Who’s really targeting civilians?

Israel, the one and only Jewish state in the world, is surrounded in the Middle East by a plethora of Arab nations, 650 times its size, many of which have openly called for the extermination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Due to threats and attacks against Israel and its people, the IDF needs to take defensive measures to ensure that the country remains safe and secure.

Unfortunately, civilian casualties are part of any military conflict, on both sides. However, the claim that Israel targets civilians is completely false. In fact, Israel is widely known for having one of the most humane armies in the world and at all costs tries to avoid civilian casualties. The IDF targets Hamas terrorists and military outposts to defend itself and attacks only those who are trying to harm them, not innocent people. This is all done in order to protect the people of Israel.

The real reason Gaza’s civilians are put in danger is because of Hamas. Hamas uses its civilians as human shields, setting up rocket launchers, military operations, and storing arms and explosives in major civilian sites. They set up in residential backyards, schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., purposefully tempting Israel to need to attack those locations, which gives Israel a bad reputation. Hamas also breaks a law set at the Geneva Convention, which states that lawful combatants must wear, “fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance.” Because they purposefully try to blend in with civilians, it is hard for the IDF to distinguish between civilians and Hamas soldiers. In addition, this allows Hamas to inflate the number of casualties as they can claim that Hamas soldiers were civilians because they are dressed like them. Israel has warned Gaza’s civilians of impending air strikes by making phone calls, announcements over loudspeaker, and by dropping thousands of leaflets warning civilians to leave the area for their own safety. During operation Cast Lead, which the IDF carried out in Gaza in 2009, British colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said, “The Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

It is not the IDF that targets civilians, it’s Hamas. Hamas deliberately attacks areas in Israel with high civilian populations. For example, since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 over 14,000 missiles have been fired by Hamas into Sderot, a city on the border of Gaza with 25,000 citizens. That is Sderot alone. Thousands of other rockets have been fired from Gaza into various other cities bordering the area for the sole purpose of harming Israeli civilians. They aim their rockets at private homes, schools, and  hospitals just to try and kill Israelis. Also, numerous Hamas terrorists have infiltrated Israel to carry out suicide bombings in highly populated areas, again, just to kill innocent Israeli civilians. I ask you one question, if someone points a gun at you  are you just going to point a gun back? No, you don’t want them to shoot the gun and hurt you, so you will do whatever you can to make sure that person can’t use the gun and is rendered unable to harm you. In the same way, if Hamas fires rockets into Israel targeting civilians, Israel’s reaction, keeping in mind only the defense and security of its people, is to completely destroy the outpost from which the rockets were fired using only the necessary amount of force to ensure that an attack like that will not occur again.

The Security Fence

There has been a lot of conflict about the security fence that Israel built to prevent terrorist attacks from Palestinians in the disputed territories. The fence was built by the Israeli government in order to prevent terrorists from infiltrating Israel to attack Israeli citizens. In the years 2000-2005, roughly the time period of the Second Intifada, hundreds of Palestinian terror attacks (many were suicide bombings) killed over 1,000 Israeli citizens and wounded multiple thousands more. The overwhelming majority of the attackers came into Israel from the disputed territories. In order to protect its citizens, the Israeli government voted to build a security fence that runs roughly along the Green Line (the 1949 armistice line). Most of the fence is chain-link but there are certain portions made out of cement in particularly populated areas of Israel and areas where high concentrations of terrorists were entering the country. Over 440 kilometers of the fence have been built and LESS THAN 5% of it is made out of cement. The fence has been a huge success for Israel in terms of preventing terror attacks. Terrorist activity has decreased by 95% and thousands of Israeli lives have been saved. The opposition will call it a “separation wall” but that is not a term that can be in our vocabulary as advocates. It only fuels their fire if you are willing to succumb and use their terms.

Change the Brand

Our main problem as Israel advocates on college campuses is that we allow our opposition to bully us on this issue into getting defensive about Israel’s use of force in response to terrorist attacks. In order to better defend this issue you need to go on the offensive–Israel is NOT the aggressor, Hamas and other terrorist organizations ARE. Israel uses necessary force for security with its only goal being the safety of its citizens and the country as a whole.

Written by Yoni Krakow