that have found over 75% of Palestinians living in J&S were overjoyed with what Hamas did on the 7th of October. One can thus consider these people genocidal, and Israel is justified in liberating them to live elsewhere, anywhere, but not on Israeli soil.
Just as in WWII, when the war ended, the Nazi army had to lay down their weapons.
However, we can do better than what was done in WWII. Because as it turned out many Nazis stayed in Germany and became part of the police forces and government. Many were brought to the US and worked in aerospace industry and in the CIA.
It is better to remove ALL genocidal people from Israel’s borders leaving none to be PA “policemen” or members of the PA “government.” Otherwise, Israelis risk keeping genocide alive to form a new force. There must be a plan to make sure that does not happen.
This is the time to do this, because there is much wider support now for serious national security changes over the way things were done prior to the 7th of October.
The new part of the equation here is that Israel is in a position to be able to punish 100 prisoners for every hostage killed. This is really new for our so-called friends and enemies. It would be a major reset for one and all, not to speak of all the action in front of and behind the SC in Israel.
Of course those hundreds of prisoners would have to be guilty of these crimes.
It is high time that Israel totally abandoned the idea of “proportionality” in its war with Hamas. The doctrine was created by a thirteenth century priest to deal with thirteenth century problems. It is simply not relevant to the twenty-first century.
If America had followed the principle of proportionality, as Thomas of Aquino described it, in World War Two, it would have conducted one retaliatory bombing raid on Japanese ships, destroying approximately the same number of Japanese destroyed in their attack on Pearl Harbor. It would then have immediately contacted the Japanese rulers to negotiate a restoration of peace between the two countries. And then where would we all be?