THE WAR IN GAZA

Plea to Hamas: No Ceasefire until Joe the Plumber Arrives in Gaza

Dear Hamas,

Allow us to restate that we deplore your actions, which have harmed both Palestinians and Israelis. However, it has come to our attention that Joe the Plumber is headed to the Middle East, to cover the war for WNWO-TV in Toledo. And while we are not technically asking you to kill Joe the Plumber (that's illegal!), we are encouraging you to reject a ceasefire until at least three rockets are fired in his direction. He's easy to spot. He literally has a skinhead, and he'll be surrounded by Israelis who will be asking themselves, "it's come to this? Israel's security is dependent on the editorial skills of Joe the Plumber?"

--236.com

Free, where have you been. Israel pulled out of Gaza completely, leaving valuable commercial properties, which were promptly destroyed by Gaza. For some strange reason, Israel dislikes the some 8,000 rockets, plus shells, fired at it. Should Hamas stop this, it could have peace.

Foofie wrote:

One humanitarian effort was to mature people, the other one is to people I cannot even define.

In that case it's of course okay to shoot the relief workers.

You responded to the post about the UN workers getting killed by demonizing the UN. I wondered what relevance of the UN's popularity with conservative Americans would have with the workers getting killed doing a job they had prior permission to do.

Quote:

The horrors in Gaza are the fault of Hamas, which continually attacked Israel from day one. Israel was always willing to live in peace with Gaza and its governments. Israel is not willing to wear a bullseye for the Hamas gunners.

Advocate...lemme ask you a question.

If some people came into your house and appropiated a significant portion of it for their own use, but declared that they will willing to live in peace with you there...

...would you consider it logical or proper for them to declare you to be at fault for struggling, by whatever means, to reclaim the house?

Advocate wrote:

Israel was always willing to live in peace with Gaza and its governments.

Is that why it reacted to the election of Hamas by demanding that the government be dissolved? Is that why Gaza was blockaded? Israel doesn't want peace -- she wants land and resources and she wants a Jewish controlled democratic state in an area where the demographics make it nearly impossible unless it is ethnically cleansed.

I think you have, perhaps unwittingly, uncovered the central issue here. Israel's security is indeed dependent on the continuing guarantee provided by the United States, and any action that might result in reduced popular support for this increasingly costly guarantee is itself a threat to the security of Israelis.

This should remind Americans that, as an unintended side effect of that support, we have removed any incentive for Israelis to deal responsibly with their neighbors and the people who occupy the land which they covet. Worse, Zionists have come to expect this almost as a right - no matter what they do or what it may cost us.

I believe Americans have become increasingly aware of this situation.

Right. Israel was just minding its own business being a good neighbor and Hamas fired rockets into Israel for no reason. Israel instituted a blockade, which is itself an act of war, and launched several attacks in Gaza. Israel is not the victim.

The United Nations on Friday cited witnesses saying Israeli forces moved about 110 Palestinians into a house, told them to stay inside, and later shelled it repeatedly, killing about 30 people.

The Israeli army said it had no knowledge of such an incident but was investigating.

The UN report said that "according to several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."

Hamas does not, nor will not, based on its charter, accept the existence of Israel.

What is this belief that Israel is obligated to treat Palestineans like Friar Tuck, and offer them jobs, and whatever.

Israel, in my opinion, should give Mexicans guest worker Visas, so that Palestineans can never be needed as labor in Israel. Palestineans should fend for themselves, since they have a coastline, and an Arab neighbor to the south. Israel is not a railroad flat where one must go through every room to get to the last room.

Deadly And Proportionate Force: The Tragedy Of Hamas
Richard A. Epstein 01.06.09, 12:00 AM ET

The breakdown of the uneasy truce between Israel and Hamas once again exposes the open conceptual wounds that surround the law of self-defense. On the one side, Hamas indiscriminately lobs deadly homemade rockets from Gaza into Southern Israel, especially the town of Sderot, killing to date some four people and wounding dozens of others. In response, the Israelis have unleashed, first, a sustained air attack, followed by a major ground offensive. Both of these target Hamas operatives but kill and wound, in addition, hundreds of women and children, some of whom Hamas uses as human shields around its sensitive targets. It is a given that if Hamas were to renounce the use of force, the Israelis would instantly follow suit. But when Hamas declares open season on Israeli civilians, what may the Israelis do in response?

On this issue, we are all libertarians insofar as we believe that no individual or nation is entitled to use force against another. Why? Because the world is a far more dangerous place if everyone is entitled to use force than if no one is. But just how is that peace secured? As if by design, Article 51 of the U.N. Charter is quite useless. It recognizes "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations." But it does not explain the scope and limits of that inherent right. Rather, it contents itself with saying that the right may no longer be exercised once "the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security," which it rarely does.

So what's to be done in the interim? Understanding self-defense in international affairs depends on the imperfect analogies to individual conflicts. Dead people lack good legal remedies. Self-help is thus allowed universally to repel or defeat the aggressor. By the same token, however, self-defense may not transmute itself into vengeance by the use of excessive force. But just how much force is necessary, and for how long may it be used? In general, the private law throws the risk of uncertainty on the aggressor so long as the innocent party acts in good faith to minimize unnecessary harm.

As applied to the Israeli/Hamas dispute, two points are clear. Hamas has been the aggressor, and the nonstop Israeli response against military targets cannot be regarded as excessive so long as the rocket attacks continue. But can the Israeli actions still be condemned as disproportionate to a legitimate end? Tough question. At one level, many libertarians bridle at the mere mention of proportionality. Right should not have to yield to wrong--period. So if it takes deadly spring guns to keep robbers at bay from my house at night, so be it. Yet even for most libertarians, that stark view of right vs. wrong comes out second best. Better that $1,000 of goods be stolen than a guilty human life be sacrificed. The innocent party has to rest content with criminal sanctions and recovery of the goods if the wrongdoer is caught. The price of perfect justice is just too high.

The principle of proportionality can be extended to some cases of bodily harm. You can't kill an attacker who for sure will do no more than scratch your face. The innocent party has to lick his wounds for the benefit of a wrongdoer. But you may kill, if need be, the attacker who threatens to maim but not kill you. Or all 10 gang members act with that same intention. Unavoidably messy.

The face-off in Gaza, however, pushes the idea of proportionality one step further. The claim is that it is not permissible for the Israelis to kill many individuals, including civilians, to stop sporadic deaths from rocket fire. Sorry. As with individual aggression, proportionality has no place in dealing with deadly force, where the right rule is that all necessary force is permissible.

The Israelis are not required to slowly bleed in Sderot because Hamas is at present only capable of using primitive rockets against it. It need not wait until the attacks become ever more deadly to raise the ante. It should of course do whatever it can to avoid the killing of civilians, even those who serve as human shields. It can, of course, back off to take into account the political repercussions, and it has been well-advised to dance the peculiar minuet that couples bombings on one day with relief conveys on the next.

As these examples show, the riddle of self-defense has no tidy theoretical solution. If overwhelming force is needed to stop persistent deadly attack against nations or groups that flout international law, then so be it. The sooner the international community acknowledges that principle, the sooner it will intervene constructively to stop bloodshed--by putting troops on the ground in Gaza if necessary, and by convicting top Hamas leaders of crimes against humanity.

Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution; and a visiting professor at NYU Law School. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.