Why a war?

I support the Israeli position on the current military action in Gaza. Like them, I hope it will soon be resolved with relief for all the victims of bombs and rockets on both sides of the border.

The Israelis hate the killing and injustice delivered by the bombs and rockets. They hate when it is done to them, and they hate when they have to do it. But even the most peaceful Israelis seem to find no way out of defending the southern half of their country: an area that's getting larger and larger as Iran supplies better and better rockets and weapons to Hamas. While not every person in Gaza supports Hamas, the people of Gaza did elect them (outnumbering the West Bank voters, who prefer Fatah) and they cheer them on in many ways.

Are this year's victims the same Palestinians who took delight in the SCUDs that landed on Israel in 1991? Did they all hide rockets under their beds? Do they all prefer martyrdom to a cease fire? Probably not. That's not the issue: I don't think the Israelis are vengeful, for the most part. They didn't choose these victims, Hamas chose them. The Israelis just want to stop having rockets aimed (more and more precisely) at their farm buildings, schoolyards, synagogues, restaurants, public buildings, drivers, and pedestrians.

Hamas is explicit: they target civilians and civilian structures with their rockets, and they frequently launch them in the morning when children are on the way to school. They want to terrorize the Israeli population, and they say so. They say that they only want the borders to be open, but remember that they started bombing when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza and opened the borders, and they also say their only goal is to eliminate the Israelis and Jews.

Hamas says Israelis can't be their partner in any negotiation. Why? Because Jews are apes and pigs, not humans, and their goal is to eliminate them from the face of the earth. It's not just rhetoric. Even in their humanitarian and educational activities, Hamas reflects this: a number of Hamas-produced kids' TV shows, for example, present in one form or another the inhuman essence of all Jews (not just Israelis). Open hatred of Jews (not just Israelis) permeates the Hamas philosophy.

The Israel Defense Forces are explicit also: they target Hamas, the fighters, the theorists, the politicians. No one doubts that Hamas stockpiles weapons and houses fighters in Mosques, beneath hospitals, in heavily populated apartment buildings, and among unarmed men, women, and children. The human shields may or may not agree with the Hamas decision to hide behind them -- I suspect that the fact that the main Hamas spokesmen are far away from Gaza, and not personally threatened is quite relevant. The accusation that the Israelis are somehow unjust (or worse) for fighting under these Hamas-determined conditions bothers me a great deal, as it fails to propose any way they can defend themselves.

Many Europeans choose to see only the suffering of the Palestinians, not that of the Jews. Somehow in recent years, at least a few of them have reverted to their ancient feelings about Jews, including some uncomfortable reminders about previous justifications for persecutions and other anti-Jewis acts. Though maybe not seeing Jews as apes and pigs, certainly their view is that Jews are not quite as human as real Europeans. Also, they are obsessed by numbers -- Do they really see that as the issue? I am skeptical that the so called issue of disproportion is really that important to them.

Says Israeli author A.B.Yehoshua in an open letter to a journalist, Gideon Levy, who emphasizes this disproportion in his writing:

There is something absurd in the comparison you draw about the number of those killed. When you ask how it can be that they killed three of our children and we cause the killing of a hundred and fifty, the inference one can draw is that if they were to kill a hundred of our children (for example, by the Qassam rockets that struck schools and kindergartens in Israel that happened to be empty), we would be justified in also killing a hundred of their children.

In other words, it is not the killing itself that troubles you but the number. On the face of it, one could answer you cynically by saying that when there will be two hundred million Jews in the Middle East it will be permissible to think in moral terms about comparing the number of victims on each side. But that is, of course, a debased argument. After all, you, Gideon, who live among the people, know very well that we are not bent on killing Palestinian children to avenge the killing of our children. All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed. The fact is that since the disengagement, Hamas has fired only at civilians. Even in this war, to my astonishment, I see that they are not aiming at the army concentrations along the border but time and again at civilian communities.

Besides this questionable issue of disproportion, I'm very upset by the resonance with history of some of the things Europeans say about Israelis and by implication about all Jews. Their view that American Jews are also responsible has some truth to it, but also resonates with racial guilt. These Europeans say are tired of hearing about the Holocaust, and that's fine, but I think they are unjust to deny that the Arabs want to repeat that part of history. The Arabs say they want to repeat that part of history. So that's me speaking as a Jew.

I think I can also speak as a generic American, born in the US, educated in mainstream midwestern schools, and in childhood not particularly taught to admire or support the Zionist project (though as an adult, in recent years, I've come to admire it very much). As an American, I am convinced that Israel is acting in self-defense, and that Hamas -- possibly acting as a proxy for Iran -- bears an enormous responsibility for choosing to make martyrs of people who haven't chosen it for themselves. Further, I feel that the Islamic fundamentalist position of Hamas is inherently evil and extremely bad for the values that I share with Americans. I think a large number of my fellow Americans -- both Jews and Christians -- have the same view.