The West has to abandon its approach to terror. Terrorists take advantage of Western restraint in attacking civilian targets. Those days of weak response ended.
Israel has by no means recovered from Saturday’s surprise attack on the south of the country. To give some perspective, the Second Intifada ran from September 2000 until it petered out in 2006. Over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, and over 10,000 were injured in thousands of attacks ranging from car stoning to suicide bombings. In a matter of a few hours, Hamas terrorists killed and wounded around one-quarter of what took six years to do in the past. How Israeli intelligence missed the signals and why there were no army forces to trap and repel the terrorists exiting Gaza will be the subject of great concern in Jerusalem and Washington. But those analyses are for another day.
As Israel prepares to pummel Hamas in Gaza, the question comes up as to what rules will be applied in taking on the terrorist foes. In the past, Israel, like the US, has restrained its activities to the point of demanding pinpoint accuracy of bombings and retaliatory attacks. The US now apparently has a degraded version of a Hellfire missile with long knives in place of an explosive charge to reduce collateral damage. Israel supposedly used some very sophisticated mechanism to kill a senior nuclear scientist in Iran without harming his wife, who sat beside him in their car. This approach might seem noble, but it is wrong-headed. The only decision commanders and their political leaders must make is which targets must be destroyed. How they get destroyed, and any collateral damage should be a secondary consideration, with the safety of the troops being the primary concern for the operation.
One sees from the Hamas videos that they killed civilian men and women as well as children and elderly citizens. Their lackeys in the West claim that all Israelis are combatants, but Hamas does not try to focus its rocket fire or attacks solely on military targets. The world should expect no different from Israel. The days of scrubbing missions because some kid is playing outside of the target building should be over. Any legitimate target, however far-fetched, should be attacked and destroyed. Israel warning the residents of an eleven-story building to get out before the building was razed yesterday with a single bomb is not an encouraging start to the war. Buildings do not kill Jews; the ones inside whom you gave an opportunity to get away do.
The issue of civilian casualties during wartime operations is not new. American political and military leaders were generally uncomfortable with napalm-based incendiary burning of Japanese cities. Even General Curtis LeMay told one of his aides that if the US should lose the war, he would be considered a war criminal. But General LeMay did not lose, and in the 1950s Japan gave him one of its highest military medals. General LeMay justified the area bombing on the unique Japanese practice of having preliminary work performed in homes with lathes and products being brought to factories for final fitting and assembly. The homes thus became legitimate wartime targets. Its friends must give Israel a free hand, and its leaders must seize the moment of wall-to-wall support to destroy any and every target in Gaza. This is not the time to consult the combat lawyers about what is allowed; it is not the time to take pride in warning people to get out of buildings before their destruction. The hundreds of thousands of Japanese who died in area bombing and the nuclear detonations saved the lives of probably one million GIs and three million Japanese who did not die in a direct frontal attack on the Japanese home islands planned for November 1945.
I am not suggesting stooping to Hamas’ primitive level of killing civilians for sport. Instead, I strongly support attacking any school, mosque, building, tunnel, or car that has some military importance. I still remember Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, coming out of his rat’s nest and being surrounded by Gazan children so that Israel would not attack him. Those days should be over. Maybe give Hamas one warning that the old rules do not apply. Then, attack any and every meaningful target, however tiny.
When one fights cancer, he does not ask the doctors to be gentle and thoughtful in their treatment. Instead, he asks that they do everything to remove the disease and ensure it can never bother him again. Israel has repeatedly fought Hamas since the ill-conceived withdrawal from Gaza because it refuses to fight to win. America is no different. It often puts its own soldiers in harm’s way rather than attack a legitimate target for fear of collateral damage. This demented approach to warfare has to end; as we saw in Afghanistan, the wars will continue forever.
There is a story of Ernest Hemingway in World War II. He interrogated captured German soldiers. The famed author asked one of them about escape route signals. The soldier refused to answer and said that Hemingway wouldn't do anything to him anyway. Hemingway shot him three times in the stomach and once through the top of his head. Before he could turn to the second soldier, the latter started talking and giving all the information he had. The time has come for the West to realize that fighting terror is not the same as fighting crime. Victory will require a focused application of all military assets against the enemy without secondary considerations like collateral damage and what the press or UN will say. Will Israel destroy Hamas or just blow up some empty buildings and quickly agree to the first ceasefire that Egypt and Qatar throw its way? We will soon find out.