The West Has Forgotten Why Collateral Damage Is Morally Justified
By Shlomo M Brody, Public Discourse.
Ultimately, the defeat of these terrorist groups is the primary ethical imperative. This will benefit not only Israel but also the Gazan civilians who suffer longer under their terrorist leaders and the continuous warfare that they breed. There is a moral cost to not acting decisively, and a strategic cost to forgetting the moral justification for killing in war.
Does the Western world have the moral fortitude to allow Israel to take the bloody but ethical steps to defeat Hamas? It doesn’t seem like it. The reason is clear: the Western world has forgotten why killing in war is moral.
Western leaders have repeatedly condemned Hamas for its brutal October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped more than 240. They further recognize that many Palestinian lives have been subsequently lost, since Hamas uses human shields while fighting from underground tunnels. Nonetheless, they continue to call for a “sustainable ceasefire” in light of growing civilian casualties in Gaza. The foreign ministers of Britain and Germany declared that Israel has the right “to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.” Yet they went on to say that “too many civilians have been killed.” Similarly, the French foreign minister called for a “durable truce” because “too many civilians are being killed.”
These sentiments echo the more systematic statement of Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who called for Israel to exercise “maximum restraint.” He then added that “the world is witnessing this—the killing of women and children, of babies. This has to stop. The price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. . . . All innocent life is equal in worth—Israeli and Palestinian.”
Even the leaders of the United States, which after its own experiences with asymmetric warfare in Iraq should be more sympathetic to Israel’s dilemmas, are urging Israel to switch from full-scale warfare to more targeted raids by elite forces to kill Hamas leaders. Such intelligence-driven missions within population centers might be high-risk to Israeli soldiers yet would minimize Gazan civilian casualties.
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