When Israel targets the launch location of Hezbollah rockets and kills civilians, the international community blames Israel for being overly aggressive and bloodthirsty.
When Hezbollah launches rockets into Israeli cities deliberately targeting civilian population centers, the international community declines to blame Hezbollah, because, well, I'm not exactly sure why nobody blames Hezbollah.
The easy answer is "Well, after all, they're only killing Jews," and we know how the world community feels about that.
Another easy answer is "Well, they're Arabs, and you know how those people can be."
Is the answer really as simple as overt/covert racism, or is there another dimension to this dementia?
How about cultural decadence? Moral cowardice? We have become so sensitive and so afraid of giving offense that we are no longer willing to differentiate between the deliberate targeting of civilians and collateral damage. Sure, innocents are dead in either case, but doesn't motive matter?
I think it does.
In the past, civilians were legitimate targets. Tokyo. Dresden. London. Hiroshima. Atlanta. Destroying the enemy's will to fight by bringing the fight home to them was a part of war.
In the last 60 years, we've moved away from that. We see war as a business between professional armies, leaving the civilian population relatively safe. Unfortunately, not all combatants follow the new way of warfare. They still believe in total war.
To the knife.
So here's Israel, fighting an enemy that believes there are no non-combatants, being held by the international community to a higher standard of behavior than their brutal enemy.
Hezbollah fires rockets that kill civilians indiscriminately and the world yawns. Israel kills civilians in the course of fighting back, and the world condemns them for it.
Posted by Rich at July 31, 2006 4:56 PM | TrackBack