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Civilians Pay a Price When Their Country Attacks Another Country

(The Hill) Alan Dershowitz - Hamas death tolls hide the relevant truth: How many of those killed by Israeli fire are really totally innocent civilians? How many were active Hamas terrorists? How many were vocal supporters of Hamas terrorism? How many 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds, who Hamas counts as "children," were in fact combatants or accessories? How many women were Hamas accessories? How many were killed by misfiring terrorist rockets? A common mantra is that Israel is at war only with Hamas, not with the Palestinian people of Gaza. That ignores the reality that many, perhaps most, of the Palestinian people of Gaza support the brutal tactics of Hamas. Israel is at war with Hamas, which controls Gaza politically and militarily. It is comparable to when America was at war with Germany and Japan in the 1940s. Civilians pay a price when their country attacks another country, as Hamas attacked Israel. Even when it is only a group within a country, such as al-Qaeda or ISIS, civilians die, as many did in Afghanistan and Iraq when the U.S. battled terrorists thousands of miles away from our homeland. Israel is fighting mass murderers just across its borders. Every genuine civilian and young child that is killed is a tragedy, but these tragedies are entirely the fault and responsibility of Hamas. When Hamas decided to invade Israel and murder and kidnap its civilians, it knew that Israel would have to respond militarily and that Palestinian civilians would inevitably become collateral victims. The writer is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.
2023-11-03 00:00:00
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