As I was reading the article yesterday (“Minding the Middle East,” ODE, April 7) regarding students’ impersonation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, my reaction was, “How am I going to fit all my responses into a small letter?” The truth is I can’t, so I am just going to focus on one main fallacy used by the impersonators: the death toll contrast.
The basic allegation is Israel killed 1,000 Palestinians while Hamas shot one missile into Israel. The conclusion is, of course, that Israel deliberately killed far more people than Hamas and is therefore the bad guy. The numbers are off, and the conclusion is way off.
Ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas has fired upwards of 8,000 rockets into Israel. The fact that the rockets haven’t killed at least as many Israelis does not exonerate Hamas; Hamas deliberately tries to kill as many Israelis as possible. Thankfully, Israel has great defense abilities and has prevented deaths from all those rockets. Don’t mistake Israel’s good defenses for any benevolence on Hamas’ part.
But here’s where their conclusion is way off: It blurs the distinction between deaths of combatants and deaths of civilians. Fathi Hamad, a leader of Hamas, recently admitted that mostly combatants were killed during (Israel’s) Operation Cast Lead. One could kill a million combatants and be more justified than killing one civilian.
Furthermore, other reasons exist for the death toll contrast that do not indict Israel or exonerate Hamas. As mentioned above, Israel is good at preventing Hamas from killing Israelis. Also, the civilians who die from Israel’s actions do not die because Israel wishes to kill them. Rather, Israel attacks combatants and weapons used against its people while Palestinian civilians are in the area. Israel doesn’t let the fear of civilian deaths prevent it from defending itself — nor should it.
The story doesn’t end there. Israel tries to minimize civilian death. Israel has dropped leaflets in areas it’s about to attack warning civilians to flee, even risking that terrorists will get the message and flee too. If anything, Israel is too careful.
On top of that, Hamas deliberately hides its combatants and weapons in hospitals, schools and other concentrated areas. Why?
It figures, “As long as Israel’s going to respond, we may as well take down with us as many Palestinian civilians as possible, to make Israel look like the bad guy to the world.”
The blame lies on Hamas for instigating the war and hiding in concentrated areas, not on Israel for defending itself.
Furthermore, the death toll argument suggests Israel would have been more justified letting Hamas kill 1,000 Israelis before responding. That is just ridiculous.
Israel is responsible for defending its own people, and no moral equivalence exists between deliberately killing civilians on one side, and deliberately killing combatants and inadvertently killing civilians in the process on the other side.
On a side note, if you look at Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” index, you’ll find that only one country in the Middle East is a free country: Israel.
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Letter: Palestine protesters miss point
Daily Emerald
April 7, 2011
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