https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/qed/aiding-abetting-and-rewarding-evil/
“You have to despair for Australia in the year of Our Lord 2025. A battle between good and evil is going on before our very eyes. And our government, representing all of us in the eyes of the world, is aiding and abetting evil.”
The minister at my church, an Army Reserve chaplain, studiously and admirably steered cleared of politics from the pulpit. It was Sunday, October 8, 2023. Who could not have been affected by the previous day’s horrendous events in Israel? He took a step out of his lane. Israel had a right to fight back, he said. Adding, provided it was proportionate.
We debated afterwards on the meaning of proportionate. He lent me a book, Military Ethics by Stephen Coleman. Thereafter we had more informed discussions without necessarily reaching agreement on what proportionate meant in the circumstances Israel faced. It is fair to say that once obvious abuses such as the wanton killing of civilians are put aside, proportionality is highly subjective. Best to quote Coleman:
The fact that something is a legitimate military target means that it can be directly targeted, but an attack will only be justified if is also proportionate … The commander will need to determine what the military value of the target is, what collateral damage is likely to be caused … and whether the target is of sufficient military value to justify the level of collateral damage that will be caused. (p.192)
Unsurprisingly, there is no uncontested view about any number of past war-time events: from the Allied saturation bombing of German cities to the Dambusters Raid to Hiroshima to the sinking of the Belgrano, and so on. What is not contested is that “War is Hell”, as General Sherman put it during the American Civil War. And this remains the case despite the Geneva Conventions, which pointedly do not in the least restrain Hamas terrorists. Which brings me to the war in Gaza.
Israel is up against an enemy emerging from tunnels to shoot from behind women’s skirts, from hospitals and schools; an enemy which invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, killing, raping and kidnapping its citizens, and which expresses a religious determination to wipe Israel off the map. Yet, bizarrely, Israel is being held solely accountable by the media and assorted prime ministers for any and all deprivations suffered by the resident population in the enemy’s territory. The situation is unique in the annals of war. I wonder what Churchill would have said about the deprivations of German civilians who voted the Nazis into power; just as Gazans voted Hamas into power.