IDF's Operation "Protective Edge" Begins Against Gaza

[The Magistrate]

60. I Have Neither Defended Nor Denounced Either Party, Sir

I am not familiar enough with the current habitues of the 'sand trap' here to know whether your first response to, say, a report that Hamas has fired a rocket barrage is to post a statement to the effect that Hamas, by launching a strike intended to kill non-combatants at random, has committed a war crime which warrants trial at the Hague.

I consider the relation between Israel and Arab Palestine to be one of war, punctuated by periods of poorly observed armistice, and of a duration which, including the earlier phases in the Mandatory period, stretches back nigh on a century by now. I recognize that people at war will employ violence, and have a right to employ violence. That is conditioned chiefly by whether that violence is within the bounds recognized by the laws of war at the time ( these have changed appreciably over the course of the conflict ). In terms of use of violence, Israel comes out rather better on remaining within the law, although in other areas, such as conduct of an occupying power, it falls very far short.

There is one further condition regarding employment of violence by peoples at war, not a legal one, but one that deserves consideration. That is the basic question of whether the war can be won, whether the end to be warded off is so bad as to justify the suffering inflicted and endured to try and do so, whether the end to be gained is so good as to be worth the suffering inflicted and endured to gain it, whether the end sought is one that can be best achieved by violence, or can even be achieved by violence at all. By now, neither side comes out very well on this. There is no real prospect of Arab Palestine overcoming Israel by exercise of violence. Nor is there much prospect that Israel, by exercise of violence in a degree it is practicable for Israel to employ in the present day, will be able to force acquiescence of Arab Palestine to its existence as a Jewish state controlling Jerusalem and most of the Jordan valley. It is not unreasonable for the people of Arab Palestine to feel they face complete expulsion, which is a result of defeat a people is entitled to fight against even without much prospect of success. It is not unreasonable for the people of Israel to feel they face expulsion with massacre if their arms should fail them, and this is a result of defeat which a people is entitled to fight against even without much prospect of success. It would be possible for Israel, behaving in a manner common to empires of the Classical period, to secure its objective of recognized existence, but the sorts of decimations and expulsions and wholesale reductions to servitude elder powers like Rome were wont to employ to such ends really just are not done anymore, certainly not by powers with some pretense to being exemplars of civilization.