Michael Ejercito
2024-10-07 13:19:18 UTC
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PermalinkOctober 7 Offered a Stark Choice Between Good and Evil
When civilians are the targets, terrorists’ grievances don’t matter;
it’s time to hunt the perpetrators.
J.D. Tuccille | 10.7.2024 7:00 AM
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A tank with Israeli soldiers on the country's border with Gaza. | Ilia
Yefimovich/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom
(Ilia Yefimovich/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom)
One year ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists swarmed across the
border from Gaza in a stunning and bloody attack on southern Israel.
Roughly 1,200 people were killed, the vast majority civilians. The
attack set off a still-escalating conflict that raises questions about
how far people can go to defend themselves and what constitutes
legitimate targets for military strikes. But it also posed a stark
choice between good and evil, innocents and terrorists—and some people
around the world are picking the wrong side.
That murderous attacks on unsuspecting civilians and the kidnapping of
hundreds of them—some still in captivity—constitute unjustifiable acts
of terrorism is beyond question. Surprisingly, though, there's no
generally accepted definition of terrorism, because governments like to
keep the term vague so it doesn't encompass their own actions and
perhaps so it can be applied to domestic political opponents.
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Terrorism Means Targeting Civilians
Decades ago, in a class taught by a retired U.S diplomat who worked for
years in the Middle East, I was told the best way to distinguish
terrorism from military action is that terrorism deliberately targets
civilians rather than government officials or military personnel. That
squares with a 2004 report by the office of the U.N. Secretary General
that framed terrorism as "any action 'intended to cause death or serious
bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of
intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international
organization to do or abstain from doing any act.'"
This doesn't mean that purely military action is necessarily
justified—whether it's right or wrong depends on the rationale. But when
civilians are the main target, there's no need to consider the cause;
that's terrorism, it's evil, and it's time to hunt down the perpetrators
and bring them to justice.
October 7, When Mostly Civilians Suffered
On October 7, the attack began with a barrage of thousands of rockets
launched from Gaza into Israel. Then approximately 1,500 terrorists in
the employ of Hamas, an Iran proxy which runs Gaza, and its allies
breached the border wall or bypassed it by paraglider and motorboat.
About 1,200 people died at the hands of the terrorists by guns, bombs,
rape and sexual torture, blades, and fire, especially among residents of
nearby kibbutzes and attendees at the Supernova music festival.
"Authorities have identified a total of 274 soldiers and 859
non-soldiers killed during the brutal assault," the Times of Israel
reported last December. Removing police and security guards from the
total still "leaves a figure of 764 civilians," the Times added.
"The assault dwarfs all other mass murders of Israeli civilians," The
Economist noted. "The last time before October 7th that this many Jews
were murdered on a single day was during the Holocaust."
Not immediately killed were hundreds of hostages seized by Hamas and its
partners. Some have since been released in exchange for concessions, and
some have been rescued. Others have been murdered in captivity. A few
have been held for a year and are hopefully still alive, including four
Americans.
The correct reaction is to recognize that terrorists who target
civilians for murder, rape, and kidnapping deserve contempt. They should
be on the receiving end of efforts to make sure they're apprehended,
killed, or otherwise rendered incapable of again committing such acts.
Terrorism isn't an act that might be justified if you have a
sufficiently strong grievance; it's slaughter and brutalization of the
innocent to spread fear while bypassing those who might fight back. It
deserves an equally brutal response.
The Limits of a Just Response
That doesn't mean anything goes in punishing terrorists. There's room
for debate about the tactics that can be used to target Hamas and the
degree to which civilians can be put at risk as Israeli forces search
for those responsible for October 7. It's a dilemma amplified by the
fact that Hamas, like many terrorist organizations, embeds itself among
civilians in schools, medical centers, and residential neighborhoods to
make punishing its members impossible without putting the innocent at
some degree of risk.
"With Hamas locating themselves alongside important places like
hospitals, Hamas has actually made Israel fight them in places Israel
wouldn't want to target them, because of the potential loss of civilian
life," American University School of International Service Professor
Benjamin Jensen observed last November. "And in doing so, look at how
fast Israel lost momentum in its information war. Israel is taking a
huge amount of criticism for its killing of civilians as it goes after
Hamas."
Risks can be mitigated. As the conflict expanded to include Hezbollah,
which has rendered much of Israel near the Lebanese border uninhabitable
with rocket attacks and violent incursions, Israel planted bombs in
pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah personnel to hit the guilty
and reduce danger to innocent people. Inevitably, though, a few
civilians were killed and wounded. Conventional attacks on Hezbollah's
leadership have been very effective, but also killed and wounded
civilians located near the targets.
Is that too many civilian casualties? Nobody has an easy answer
regarding any conflict. A public health paper published in 2021
estimated that civilians made up 28 percent of all casualties during
America's involvement in Afghanistan, about half of casualties during
the Balkan War, about a quarter of casualties after Russia's first
invasion of Ukraine, and a whopping two-thirds of casualties during the
war in Iraq.
Terrorists Rely on the Deaths of Innocents
Accepting the moral compromises of armed conflict is a hell of a
challenge. But aggressors count on that and are happy to see innocents
killed and wounded to insulate their people from consequences.
Civilian casualties are "necessary sacrifices", Hamas military leader
Yahya Sinwar—who may have since died—told colleagues in correspondence
published by The Wall Street Journal. "In dozens of messages—reviewed by
The Wall Street Journal—that Sinwar has transmitted to cease-fire
negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza and others, he's shown a
cold disregard for human life," the report added.
Such calculated evil leaves people in a bind. Some have chosen to
embrace terrorists as freedom fighters, as if supposed grievances matter
when the chosen weapons are murder, rape, and kidnapping. Protests
against the war resulting from October 7 feature symbols and slogans in
favor of Hamas and other terrorists. France's President Emmanuel Macron
wants an arms embargo against Israel. Antisemitism is globally on the
rise as those who favor terrorists expand their hate from Israel to all
Jews.
Let them speak. Those who embrace evil reveal themselves to us and let
us know where the next threat might arise. If they go beyond speech to
action, we'll already have them on our radar. Those who have already
engaged in terrorism should be hunted and punished to prevent a
recurrence of such crimes.