HAMAS HAS NO MORAL SYMMETRY WITH ISRAEL

I guess that you have heard that a new round of violence has erupted between Israel and Palestinians. Most likely you’ve also heard that it has to do with Palestinians protesting eviction orders from several houses in Jerusalem, and that things got out of hand and lost proportion. So let’s talk a bit about proportion.

The best way is to start with some data.

Indeed there is a decadeslong legal issue, with pending eviction orders for house occupants not paying rent. The only problem is that the property owners are Jewish and the squatters are Arab. This quickly escalated into violence, and thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza into population centers all over Israel. In an attempt to protect its citizens, Israel had been pounding Hamas military installations. Most of these military installations were positioned in civilian areas or in a vast underground Metro system dug under the city of Gaza to transport fighters and ammunition for attacking Israel.

Hamas was firing indiscriminately in fierce barrages of hundreds of rockets each time, day and night, hoping to overwhelm the technological miracle that Israel has developed called the Iron Dome. The Iron Dome intercepts incoming rockets mid-air and has in fact stopped the vast majority of the incoming rockets in recent days.

Gazan Hamas shoots from population centers (a war crime) into population centers (also a war crime). In contrast, Israel “knocks on the roof ” of buildings that hide Hamas rockets, warning and letting the inhabitants evacuate before actually bombing in order to spare their lives.

There is indeed little symmetry or proportionality in the collateral damage here. Despite Hamas’ attempt to maximize civilian casualties, only a dozen Israeli civilians were killed by its rockets in the first 10 days of conflict. Despite Israel’s attempt to minimize the civilian loss of life, at least 227 people, civilians and combatants, were killed — some from Hamas rockets falling short and exploding in Gaza — and 1,600 people wounded in Gaza in the same period. Is this abnormal, immoral or wrong that a state enjoying technological superiority that is acting in self-defense will be able to save more lives compared to a terror organization that hides in the midst of a population and invests all its foreign aid into offensive operations, with Metro bomb shelters reserved only for its guerrilla fighters? This month’s death toll can be compared to the six Israeli citizens killed and about 1,000 or more civilians killed in Gaza in a July 2014 operation, showing how much more careful Israel is this time around.

With nearly all of Israeli strikes hitting their targets, if the bombing was indiscriminate, we would see casualties similar to Aleppo or Chechnya, in the hundreds of thousands. If Israel was not able to stop the Hamas rockets, many thousands of Israelis would have been killed. This is the proportionality that some cynical critics seem to be aspiring for, and luckily Israel manages to prevent that symmetry from happening, saving hundreds of thousands of lives on each side.

But there is another lack of symmetry, that is the moral symmetry. In the conflict of terror versus state, Israel adheres to the principles of war that make a distinction between civilians and military, and views the use of military force as a step towards diplomacy and hopefully a peace agreement. The Hamas side does not adhere to the principle of distinction. For Hamas, women and children are all equal warriors.

If anyone has seen the opening scene of “American Sniper,” with a child led by a woman to throw a grenade at U.S. soldiers, this is very much what happens in Gaza. When on one side a whole generation is brought up to see its life goal in death, wishing to become martyrs seeking the total annihilation of Jews and of the Jewish

state, there is no symmetry with the other side.

The other side, in an attempt to achieve peace, unilaterally withdrew its Jewish population from Gaza in 2005 in order to let the Palestinians have their own rule. There is no symmetry when the only thing that stops Hamas from eliminating Israel is Israel’s military advantage and the only thing that prevents Israel from eliminating Hamas is Israel’s moral advantage of valuing life over death and repeated attempts for a peaceful compromise over genocidal victory.

So next time when you hear about asymmetric conflict and proportionality, please praise Israel for keeping it this way. These are the sad invariants of Israel-palestinian reality, and they will remain so as long as terror reigns on the south of Ashkelon, the birthplace of Goliath.