Reasonable minds can, and do, differ, on the answer to all of the questions you raise. I know that our own military has ethicists and lawyers and the like assisting in making these decisions in advance. I assume, without knowing for sure, that this type of effort is international.
But Sarman's refusal to discuss these issues with me suggests to me that to him, what matters is not the intention behind the acts, or the relative culpability, but only the ethnicity of the dead children and the person who set off the chain of causation.
He cares about Palestinian dead children, but not about Israeli dead childrean, and thinks that everybody makes the same type of tribal calculations.
It seems as if he doesn't really care how the children died, only that they are dead, and that the agent of their death was an Israeli, and he wants revenge.
I have been entertaining strange thoughts - if an Israeli lost consciousness while driving a car, and killed a Palestinian child, would he think that called for revenge? If a strong wind blew an Israeli off a roof and he landed on a Palestinian child and killed it, would that call for revenge? If a Palestinian child is trying to shoot an Israeli, but the gun misfires and kills the Palestinian, would that call for revenge?
I realize these are weird questions but no weirder, to me, than the conversation we were already having.
The answer to the question, "can't we all just get along?" appears to be, "no."
I guess I need to read up on Arab revenge killings. |
