No Moral Equivalence

Conflict has yet again broken out between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas has launched over 1500 rockets at Israeli cities, an attack to which Israel has responded with airstrikes against Hamas military targets in Gaza (see here for an account of how the Israelis duped Hamas terrorists), and predictably there are several myths circulating about these events.

Jack Elbaum debunks three of the biggest myths surrounding the violence in a piece at The Federalist.

The three myths Elbaum criticizes are these:

• Israel Is Committing ‘Terrorism’ in Gaza
• Israel Attacked Peaceful Worshippers
• The Conflict Would End if Israel Gave Palestinians a State

You'll have to go to Elbaum's article to read his full response to these, but here's some of what he says about the first:

This claim is not supported by the facts. The only reason that Israel conducted any airstrikes was that the terrorist group in charge of Gaza, Hamas, instigated violence by indiscriminately shooting thousands of missiles into Israel. These rockets were not only aimed at their usual targets in southern Israel, but also civilian centers in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.

These strikes have hit schools, hospitals, and homes in Israel.

While Hamas’s attacks were aimed at civilians, Israel only intends to strike military targets. Israel destroyed a Hamas military intelligence facility, a weapons manufacturing and storage site, terror tunnels used to kidnap and kill Israelis, and dozens of top terrorist leaders.

Anti-Israel activists are quick to point out that many civilians have also been killed in Israel’s airstrikes. This is true, and it is a tragedy. The reason it is happening, however, shows who the real terrorists are.

While Israel invests in state-of-the-art Iron Dome technology to protect its people from rocket attacks, Hamas puts its people in harm’s way by using them as human shields. While Israel conducts its military activity away from civilian centers, Hamas launches rockets, hides senior officials, and manufactures weapons in heavily populated areas where they know collateral damage will take place.

They store rockets in hospitals, schools, and mosques; they shoot rockets off the top of homes.

When Israel responds, they attempt to only hit terrorist targets. They even give notice hours in advance to the people who are in the buildings they are about to strike through phone calls or other means — something that nearly no other army would have the decency to do. But, because Hamas would like their people to remain in harm’s way for photo ops and to stoke Palestinian grievances, innocent lives are tragically taken.

The loss of innocent Palestinian life is a strategic goal of terrorist groups like Hamas.

Those who seek to draw some sort of moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, or worse, make Israel culpable for this current outbreak of violence, are either very ill-informed, very unintelligent or very malevolent. As Kevin Williamson notes at National Review,

Hamas has its advocates and apologists in the United States. So did Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, etc. — all of them “deadly foes of civilization.”