Moshe Yaalon is a retired lieutenant general and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. In "Rules of War" in the Washington Post (thanks to Sr. Soph), of all places, he lays bare some of the inconsistency and dishonesty of what passes for thought among all too many dhimmi analysts in the West.
The conflict in the Middle East is about much more than Israel and Hezbollah, or even Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order.Sadly, judging from how most of the world has responded to Israel's military action against Hezbollah, these rules have been completely abandoned.
The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.
Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.
Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.
We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.
Read it all.
The scrupulosity of the Israelis, observed in war after war, and certainly in this war, wins them no points, and as in Jenin, where bombing from the sky could have prevented the deaths of 23 Israeli reservists going house-to-house, may be admirable, but apparently no one is admiring it. No government in the decent, advanced, un-primitive world, should be so prodigal with the lives of its own soldiers. If one bothers to compare what Israel has done in its incessant attempts to get civilians out of the way -- leafletting, phone calls dialing and warning every household with a phone in southern Lebanon to leave, and the careful rather than carpet bombing, and compares this with the approximately 2,100 missiles all aimed at civilian targets in Israel (or rather, aimed at villages and the middle of cities, with no specific targets, it appears, in view) -- one sees at once the moral difference.
But perhaps the Israelis should be just a little less concerned, a little less scrupulous, since it wins them nothing, since ready opprobrium is their lot in any case.
On the BBC yesterday, giving not as good as he got but far better, to the BBC interviewer (not the worst one, not a Plett or a Lustig or an ineffable Swallow, but not friendly either), Benjamin Netanyahu noted that Israel is subject not to a "double" but to a "triple" standard. There was one standard, he said, applied by the "international community" (yes, he used that phrase) to the behavior of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups engaged in violent Jihad. That standard was and is: we expect you to do whatever you do. No standards necessary. These groups efface entirely the distinction between soldier and civilian, in every way they can -- in how they dress, without uniforms, in where they hide their weapons, in where they fire their missiles from, in where they run to just after firing the missiles.
Yet this does not penetrate into consciousnesses. Whatever Muslim terrorists such as Hezbollah do, it is somehow ignored, no doubt tacitly or openly justified by the "justice" - or at least the declared injustice, which you scream and ululate about for the cameras on every rigged occasion --and nothing more need be asked. The second standard is that demanded of the Western powers, such as the American and British and Coalition governments, when their troops are fighting terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan, and are attacked for observing the ordinary rules of warfare, as developed in the West, in whichone makes some efforts to avoid civilian casualties but also takes into accout and weighs heavily the likelihood of undue risk to one's own soldiers. The third standard, that applied only to Israel, is to insist that casualties on both sides be equal, even if Israel is a tiny sliver with a small population, facing not really a tiny Hezbollah, but behind it Syria and Iran (with 75 million people), and beyond them, the umma of a billion or more people. Yet it is Israel that is required, it appears, to do more than the precision bombing, to do more than warning civilians to leave, do more than not bombing, again and again, when it had every right to do so, because of fear of causing undue civilian casualties.
The beyond-belief hellishness of trying to locate and destroy up to 12,000 missiles (deducting for those already sent flying into Israel) that may remain, when they are all spread out in civilian areas, maintained by Hezbollah forces who themselves are dressed as civilians and have placed them, deliberately, in the middle of civilian areas (or even built, on top of military bunkers, schools -- as was noted by a Shi'a Muslim, Mounir Herzallah, in his letter to a German newspaper).
The triple standard must end. And so, by the way, should the double standard. The civilized nations need to be permitted to defend themselves without the ludicrous imposition of standards that no army can conceivably oberve and still succeed against a group that has effaced the civilian-military distinction on both sides. If Israel continues to have this triple standard applied to it, the same standards will, in the end, be forced on the United States and other Western governments.
And the Western governments will regret having prevented its own peoples from allowing their governments, in some not distant future, from behaving as, say, the Czech government, that wise, tolerant, advanced state, did in 1946.
It is an ominous sign when you see one side in a war complaining that the other is not following the rules of war. I believe this is an indication that the enemy (that is those not following the rules)may defeat the good guys. It has happened so many times over the long course of the history of warfare. The West (including Israel) seem so obsessed with following old rules and not adapting to change, the analogy is like the dinosaur meeting the challenge of a changing world. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs. Annilation!!. The West needs to forget about its self righteousness and do what is required to totally defeat the enemy. Good guys do not always win. Being good is not a requirement for survival. Wake up Western Civilization!!!
C'mon, Hugh. If the Israeli government and military are criticized and condemned as much as they are now, in the face of the fairly high moral standards they impose upon themselves, I wouldn't want to see what it would cost them in the propaganda wars if they lowered them even a millimetre, especially in the views of its fiercest critics, domestic and abroad -- other Jews.
