Two Great Fallacies on Israel
There are two great fallacies running around in the debate about Israel and Hamas. They sound very different, but I think they both have the same fundamental error. The first is the phrase ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’. The second is the phrase ‘limit civilian deaths’. I think both of these are false and in the same basic way.
It is not the goal of the government of a country to ‘defend the country’. We use those words, but they are not accurate. It is the goal of the government of the country to prevent its citizens from being killed, its territory from being invaded, etc. And, indeed, wider than that when it comes to issues of trade etc. But at its core, it is the goal of the government of a country to prevent its citizens from being killed.
Nor is it the goal of the government of a country to ‘limit enemy civilian deaths’. That might be ‘a’ goal, but it cannot be ‘the’ goal. The goal of the government of the country is to prevent its citizens from being killed.
I recently saw an article that showed a chart of Israeli vs Palestinian deaths from 2008 to 2020 (which I thought was an odd time frame).
The author asked:
We can see that Israel’s “counterattack” on Gaza has been much more deadly than the attacks by Hamas.
Is this is a new pattern of imbalance due to Israel’s need to defend itself aggressively against the worst attack on Israel in decades?
and in response, posted this chart.
But the chart completely misses the point. It is not a government’s job to balance out the deaths of its citizens with that of its enemies. It is to prevent the death of its citizens. If the number of deaths for one country were zero… that would be an indication that it was doing its job, not an indication of failure!
If a man stands up in a mall and says that he is going to murder all of the left-handed Irish shopping that day, we take him into custody (with deadly force if needed); we do not wait until he actually kills someone!
So when the government of Israel states that it is its goal to eliminate Hamas, it does not need to be saying that because Hamas has eliminated the government of Israel or has killed a certain number of the citizens of Israel. It is enough that Hamas threatens the citizens of Israel. When Hamas puts its military headquarters under civilian targets, that does not exempt those targets from attack. It does mean that Hamas is failing at a government’s most basic duty.
But International Law
‘But doesn’t international law say…?’ It may. I don’t really care. Outside of certain maritime issues, international law is mostly a sad joke. Beyond that, I don’t care about it.
In large part because neither does anyone else. International law is a stick to beat others about if they are weak enough. But they don’t affect what the strong nations do, and rightly so. If Canada was lobbing missiles at Detroit… well, no, not Detroit. I don’t care about Detroit… if Canada were lobbing missiles at the farmers across the border and burying their headquarters under hospitals, etc etc,… The United States would kill a lot of Canadian civilians. Like, in a heartbeat. And then there was Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Now, mind you, the very idea of Canadians holding their own citizens hostage in order to murder random Americans seems ludicrous. They want to beat us in hockey but not launch random missiles.
Which is the other great flaw in international law: it assumes that both sides are going to play by the same rules and have more or less the same goals. When they don’t, and they don’t, then they are a crock.
So, it’s all very well for ‘international law’ to talk about limiting civilian deaths; that doesn’t change the basic role of a country’s government. I sincerely doubt that dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, attacking Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war, or invading Belgium were all according to international law. Big countries did them, and only paid the price if other big countries went to war against them. And won.
Conclusion
The goal of the government of a country is to protect its citizens. That protection often includes very broad issues, such as traffic control or divorce laws, but the most fundamental and basic goal is that of the physical protection of its citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Especially foreign.
That goal must not be overridden by concerns for ‘civilian casualties’ in their wars. Those may need to be taken into account, but they can never be primary. To say otherwise is to deny the very foundation of government.
