Consider this scenario: your neighbors, who have made it clear that they cannot stand you, regularly throws rocks at your house. Sometimes the rocks miss, because your neighbors aren't exactly the reincarnation of Peyton Manning. Often the rocks do hit their target- breaking windows, injuring family members, and just generally wreaking havoc and destroying your household's peace of mind. OK, so how long do you think it would be before you decided that you have no choice but to take action against your neighbor- to protect your property, as well as the safety and well-being of your family? I submit that you wouldn't tolerate this situation for long without responding, because you're going to protect you and yours.
You'd feel perfectly justified in taking action, wouldn't you? After all, who could blame you for doing what you need to do in order to protect your property and your family? Hey, I may be a pacifist, but if you come after me or my family with the intent to harm- or worse- you'd better believe than I'm going to protect those I love.
Here's what I don't understand, though: this is exactly the scenario that Israel finds itself in, with Hamas fighters randomly lobbing missiles into Israel. Yet, when Israel takes action to protect it's citizens, it finds itself roundly condemned for engaging in a "disproportionate" response. Here's big, bad Israel swatting the Hamas mosquito with a Jewish hammer; surely Israel can respond in a manner that doesn't endanger innocent Palestinian women and children in Gaza? Nice idea, but when you understand that Israel's adversary is Hamas, which has no probably with placing innocent Palestinians at risk, you know that they don't play be the rules of war.
Before we get all warm and fuzzy over the far Left's propaganda, let's keep in mind that I'm a committed and proud Progressive Democrat. I'm about as Liberal as they come, but this is where I part ways with my woolly-headed Librul brethren. While so many on the Left are willing to condemn Israel for what they perceive as "disproportionality", there's a reality that they're completely ignoring.
Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the violent destruction of Israel, is the democratically elected government in Gaza. To claim, then, that the civilian population is innocent in this conflict is ridiculous on it's face. The voting population of Gaza elected a terrorist organization to represent them. This being the case, they also bear responsibility for the actions of their government- in the same way Americans bear responsibility for the eight-year Reign of Error © of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader ©.
Hamas more often than not fires rockets into Israel from positions in population centers. Granted, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely-populated areas on the planet, but firing rockets from civilian and residential areas is a war crime in it's own right. Hamas stores weapons in civilian and residential areas, also a violation of the laws of war. When Arabs and those who hate Israel feign paroxysms of righteous indignation, they conveniently ignore the reality that Hamas has placed it's own civilian population in the line of fire...and that Gaza's civilian population seems to acquiesce in this.
Israel is absolutely within it's rights to respond to attacks by Hamas. That the Israeli response has injured and killed noncombatants is deplorable, but in this case not entirely to be laid at the feet of the Israelis. If blame is to be cast, how about we start at the beginning with Hamas? Why do so many well-meaning sorts completely skip over Hamas' culpability and proceed directly to bashing Israel for a so-called "disproportionate" response? How would you have Israel respond?
Within Israel, there seems to be no conflict about the correctness and proportionality of their government's military response. No reasonable person wants war, but when your day to day life involves the threat of random missile fire into civilian neighborhoods, you're not going to be okay with the idea of merely turning the other cheek. At some point, you're going to want action to be taken to protect civilians.
No one wants to see innocent women, children, and noncombatants in general to be harmed. The Israeli government is not deliberately targeting the innocent. The problem here is that Hamas by it's actions has placed it's civilian population in grave peril. Hamas is the problem here, NOT the Israeli response.
Instead of giving Hamas a free pass and plastering pictures of dead and injured Palestinians civilians all over our television screens, how about addressing the reality that Hamas is directly responsible for the plight of the people they represent? When you get right down to it, the only thing worth more to Hamas than dead Israelis are dead Palestinians. THAT is the root of the problem here, not Israel's response.
