Today, Israel’s citizens suffer crimes that no government would ever allow within its own territory toward its own people. Just in the last two weeks, 170 rockets have fallen on people who are just trying to go about their daily lives. What would the United States do if Canada or Mexico were firing rockets on American cities? Would they sit around and tell the people to just deal with it? No. If Canada was raining death down upon New York, the Marines would be in Quebec so quickly that even an Iraqi would say that it was fast.
But when it comes to Israel, it’s a different story; Israel has to hold back. The military isn’t allowed to conduct operations in Gaza because there are too many civilians — and did we mention the cease-fire? Israel is continually victimized by the international community. It is a political entity, whereas terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah do not have to play by the same rules. They operate with impunity; civilian deaths, Palestinian or Israeli, serve their purpose equally. Every dead Jew is a victory and every dead Palestinian is a call to arms.
The argument is made that Israel has no right to retaliate against the rocket attacks because they very rarely hurt anyone. While it is true that since the rockets started in 2005 actual deaths as a result have been minimal, I ask: Would anyone else be willing to live in constant fear like that? The terrorists responsible for these atrocities do not need to kill anyone; they accomplish their goals simply by inflicting fear on these innocent people. People sleep in their bathtubs just in case the rockets come at night. Playgrounds are empty because there isn’t any place to find cover. Over 95 percent of children in the towns directly outside of the Gaza Strip suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the same thing that our soldiers from Iraq are coming home with. Who says there are no casualties?
Nowhere in the Geneva Convention or any other international treaty does it say that a military is not allowed to fire into civilian areas if the intended target is a military target, yet Israel is expected not to try and stop rocket attacks because trying to take down terrorists puts civilians in harm’s way. No one ever criticizes Hamas for the practice of using civilians to cover their attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. There is a severe lack of perspective here; newspapers like The New York Times use the word “militant” instead of terrorist to create a kind of parity for both sides. There is no parity in this conflict. There is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas. There is no moral equivalency between a terrorist who blows himself up on a public bus or in a pizza store and an Israeli soldier who is constantly put in harm’s way by his own government to minimize Palestinian casualties.
In October of 2000, right at the beginning of the Second Intifada, the tomb of Joseph, a Jewish holy site, was attacked by Palestinians. They fired upon the Israeli soldiers protecting the Jewish pilgrims coming to visit before the Yom Kippur holiday. One Israeli soldier was wounded and slowly bled to death because the other soldiers were ordered to retreat, so as to avoid firing on any more Palestinians. After the army withdrew the Palestinians ransacked the tomb, shattered the ancient stones of the tomb and turned it into a mosque. Where is the parity? We saw what happened when cartoons of Mohammad were published; can you imagine what would happen if Israelis desecrated a Muslim holy site? Unless terrorists are held accountable for the crimes they commit, there will never be peace in the Middle East.