WEEKLY STANDARD
by Gabriel Schoenfeld
August 18, 2014

Condemnation of Israel for its conduct of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza continues unabated. The chief accusation, heard time and again, is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have either been cavalier about civilian casualties or are intentionally inflicting them. Israel and its defenders, for their part, have been at pains to point out the great lengths the IDF has gone to avoid injuring civilians, while at the same time noting the innumerable ways in which Hamas has violated the laws of war.

The debate over these matters has been almost as intense as the fighting itself. All too often, historical and moral perspective have been lost in the rhetorical smoke. No nation can survive with hundreds of rockets raining on its cities day after day while its borders are simultaneously penetrated by armed fighters seeking to spirit out hostages via underground tunnels. Once again, Israel has found itself waging a war for its survival. In such a war, the question becomes: What is forbidden and what is permitted?….

…..The Germans in World War II may have initiated the carpet bombing of civilian centers, but it did not take long for the Allies to respond in kind. Days after the German bombing of Rotterdam, Winston Churchill’s war cabinet settled on the initiation of “unrestricted air warfare,” openly casting aside concern for civilian life so long as military objectives would be realized. What followed over the next years, as is well known, was the destruction of more than half of Germany’s urban centers……

…..This brings us back to Hamas. Its illegal use of Israeli uniforms in combat is but one of many practices that reveal the group to be not a government or a governing party, but a terrorist organization. Indeed, its fighters fall into the same category of “unlawful enemy combatants” that applies to al Qaeda. In fighting such an adversary, one is allowed to take off certain gloves, as the United States has been doing in Afghanistan under both Presidents Bush and Obama. Our forces there have routinely used a variety of tactics to kill our enemies that entail the inadvertent but extensive loss of civilian life……

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