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Isi Leibler chairs the Diaspora-Israel relations committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and is a veteran Jewish international leader.
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By Isi Leibler
June 21, 2006
What a tragic missed opportunity. Over the past month the global media focused on Ehud Olmert as he met heads of state in Washington, London, Paris, Cairo and Amman on his maiden Prime Ministerial visit. It was a perfect opportunity for our eloquent Prime Minister to depict the nightmarish life that Israeli citizens in Sderot and the Western Negev were undergoing as their schools, hospitals, homes and infrastructure faced daily missile barrages from their Palestinian neighbors.
This should have been the ideal setting for Olmert to proclaim to the world that, like any other state, Israel would no longer tolerate its citizens being targeted in this manner and that those facilitating the missile attacks against Israeli women and children would bear the responsibility for Palestinian civilians harmed in the course of our legitimate efforts to defend ourselves.
Alas, instead of this, the media concentrated almost exclusively on our Prime Minister's futile efforts to persuade heads of state to endorse his realignment program.
It is a disgrace that until recently the government of Israel has been understating the Kassam rocket as a primitive missile with limited range and low accuracy. By doing so it was implicitly conditioning us to come to terms with these attacks.
Until now the casualty toll has been miraculously low. But there have already been fatalities and it is obscene to delay more drastic remedial action for the inevitable disaster of a rocket exploding on a school, movie theatre, or major infrastructure facility. International public opinion is tremendously important, but it must never be subordinated to the loss of life of innocent civilians.
If the status quo remains, communities like Sderot will be transformed into ghost towns. Besides, the current primitive rockets are already being upgraded to more advanced models and the Iranians have been flooding Gaza with more sophisticated missiles including Katyusha rockets which will enable more precise targeting and travel greater distances, threatening our major cities.
In any normal country missile launches on civilian population centers would automatically represent a declaration of war. The longer we delay a tough remedial response, the more the Palestinians acclimatize the international community into accepting rocket attacks on Israeli civilians as routine. Marking time until a disaster forces us to act, merely ensures an even more difficult future confrontation with the international community.
We witnessed this in recent days when Palestinian civilians were killed, allegedly by an errant shell from our artillery. The IDF conclusively demonstrated that Israel was not responsible and that in all likelihood the Palestinian casualties originated from explosives flowing into Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal.
But despite this, other than the Americans, the standard one-sided condemnations flowed from the entire world. In what can truly be described as a classic example of Orwellian double talk, Kofi Annan had the gall to condemn Israel for breaching international law by "targeting civilians". With Gallic hypocrisy the French deplored the "disproportionate" response of the Israelis. The Russians, whose enlightened responses to Chechen terrorism are well known, also complained of a "disproportionate" response.
None of the international chorus of bleeding hearts have expressed moral outrage against Palestinians launching missiles against Israeli civilians. Instead they related to "cycles of violence", implying moral equivalency by failing to distinguish between those targeting innocent women and children and those seeking to defend themselves. None noted the extraordinary efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties, in contrast to the Palestinians who deliberately targeted civilians. Many Israelis lie in military cemeteries because (even more so than the Americans, not to mention the Russians and the French) the IDF frequently opts not to employ its superior fire power out of concern for civilians. In addition none of the critics noted that the vast majority of Israelis are genuinely distressed when innocent Palestinians are inadvertently harmed, whilst the Palestinians invariably erupt into spontaneous street celebrations every time their ghouls successfully maim and kill Israeli civilians.
It is surely time to call a spade a spade. No sovereign state in the world would conceivably tolerate a neighbor whose leaders refuse to inhibit terrorists operating under their jurisdiction from launching missiles at their civilians. Now unlike their PA predecessors, Hamas leaders don?t even bother speaking with a forked tongue. They proudly proclaim that their intention is to launch attacks to kill our citizens and destroy us.
Setting aside the effective targeted assassinations which hitherto exempted Hamas leaders, our government exacerbated the situation by issuing hollow threats which were never implemented. Instead, vacant buildings and empty fields were bombed -- "punitive" responses that terrorists regarded as a joke. Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz after panicking and halting all artillery bombardments, has now explicitly warned that the Palestinians would face devastation unless they reined in the Kassam attacks. If this is not implemented whatever remains of our diminished deterrent capacity will totally evaporate.
The time is now overdue for the Israeli government to bite the bullet. Ehud Olmert must belatedly tell the world that Israel will continue making every effort to minimize civilian casualties. But he must proclaim that if the terrorists continue callously disregarding the lives of their kinsmen by exploiting them as human shields, storing weapons in hospitals and schools, and operating from heavily populated areas, they will be responsible for the escalation in civilian casualties.
We realize that when we act the world will not sympathize because they will watch their TV screens and see the horror and devastation that war inflicts on everyone. Our spokesmen must therefore stop apologizing, direct the blame for any civilian casualties on those indulging in terror acts and expose the double standards and hypocrisy of our critics.
As Jews we pride ourselves as being a compassionate people genuinely saddened with the suffering of innocent non combatants. But if the Palestinians continue in this manner, the point must be reached where Israel will be obliged to sever its remaining links with them.
It is bizarre to expect us to continue providing water and electricity to neighbors who proclaim that their objective is to destroy us and rain rockets on our civilians. As a preliminary step in this direction Prime Minister Olmert should inform the Palestinians that from now, every time a Kassam rocket or other missile is launched against Israeli citizens, we will turn off the electricity and water from Gaza for three hours. That will surely be more effective than bombing empty fields and buildings.
Unless our oft stated concern for the sanctity of human life is intended to exclude our own people, the time for standing by with folded hands is over.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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