Terms and Conditions Apply

Sure, they say, Israel has the right to self-defence—but then comes the fine print

There are laws! But they don’t apply to Islamofascist terrorists

---

A recent debate on Substack Notes over the Gaza War ended with this: “We clearly disagree on laws and ethical standards, and we will not convince the other. So let’s stop wasting our time and end this conversation. Have a nice day.” And as a matter of fact, I am having a nice day, because this or something like it is what happens when your interlocatuer realizes that the argument is going against him.

Some enemies of Israel—the odious Rashida Tlaib, for example—don’t trouble to conceal their hatred of Jews. Others, however, are more cagy, and employ various dodges to avoid being labeled as antisemites. So it was with the person, presumably French, who wished me a nice day.

This person denied that he believes the Jewish state to be illigitimate, or that it has no right to defend itself. But then came the fine print:

Hamas are terrorists and should be dealt with as such: when they committed the 10/7 pogrom, it was perfectly fair game for the IDF to shoot them on sight to stop the pogrom. But this doesn’t grant Israel a licence to kill anyone, anywhere. Why? Because there are laws.

France was a victim of terrorism, and yet we neither carpet bombed the French neighbourhoods were terrorists hid, nor carpet bombed Belgium when they fled and hid in Molenbeek. Why? Because there are laws.

England does not carpet bomb the Republic of Ireland whenever remnants of the IRA commit violent acts in Northern Ireland and cross the southern border to hide. Why? Because there are laws.

You don’t get a free genocide when people attack you. This goes for everyone. Back to my initial post: there are laws. Follow them.

Get that? It was perfectly OK for the IDF to kill Hamas terrorists on Israeli soil—but not at all OK to root them out in Gaza. After all, the French government didn’t “carpet bomb” the Paris neighborhoods from which terrorists sallied forth to commit their atrocities. There are laws!

But of course, those Paris neighborhoods were not being governed by a large, well-organized, well-armed terrorist group that for years had been raining rockets down on the rest of France, or dispatching hundreds of murderous jihadists to commit mass murder and rape. Had that been the case, I doubt whether the French government would have fretted about the laws. No, it would have taken all necessary measures to eliminate the threat. In short, my French interlocatuer’s argument is absurd. It’s also disengenous in the extreme, because I’m quite certain that he realizes its absurdity.

I replied as follows:

You can’t have it both ways. Piously asserting your belief that Israel has the right to defend itself, then setting limits on military action that would make such a defense impossible gives the game away. The idea that Israel has a right to defend itself only within its borders is absurd. What it means is that Gaza should be treated as an inviolate sanctuary for a bloodthirsty terrorist organization. Moreover, in urban warfare, civilian casualties are inevitable. And Hamas seeks deliberately to maximize such casualties, using the civilian population as human shields and using civilian infrastructure for military purposes. Surely you realize all this. But you skate past it.

And let me correct you on one point: Israel has not engaged in “carpet bombing.” Rather the reverse, in fact. If it were true that Gaza has been subjected to indiscriminate bombardment, the civilian death toll would be far, far higher. So just retire the term, okay? It’s nothing but a slur.

To summarize, your rhetorical support of Israel’s right to defend itself is contradicted by your caveats.

The response? “Have a nice day.”

Because he vamoosed, I had no opportunity to address the charge that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. This is a bare-faced lie, of course: The genocide is all on the side of Hamas, its allies, and its supporters. On university campuses across the United States, “anti-Zionist,” i.e. antisemetic students and faculty are calling openly for the destruction of the Jewish state. They make no bone about it: Palestine is to be free “from the river to the sea.” And they back up their rhetorical hatred of Jews with harassment and assaults on Jewish students. Dr. Goebbels would heartily approve.

On his classic work, On War, Carl von Clausewiz proposed a theory of “extremes” that may be summarized as follows: If one side ratchets up the level of force, the other side must follow suit—the first extreme. Since each side seeks to disarm the other, both sides are driven to a second extreme. If one side increases the intensity of its effort, the other side must follow suit—the third extreme. But people like my French interlocatuer apply, uniquely to Israel, an opposite theory: If Hamas ratchets up the level of force, Israel must refrain from doing likewise. If Hamas seeks to disarm Israel, the Jews must not respond in kind. If Hamas increases the intensity of its effort, Israel must not follow suit. Because, you see, there are laws.

It’s all so dishonest, especially coming from someone in France, where antisemitism has been on the rise since the beginning of the century. Sure, these covert antisemites say, Israel has a right to exist. Sure, Israel has the right to defend itself. Terms and conditions apply, however: always to Israel, never to the enemies of the Jewish state.