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My Tribe in Israel Is Right

(Times of Israel) Carra Glatt Ben-Baruch - My tribe are the tens of thousands displaced from Israel's north and western Negev, areas that no UN resolution calls "occupied." They are the million in the Haifa area who are now under daily rocket attack from Hizbullah, which has no territorial dispute with Israel. They are the families slaughtered in their homes on Oct. 7. They are the soldiers, the sons and fathers who have died defending us. They should be your tribe too, whether you are Jewish or not. Because we're right. Determining the justice of conflicts by who has suffered more or who has more power and privilege is inane. Those in the West who reflexively condemn every Israeli operation that results in any civilian deaths as unacceptable are much less quick to offer alternatives. How should a country respond to deadly and destructive rocket attacks that have left whole cities uninhabitable? How should it respond to an invasion and mass slaughter? How should it respond to neighboring enemy nations repeatedly threatening its destruction, all while building up enormous arsenals? How can an army fighting a group operating in densely populated civilian areas possibly avoid civilian casualties, even if it takes great care to do so? What is the basis for the belief that the Israeli military has not done so? Every past military conflict between Israel and Hamas and Hizbullah has ended with a ceasefire. All of those ceasefires have been violated by Hamas and Hizbullah. Ceasefires that left these groups in place were part of the path leading to Oct. 7. So why would we believe that a ceasefire today would be anything but slow-acting suicide? Major Israeli gestures toward increasing Palestinian autonomy, including a total withdrawal from Gaza in 2006, have been met with disastrous consequences for Israelis. Evil exists and must sometimes be fought. Even in just wars, the innocent cannot always be spared. On some level, Western leaders must know that they are admonishing Israel to act in a way that they would never act themselves. The writer is a senior lecturer in English Literature at Bar-Ilan University.
2024-10-31 00:00:00
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