RUTHIE BLUM: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ****
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1564
Mission impossible
Every time a war is waged against Israel by Iranian proxies along its borders, the response on the part of the Israel Defense Forces becomes headline news across the world. The moment the story erupts, the following chain of events ensues:
The Obama administration calls for “both sides to exercise restraint.”
The websites of terrorist organizations and NGO supporters or funders of those organizations pull out pumped-up casualty figures – as well as pictures and clips (often way out of date) of innocent women and children supposedly victimized by Israeli actions.
J Street distances itself from anything smelling of Israel, denouncing the “use of excessive force” by the country which it claims to support critically, “like a disappointed parent.”
And leftists at home and abroad accuse Israel both of instigating the “cycle of violence” and of violating international law.
Last week was no exception. When the Israel Air Force targeted and killed two members of the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization (operating under the full knowledge and with the cooperation of the Hamas government) in Gaza, all hell broke loose. That these terrorists – from the cell that abducted the recently released Gilad Schalit – not only had perpetrated attacks against Israeli civilians in the past, but were planning another deadly spree in the very near future, received little mention. Much attention, however, was given to the fact that Zuhair al-Kaisi and Mahmoud Ahmed Hananni were “assassinated.”
Because of this, when so-called retaliatory missiles fired from Gaza began to rain down on Israeli towns, the international outcry focused more on Israel’s policy of targeted killings than on the fact that the residents of those towns had to spend their days and nights in bomb shelters, with minimal breaks to buy bread before the next air raid siren.
The Iron Dome interception system turned out to be a godsend, but not foolproof enough to enable schools in the region to remain open. It did, however, provide enough cover to enable Israeli humanitarian goods and services to continue to flow into Gaza. But that’s another minor detail omitted from the fantastic narrative of Israeli wrongdoing.
The head honchos in Gaza couldn’t have been more pleased with the turn of events. As is always the case in conflicts with Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli government and military take the utmost care to be surgical about their strikes, so as not to kill innocent bystanders. Meanwhile, the Palestinian terrorist leadership does exactly the opposite – and not only where Israeli civilians are concerned. Indeed, what all Muslim-Arab terrorists like best is when their own innocents are slaughtered, and the more the merrier, especially if they are young children or the elderly. This is why they place their headquarters and missile launchers in heavily populated civilian areas, as close to schools and hospitals as possible.
They are not merely low-level murderers, after all. They are calculated in their carnage. And if there’s one thing they know how to fashion even better than Kassam rockets and Grad missiles, it’s how to garner sympathy for their plight, while doing serious harm to Israel’s international image. It’s often hit or miss for the former. But the latter always hits a bullseye.
Hamas, like the Left in the West, has a problem with Israel’s policy of targeted killings.
Hamas would much prefer that the IAF carpet-bomb Gaza. Its leaders have bunkers to run to, so they’re not afraid for their own lives. Nor do dead Palestinians – other than perhaps their immediate family members — cause them any distress. On the contrary, there is no better photo opprotunity for their purposes than bloody babies and maimed mothers.
But Israeli soldiers, like their commanders and their government, consider civilian casualties on the Palestinian side to be as tragic as those on their own. As cliched as it may sound, reverence for human life is as much a part of the IDF handbook as is how to clean an M-16 rifle.
So true is this, in fact, that I had to tell each of my children before their induction into the IDF that when in doubt about the legal ramifications of an approaching threat, they should shoot first and get a lawyer later, because I would rather visit them in a military prison than in a graveyard.
Because the IDF takes such pains to avoid legal and moral repercussions, soldiers are often hindered to the point of being recklessly endangered. Furthermore, due to the imbalance that exists between Israel and its evil enemies, the battlefield is never level.
Under such circumstances, precision strikes against specific terrorists and bases should be lauded by the international community, not treated as war crimes.
The true criminals in the current flare-up are the tens of thousands of “combatants” in Gaza doing the footwork for the regime in Tehran that is too preoccupied with the building of nuclear weapons to be taking care of the daily business of slaughtering Jews on a small scale.
Ruthie Blum is a former senior editor at The Jerusalem Post, whose book on the radicalization of the Middle East will be released by RVP Press in the spring.
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