DISSENT: A Justifiable Response

In today’s editorial, The Crimson Staff makes the valid point that the world ought to hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas; after all, Israel is a democratic state, whereas Hamas is a terrorist organization that violently seized power over the Gaza Strip by throwing Fatah sympathizers off buildings and killing and imprisoning those who resisted. Thankfully, Israel does hold itself to a higher standard. While Israel attacks military installations, Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets. While Israel attempts to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas stores its weapons under mosques and schools and hides its operatives in hospitals. While Israel lines up trucks filled with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, Hamas steals medicine and food from the people for use by its militants. Indeed, Israel ought to be held to a higher standard, but the staff’s argument today ignores the plight of those who have lived under constant rocket fire for the past seven years.

The Crimson Staff now joins many around the world in condemning Israel’s delayed response to seven years of continuous rocket fire from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Yet, tellingly, this opinion offers no solutions, no alternatives, no suggestions for how a sovereign nation ought to respond when missiles are launched at its citizens. In fact, there were seven years of missiles before Israel’s operation began; 8,250 missiles and mortar rounds had fallen on communities within a 20 kilometer range of Gaza. While some might say that firing 8,250 rockets and mortars at civilians is acceptable “resistance” to the “occupation” of Gaza, almost 2,000 of these rockets were fired in the period between Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory and Hamas’ takeover. There was no blockade, relatively open borders, and no checkpoints or settlements, and still 2,000 missiles fell on Israeli civilians.

Israel’s response is criticized as “disproportionate and inappropriate” because so many civilians in Gaza have, sadly, been killed in the operation. What this sort of calculus ignores, however, is the tens of millions of dollars Israel has invested in bomb shelters throughout the south, the early warning system it has installed, and the mass migration of Israelis from their homes to avoid the murderous rain of rockets falling daily from the sky. Civilian deaths are horrible and tragic, but to suggest that death ought to be the only measure of “proportionality” ignores the fact that, for seven years, Israeli civilians have lived under the constant terror of rocket fire.

The attacks on Hamas may lead to more fighting rather than the peace that Israelis, and many Palestinians, long for. While Israel’s choice of attacking Hamas may not have been the best “strategic” decision in the long run, Hamas’s actions have not given Israel the option of a peaceful solution. The staff suggests Israel needs a “radically different strategy” for ending Hamas’ reign of terror, but neither it nor the international community at large has offered any real alternatives to military action against this terrorist group.
The Harvard Crimson