Huge Dividends
….those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere.
The concluding paragraph of a opinion piece written by Moshe Yaalon, a retired lieutenant general of the Israeli defense forces. He describes exactly what is wrong with the outcry over every action Israel takes while critics give a pass to the terrorists. You are giving a weapon to those terrorists every single time you do that. Every time.
The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.
Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.
Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.
We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.
Imagine for a moment that the United States had advance knowledge of the meeting place of al-Qaeda's senior leadership. Does anyone believe that there would be a debate about what size bomb to use, much less that any leader would authorize insufficient force to do the job?
So while it is legitimate to question whether Israel should go to such extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, it is preposterous to argue that Israel uses excessive force. Even more absurd was the shameful statement last week that Israel appeared to have deliberately targeted U.N. officials — a statement fit for a knave or a fool, not for the secretary general of the United Nations. Rather than lead the fight against those who target civilians and use them as human shields, Secretary General Kofi Annan has strengthened them.
Intent does matter in this. The advocates of moral relativism are giving a victory to the terrorists and inviting more, and worse, terror. Read it again:
….those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere.
The next innocent may be someone you care about. Take the weapon away from the terrorists - start denouncing them.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Pigs Got Wings — Saturday, 5 August , 2006 @ 2:32 pm
By Black Jack, Saturday, 5 August , 2006 @ 3:24 pm
It starts at the individual level. This is exactly the reason fighters who don’t wear uniforms are not entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions, contrary to the Leftist idiot cabal on the US Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, the only way to fight terrorists who hide among civilian populations is to kill them immediately, violently, and with every means at your disposal. The civilians will quickly come to the realization that proximity to a terrorist is tantamount to a death warrant, and alter their behavior accordingly.
No form of verbal denouncement is going to dissuade terrorists from seeking protection behind the innocent. The terrorists are counting on others to value the well-being of the innocent above their own lives. The effectiveness of such a weapon is valuable beyond estimation and no enemy can be allowed a free pass to attack and then hide with impunity. To do otherwise is to invite defeat. It a harsh reality to have to face, but a reality nevertheless.