Hezbollah's To Blame For Civilian Casualties
Charles Krauthammer
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a
recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by
the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back,
regardless of whether it has restored its own security?
What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its
cities - every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians - and
is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's
infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that
sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral
civilian death and suffering?
Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it
unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few
significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain,
Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world - governments, the
media, U.N. bureaucrats - has completely lost its moral bearings.
The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into
aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried
"disproportionate Israeli response."
When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond
with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It
launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced
Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home
islands to rubble and ruin.
Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one
has every right - legal and moral - to carry the fight until the
aggressor is disarmed and so disabled it cannot threaten one's security
again. That's what it took with Japan.
The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that
there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry
between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create
civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to
minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.
In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the
London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and
villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate
cars and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.
But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die for Israel to be
terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die for Israel to be
demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its
launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human
shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.
The long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa
are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch
sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?
Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would
have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war,
destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20
years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure
- bridges, roads, runways - and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the
reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah.
Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry
and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese
civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south
Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against
Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued
warnings, sent messages telling Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that
they would not be harmed.
Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah
fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to
where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up
elaborate ambushes.
The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral
scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese
civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for
disregarding civilian life?
Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated writer in Washington. |
