objectobot.com

The scale and nature of the brutality of Hamas’s attack on Israel may have garnered unequivocal support for Israel in the immediate aftermath. However, as Israel prepares to defend itself and continues to execute operations to clear out Hamas, the usual calls for peace on ‘both sides’ and a propagandized ‘Free Palestine’ campaign begins. If ‘Free Palestine’ meant freeing the Palestinian people from Hamas, that would make sense, but it doesn’t.

The purpose of the article of course is not to convince every terrorist sympathizer or antisemite that Israel has the right to defend itself. The purpose here is to establish an ethical framework with which to talk to your reasonable friends and family, who are genuinely concerned with the death of innocent people in Gaza or Israel. The following points and order of argument are what I like to employ. I can’t guarantee that you will convince anyone, but it will address the relevant ethical aspects that I think most reasonable people are concerned with.

First, I like to establish that Hamas and Israel are not morally equivalent. It matters why there is violence, it matters why there is a war. To lose the context and just see Israel and Hamas as two butting rams, both the same, is to do a grave injustice. Hamas fights to destroy a free people and wipe a country away. Israel fights to make sure their people can live without being kidnapped, blown up with rockets, blown up by suicide bombers, or totally annihilated. One of these goals is heinous and unjust, the other is perfectly legal and just.

Of course, most people already recognize that Hamas is evil, but they express concern for the innocent Palestinian civilians who will die as a result of Israel trying to eliminate Hamas. We can empathize with the plight of all innocent in a war, however in practice, if a country that has been attacked like Israel, and can’t defend itself because it might hurt other innocent civilians, this would mean that Israel is responsible for protecting innocent people in Gaza from the actions of their own government. Regimes cannot stay in power without the support of the population. Even violent dictatorships like Hamas are held in power by the citizens either through ignorance, passivity, or fear. Whether the citizens of Gaza are unwilling or unable to overthrow Hamas, they cannot expect others to also submit to aggression and sacrifice themselves on their behalf. What happens to the truly innocent citizens of Gaza that try to stand up to, or get rid of Hamas? Hamas kills them and their families. So whether Hamas is directly killing Gaza’s innocent, or indirectly by initiating aggression on others, it is Hamas that is ultimately morally responsible for the death of all innocence. I go back to my first point, it matters why there is a war in the first place. Once a war starts, once one party attacks, the only relevant concern is who started that war. The casualties, civilian or otherwise, are the responsibility of those who started the war, not those who defend themselves. If Israel, or in fact anyone, could not defend themselves with force because of fear of hurting an innocent person, we would all be at the mercy of the first criminal willing to initiate force. It is a sad irony, that the pacifist who renounces all aggression, ends up achieving the opposite, instead of getting rid of violence, they encourage and reward it.