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David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli currently living in Palo Alto, California. He taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Tel Aviv during the 60s and 70s. He has a weekly radio show, "Mid-East Media Watch" at KZSU Stanford and is the director of the (IPI), a grass-roots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay area working to educate the American public and its leaders in to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and realistic options for resolution.
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By David Meir-Levi
September 26, 2003
An open question to the Israeli pilots refusing missions that endanger civilians.
Dear pilots,
First I want to thank you for allowing the world to get a glimpse of the degree to which Israeli society is characterized by western-style openness, free speech, and a vibrant free-wheeling democracy. Only in such a society can dissenters like yourselves publicly voice your objections to military missions aimed exclusively at terrorist operatives, but which may accidentally endanger and sometimes even take civilian lives.
A number of respondents to your letter have emphasized the palpably political nature of your motivations. Eighteen of you are no longer on active duty, and only 2 of the remaining 9 serve in units that might be called upon to perform such missions. It seems, therefore, that 25 of the 27 signers have no legitimate right to sign as pilots concerned about any violations of their own personal sense of justice and integrity that such missions might entail. These 25 seem to be more like uncritical serial-petition-signers rather than thoughtful conscientious objectors.
However, my question is in a different arena. Before publicizing your dissent, did any of you ask yourselves or one another:
Where do you want the casualties?
When soldiers stop ambulances at roadblocks, and delay some for hours as a thorough search is done lest any be the secret conveyance of terrorists and their ordnance, then the casualties are the Arabs on their side of the roadblock who are delayed, inconvenienced, searched, humiliated, and perhaps even sicken or die as a result of the delay.
But if the soldiers do not stop every ambulance, then the one that does spirit the homicide bomber to her target causes the casualties on the Israeli side of that roadblock. These casualties now number c. 1300 dead and 6000 maimed for life.
Please recall, as even the most anti-Israel of western media have acknowledged, that the Israeli responses to the Palestinian terrorist war have been measured, restrained, carefully targeted, and highly dangerous for our soldiers. We lost 23 men in Jenin precisely because we would not do what so many other nations have done... bomb from the safety of planes and distant artillery.
Recall, as well, that much of the danger to Palestinian civilians arises from the fact that the terrorists intentionally hide their emplacements in the midst of the most sensitive civilian sites: hospitals, schools, mosques, and private homes. And they do this because they know that such machiavellian actions will impede Israel's military response, precisely because Israel does not want to inflict civilian casualties and is willing to risk the success of a mission, and even soldiers' lives, to minimize such casualties.
Lastly, recall that the Palestinian terrorist groups, which now number about 12 actively operating in Israel, vociferously rejoice in the deaths of Israeli innocents, civilians who are targeted by the homicide bombers. These same terrorists reject any possibility of a peaceful resolution, and declare endless Jihad against Israel and against the West. Their war has as its goal the same one that Hitler's had. But they can couch their hate-filled genocidal rage in bogus terms of Palestinian political self-realization. Sounds good, but masks only transparently Arafat's promise to his people: the state of Palestine from the river to the sea. No room for Israel in that vision.
When you are faced with an aerial mission that may entail civilian casualties, I most sincerely ask you to ask yourselves: if the targeted terrorist lives, how much closer will the terrorists be to their victory? How many Israelis will later die? Will that number of Israelis, intentionally targeted for death by Arafat's Islamikaze minions, be greater or smaller than the number that may die inadvertently from your bomb - a bomb that targets only the terrorist, and may cause civilian deaths only because the terrorists started this war, maintain it at all costs, and heinously use their own people as human shields?
No nation, no government, no people should ever be forced to answer this question. But Arafat and his terrorists and the Arab nations that support them have forced the issue. I believe that PM Sharon, our commanders, and our soldiers have made the correct decision. It is the only decision that any government can make when faced with a relentless, remorseless, brutal genocidal terrorist war.
I will be most grateful for your response.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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