The one thing that has, for the moment, united most Jews, is the conviction that Israel, for all its failings, is fighting for its very existance against an enemy that will not settle for anything less than its irradication and will employ any means to that end. Already, the gormless appeasers are crying "disproportionate response" based on superficial measures -- "civilian death counts" as opposed to who started it and what their goal actually is. And it will only get worse as the IDF destroys infrastructure in the "non-Hezbollah" parts of Lebanon in its apparent bid to pressure the Lebanese government to get off its ass and do what it was supposed to do 5 years ago: disarm Hezbollah and other "militias".
What has Israel got to lose whether they fight to win, or abide by that constant call of restraint from countries who are not confronted with the daily barrages of indiscriminate attacks from Hizballah, and Hamas and the ever growing cancer of Islamic terrorism.
They have nothing to lose because they are hated no matter what they do because of their mere existence in the middle east. They are seen as the sword over the heads of Islamic countries that is controlled by the western powers. Whether they are peaceful,generous, and caring to all those countries that surround them, it simply does not matter to muslims.
Their only hope is that if they conduct this war against terrorism using western and Geneva procedures that they will be fully supported by those countries who respect the established rules of engagement. But to let the Islamic terrorists grow and grow year after year will only make it that much harder to defeat them later.
OT...
"European Caphilate Project" moves a step closer.
ITALY: SEA RESORT TO OPEN BEACH FOR MUSLIM WOMEN
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Trends&loid=8.0.327176384&par=
"Riccione, is set to open the country's first beach exclusively for Muslim women. "
which means that there will be "No Muslims Allowed" signs.
Western governments should maintain the same standards that they applied to themselves during World War II. Those promoting violent Jihad are no different from the Nazis, or the Japanese militarists and their cult of Kodo. Standards no lower -- but no higher either. The Arabs and other Muslims have never had a real defeat inflicted on them of the kind that others have in the past, never had to endure the kind of casualties and destruction that Western countries routinely inflicted, and were certainly prepared to inflict on the Soviet Union. Why? Israel is not only small, but has constantly been prevented from inflicting anything like the defeat it might have, for example, in 1973.
Perhaps Israel alone should not be inflicting the damage. Perhaps the Arabs should be given to understand that those topless towers they are building, in an orgy of Las-Vegas-ism, in Dubai and Bahrain, and those private and public xanadus now all over the Jazirat al-arab, the Arabian peninsula that includes all the richest oil states, merely provide, for Western attack, targets more worth hitting. As for the oil installations, it is not clear that disruption of oil production, here and there, would be disastrous. It might prove to those countries, so certain that they are immune, so certain that the West would never deliberately harm their ability to continue to acquire great wealth -- the wealth that funds the Jihad, that provided the wherewithal that allowed the buying of hundreds of billions of dollars in weaponry since 1972, the paying for nuclear projects such as that in Pakistan, or in Iran, and for mosques, madrasas, and an army of Western hirelings all over the world.
It would be better for all those who regard Jihad as a duty, and who, even if they do not themselves participate actively in violent Jihad, help pay for it, help defend it, help support it, and thereby participate in non-violent but even more effective methods of Jihad often ignored by those who prate, endlessly, of the "war on terror," were to understand that the Western world could, if it so desired, destroy completely the infrastructure of a dozen or two dozen Muslim countries, and "turn back the clock" not five years, or twenty, but back to, say, 1910 or 1890. And since the entire non-Muslim world now has a stake, for quite other reasons having nothing to do with Islam, in diminishing reliance on oil and gas which is the sole source of revenues, other than the disguised Jizyah of Infidel foreign aid, for Muslims, there will be an inevitable clash between those who sensibly wish to limit those fossil fuels and the Arab and Muslim lobby. They are not prepared for this, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. If that infrastructure, therefore, were to be damaged, and if the Western world chose to seize the assets of those defined as "enemy aliens" as it did, without hesitation, during World War II, and if the entire Western (and indeed non-Western world, save for those Muslim oil producers) will move heaven and earth, as it should have begun to long ago, to find and exploit sources of energy other than oil, then perhaps that will make some in the Arab and Muslim camp begin to bethink themselves. They should wish to hold on to what they have, and not risk its loss -- lest there not be the means for replacement.
And as for counting on the islamization, through Da'wa and demographic conquest of Western countries, that becomes a more difficult prospert the more Infidels manage, despite everything, despite the timidity, cupidity, and stupidity of their ruling elites in both government and in the media, to find out just a bit too much about Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira to make Muslims comfortable. Indeed, they are made distinctly uncomfortable by all those who simply bother to find out something of what Islam is all about.
In truth, the IDF pratice what is known as the "just war theory".
I guess there is something to say for the use of 2,000 pound bombs....as opposed to 500 pound bombs...
