Today Israel finally responded to the recent increase in rocket attacks launched from Gaza toward southern Israel by killing an important Hamas military leader in an air strike. My zionist friends immediately look quite critically toward the media reports- when they say that Israel "escalated" the conflict, how prominently do they mention that militants have been launching 150 rockets a day into southern Israel over recent days?
So here's my take: Israel has every right to defend itself. There is really no moral problem with using deadly force in response to unprovoked attacks on civilians. Any country in the world would do the same. The assassination of the Gaza military leader Ahmad Al-Jabari is completely justified. Israelis have no responsibility to sit and wait for its citizens to be killed before responding.
BUT..... what is the goal of a Gaza attack? What is the exit strategy? Saying that the actions there are justified isn't the same thing as saying that they're wise. The unfortunate truth is that no military action, including ignoring the situation, will totally stop Gazans from launching rockets into Israel. If they keep launching them, eventually a rocket is going to kill Israelis. This is unacceptable, but I'm not sure it's avoidable.
So this isn't an argument against military action exactly. Just a caution that, while it feels good to finally take action in defense of the country, the next steps have to be thought through carefully. I'm not sure the Israeli government is doing that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment