The Times Online (London) has published an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that is as billed: a full and frank exchange. I was especially impressed with his answer to the reporter’s question about “proportionality.”
Q: But there is a sense in the world, and you must be aware of it, of lack of “proportionality”. Many people question how after two soldiers kidnapped and eight killed by Hezbollah we are now seeing upwards of 400 dead and rising in Lebanon. How can such an initial incident justify such a huge response from Israel?
A: I think that you are missing a major part. The war started not only by killing eight Israeli soldiers and abducting two but by shooting Katyusha and other rockets on the northern cities of Israel on that same morning. Indiscriminately.
Now we know that for years Hezbollah – assisted by Iran – built an infrastructure of a very significant volume in the south part of Lebanon to be used against Israeli people. The most obvious, simple, way to describe it to the average British person is: can you imagine seven million British citizens sitting for 22 days in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham in Newcastle, in Brighton and in other cities? Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads? What would have been the British reaction to that? Do you know of a country that would have responded to such a brutal attack on its citizens softer than Israel did? Based on my knowledge of history no country in Europe would have responded in such a restrained manner as Israel did.
I don’t want now to draw comparisons [but] one could ask the question what precisely did the European forces [do] in Kosovo 10 years ago. How many innocent civilians were killed in Kosovo 10 years ago? We can draw on and on these comparisons.
What are we talking about? More than a million Israelis are sitting 22 days in shelters because of the fear of terrorists. In every single case…that we kill an uninvolved civilian in Lebanon, we consider it as a failure for Israel. And you know how many Israelis raise their voices as a result of this? And they don’t have to because we feel that we failed when we killed uninvolved people.
The difference between us and Hezbollah is that when we kill innocent people we consider it a failure, when they kill innocent people they consider it a success.
Tell me, who are they aiming at when they shoot already 2800 rockets on Haifa, Hanariya, Akko, Sefat, Afula and the rest of the places, if not to kill innocent people? So I’m sorry for every individual that was killed that was not involved.
And by the way, how do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed? How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They don’t wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians. We didn’t attack any of the Christian quarters of Beirut. We didn’t attack any of the Christian residential areas in any part of Lebanon. We attacked only those areas where they had the Katyusha launchers, where they had the missile launchers, where they had the command positions of Hezbollah, where they had the storage houses, the logistic centres and so on and so forth.
So the fact that people were killed there who were not dressed in uniforms doesn’t mean that they were innocent civilians. There were Hezbollah people, they are the terrorists. Did you ever see terrorists dressed with military uniforms like we have in our army? No.
“Katyusha” refers to multiple rocket launchers first built by the Soviets during WWII and “able to deliver a devastating amount of explosives to an area target in a short period of time, although with low accuracy,” according to Wikipedia.
To paraphrase Olmert for American audiences, one could say, can you imagine seven million American citizens sitting for 22 days in Chicago, New York, Dallas, and in other cities? “Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads?” What would have been the American reaction to that?икони
Excellent! Your summation of current Mid-East crisis is better than anything I have seen on CNN. Historically, war has always and will always take its toll on civilians. We need only go back to WW II. When governments [or terrorist organizations] take an aggresive stance, civilians will ultimately pay a high price. WW I resulted in how many civilian casualties? The aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan resulted in how many civilian casualties? Defeating the military of Germany and Japan was not going to bring the war to an end. The entire German and/or Japanese nation had to be defeated. Unfortunately, war does not discriminate between military and civilian populations. Hezbollah [the Lebanese government/people] must have known from the start that retaliation was just ‘around the corner.’
SC
This is sort of OT, but… thanks for that Katyusha link. After all the talk about those rockets, I still didn’t really know what they were. I was picturing them as a sort of long-range mortar. After reading the Wikipedia article, I realize that I was quite wrong. A 50-pound HE warhead? Yikes.
If a person commits a felony and is trying to escape apprehendsion from the law, grabs a hostage to for protective cover and during his efforts to escape, the hostage is killed in accidental hostilities by the police, who is to be blamed for the death of the innocent hostage? The felon or in the case of the Middle East terrorists, are the guilty parties. By action of the felon or the terrorist put an innocent life in peril. One would think it would be obvious that those using innocent people to cover murderous actions are reponsible for innocent deaths. Many ignorant people with an agenda to favor the felon or terrorist do not agree.
Merle,
I understand your robber analogy. In a black-and-white world, you’d be absolutely right. Keep in mind, though, that the police (Israel) would also have the option of not taking actions that are likely to harm the hostage (Lebanese civilians).
I think that most of the anti-Israel camp believes that, in this case, the police should be limiting themselves to tactics that absolutely will not lead to them directly killing the hostage.
That’s all fine and dandy when your risk is ‘letting a felon go.’ Israel, however, is basically in a war for survival. This bombing of Lebanon is more akin to what happened to Dresden or Tokyo in WWII. It is still on shaky ethical ground, IMHO, but it is undeniably a proportional response to actions by aggressors.
I am on Israel’s side in this conflict, but not by much. If I could cause a magical peace to fall over the area, whereby both sides would stop killing any and all civilians, I would. Barring that, however, my second-best solution is for Israel to whoop Hezbollah, but good. I still have hope that if there is ever an end to aggression against Israel, they will finally become a peaceful nation. I cannot imagine a situation in which Hezbollah would make the same transition.