Here's something about the lefties which support Hizbollah etc, which I posted on the BBC Messageboard, which lasted 2 hours before it was pulled (a previous posting - not the same - lasted between 25 and 37 minutes).
"With every day that has passed over the last four weeks, the levels of invective aimed at Israel from an assortment of loathsome and moronic crackpots who write in our newspapers, spout their drivel on the box, post messages on these messageboards and shrill their ghastly and imbecilic anti-Israeli epithets from camping tables in the middle of town on Saturday afternoons can mean only one thing: Israel is winning. And the more successful the Israelis get, the higher the volume gets turned up. If Israel were losing, the levels of invective would shrink, and the saliva would empty from their mouths like a cascading waterfall.
This week, I have been on a holiday, and one benefit of being on holiday is the fact that I can get more of a glimpse of the outside world, and get to notice just how stupider those you previously thought had bottomed out on the plateau of imbecility can get.
And I have heard the inane anti-Israeli rantings of so many blockheads. In their amoebic minds, Olmert is the latest addition to their so-called "Axis of Evil" alongside Blair and Bush. But then these feeble-minded asshats wouldn't recognise a truly evil person if he held a rusty carving knife to their necks. They'd probably be dense enough to think they were getting a good shave rather than being shrunk by a good foot and having their IQ's reduced by two percentiles. But then the "Axis of feeble-mindedness" who hawk copies of Socialist Worker on Saturday afternoons, and yes, its a good bet that I'll see a few of them tomorrow (and they look repulsive enough for a tramp to take evasive action when he sees one), have this strange idea that the more a person kills, the more they should be worshipped. That is why their icons number Mao tse-Tung (60 million deaths), Stalin (40 million) Hitler (35 million), Pol Pot (5 million), Saddam Hussein (2.5 million), Ayatollah Khomeini (4 million), all manner of terrorist groups including the Janjaweed who have murdered upwards of 500,000 in Darfur, and that wannabe Hitler Mark II (Ahmadinejad) who harbours desires to wipe out the 15 million remaining Jews on this planet, and makes no secret of it. The lefties icons of mass destruction between them have murdered at least 200 million innocent souls over the last 100 years, with plans to murder many more. But do the Left learn? Thats as futile as teaching a pig to bake cakes. But those simple-minded Citizen Smiths, fuelled by the notion of playing the tinpot revolutionary who few take seriously see no harm in the destroyers of civilization. To them, in their warped and twisted world, the good guys are the bad. Thats why they celebrate every troop loss, every missile fired, then mourn every terrorist death like the loss of their favourite granny.
But to judge a leftie, you have to look at who they side with. They side with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei who rule a country where 16-year-old girls get hanged for having sharp tongues, 14-year-old boys get lashed to death for breaking their Ramadan fast, women get buried up to their waists and stoned to death on trumped-up charges of adultery, girls get hanged for becoming rape victims, women get beaten up by crazed religious police if they wear makeup, nail varnish or a so-called 'poor burka'. If the 'useful idiot' leftists get their way, that will be the fate of the West. And yet they vent their asinine garbage at Bush, Blair and Olmert, who rule countries where none of this happens.
Funny old world, innit?
..it`s a propaganda war.
What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order.
The quicker that this moves to the lowest common denominator, the better for morality.
Civilized nations have placed their combatants in uniforms throughout recorded history in order to protect non-combatants. The sickness of our enemy is that they purposefully stage in hospitals, in a calculated effort to have us strike a military target, kill kids, and show it on TV.
Its late and I can't sleep despite a couple of beers. I bought the Iliad (Troy) a couple of weeks ago to get perspective on what's happening, Made it half-way through already. Its got a 2700 year old perspective on what may happen:
Book 6, Hector Returns to Troy, Paragraph 7
'Adrestus hugged his knees and begged him, pleading, "Take me alive, Atrides, take a ransom worth my life! Treasures are piled up in my rich father's house, bronze and gold and plenty of well-wrought iron-father would give me anything, gladly, priceless ransom if only he learns I'm still alive in Argive ships!"
His pleas were moving the heart in Menelaus, just at the point of handing him to an aide to take him back to the fast Achaean ships... when rushed up Agamemnon, blocking his way and shouting out, "So soft, dear brother, why? Why such concern for enemies? I suppose you got such tender loving care at home from the Trojans. Ah would to god not one of them could escape his sudden plunging death beneath our hands! No baby boy still in his mother's belly, not even he escape-all Ilium blotted out, no tears for their lives, no markers for their graves!"
And the iron warrior brought his brother round-rough justice, fitting too. Menelaus shoved Adrestus back with a fist, powerful Agamemnon stabbed him in the flank and back on his side the fighter went, faceup. The son of Atreus dug a heel in his heaving chest and wrenched the ash spear out.'
Pretty rough stuff. We're the product of it. It may still be there.