Three Posts on Judging and Justifying Israel

1.  Jeffrey Goldberg posted some thoughts about the Israeli action in
Gaza and the American action in
Somalia:

At least nine hundred people, maybe half of them civilians, have been killed in
Gaza so far, the overwhelming majority presumably killed by
Israel (some people, more than we probably know right now, have been killed by Hamas, mainly Fatah activists in revenge killings). This number, nine hundred, is large, and it brought to mind another conflict between a Western army and a Muslim insurgency, the one portrayed in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”

Roughly one thousand Somalis were killed by American forces over the twenty hours or so of the First
Battle of
Mogadishu (eighteen American soldiers, of course, were also killed).

Goldberg called Mark Bowden, the author of “Black Hawk Down,” who said 80 percent of the Somali deaths — roughly eight hundred people — were civilians.  Goldberg asked if he thought this meant American forces in
Somalia had committed war crimes.  Bowden responded that Hamas bore the responsibility for civilian deaths in
Gaza and drew this parallel between
Somalia and
Gaza:

“The parallel with
Mogadishu is that gunmen in that battle hid behind walls of civilians and were aware of the restraint of the (Army) Rangers.  These gunmen literally shot over the heads of civilians, or between their legs. They used women and children for this.  It’s mind-boggling.  Some of the Rangers shot civilians, some of them inadvertently and some of them advertently.  They made the choice to shoot at crowds.

When a ten-year-old is running at your vehicle with an AK-47, do you shoot the kid?  Yes, you shoot the kid.  You have to survive.  When push comes to shove, faced with the horrible dilemma with a gunman facing you, yes, you shoot.  It’s not just a choice about your own life.  If you don’t shoot, you’re saying that your mission isn’t important, and the lives of your fellow soldiers aren’t important.”

2.  At Boker tov,
Boulder!, the indispensable Yael quoted Doris Wise Montrose — president and founder of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles (CJHSLA) — as follows:

…. We are forever chasing after those who degrade and demean and cry out that no, no, we’re not like that.  Instead we should collectively ignore them and just do what we have to do without constantly offering up explanations as to why what is printed is wrong.

We should show the world the strength that we have had for close to 6000 years despite at least 3000 years of people trying to eliminate us from the earth.  While almost all of them are gone and only heard from in the history books, we survive and will continue to survive.  

And while we are surviving, we are the People who gave the world civilization and continue to give to the world everything from life saving medical procedures and equipment, technology that is even used by the Muslims to kill Jews and all other infidels, all manner of agricultural innovations that provide food to the world . . . and in Sderot, the town that the international community has found it to be perfectly acceptable for men, women and children to live with a barrage of thousands of rockets fired from the Arabs in Gaza for the last seven years remains the home of the underground pop music scene.  What other people in the entire world can say things like this?

Israel and the Jewish people are NOT victims.  Victims don’t have these characteristics.  The Jews have left the shtetl.

3.  William Hone, Jr. left this comment to Yael’s post and
Doris’ statement:

The well known declaration of Ze’ev Jabotinsky is still (if not more) pertinent: “Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest.  As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. … We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer.  We came before them and will leave after them.  We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”  (From Instead of Excessive Apology, 1911)