Daily Alert Archives

The Bizarre Moral Criticism Against Israel

(TIME) Eric H. Yoffie - The reason that Hamas has not killed more Israelis is not because they haven't tried. In the seven years during which it has controlled Gaza, Hamas and its proxies have fired more than 5,000 rockets into Israel; almost 800 have been launched just this past week. Each one has been aimed at civilians and intended to murder and maim. The reason that more Israelis have not died is that Israel has prepared herself with shelters, warning sirens and an anti-missile system. For Israel, the fundamental issue is the responsibility of its government to protect its citizens. As missiles have fallen on her cities over the years, the government has not succeeded in providing that protection. The reasons are many, including sensitivity to American wishes and a concern for world opinion; but the desire not to hurt the innocent is the most important. Now, however, as children in the south continue to live in terror and civilians throughout Israel flee to shelters several times daily, Israel's leaders have concluded that they must act. There is something bizarre about the idea of "proportionality" being used as a moral criticism against Israel. A proportional response by Israel to the attacks of the last seven years would mean that every time a rocket is fired by Hamas at an Israeli civilian center, Israel would respond by firing a rocket at a civilian center in Gaza. Israel, of course, rejected that, then and now. Imagine how we as Americans would respond if a terrorist group embedded in Mexico that the Mexican government refused to disarm is firing missiles into Houston night after night, endangering American lives. Our government would not wait a week or a month; indeed, it would not wait a single day before taking action. We need only remember how American forces flew half way around the world to engage in a war in Afghanistan against terrorists who carried out an attack on American soil. The talk then was not of proportionality, but of providing security for our country and stopping those who wished to do us harm. For any country, morality begins with a reasonable measure of security for her own citizens, and it is not right to say that Israel must protect Palestinian civilians at the cost of abandoning her own. Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie was President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012.
2014-07-16 00:00:00
Full Article