The wrong response?

Editorial

The wrenching horrors of recent days have led many in the world community – including the European parliament and the presidents of France and Russia – to criticize Israel's "disproportionate response" to the kidnapping of three Israel Defence Forces soldiers.

Israel has been operating in Gaza since June 28, three days after Hamas-linked terrorists tunnelled under the border and attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers and capturing Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19.

On July 12, Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, were kidnapped by Hezbollah in northern Israel. Eight other IDF soldiers were killed in the ambush.

As an immediate response to the kidnappings, Israel launched attacks on Hamas bases in Gaza and on Hezbollah bases in Lebanon.

Israel's ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, answering criticism Sunday that Israel's response to the kidnapping of the three soldiers was disproportionate, asked, "What is the value of a soldier?"

Baker acknowledged that he has been asked why Israel has reacted with such military might to the kidnapping of three soldiers.

"The reason was very clear," he said. "For Israel, every soldier is a member of a family, as is every Canadian soldier. When a Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan, we saw how Canada grieved. Israel is no different."

Soldiers who go off to fight for their country – any country – do so under the assumption that they have the backing of the whole country, said Baker.

To prevent the soldiers from being transported to what Baker calls "the black hole of Iran," Israel bombed the Beirut airport and power stations. Getting the captured soldiers back safely is a top concern, he said.

But despite the position that the safety of three solders is the primary motivation for the current actions of the IDF, there are, as always, larger issues.

On the face of the immediate conflict, the issue appears to be Israel's incursion into erstwhile sovereign Palestinian and Lebanese territory and the deaths and injuries caused there. The justification, such as it is, centres on the reality that jihadi terrorists are operating freely in those two entities. In both cases, the kidnappings occurred during terrorist incursions into sovereign Israeli land.

But we cannot evaluate the current crisis in a vacuum from the larger and longer disaster that is the Middle East conflict.

It is easy for the international community to view the events of recent days and conclude that Israel is hammering its neighbors in response to what appears to be a comparatively mild series of terror incidents (in the historical context of terrorism in the region). Yet, only in the context of Israel's superhuman historic forbearance could the kidnapping of three soldiers, the killing of 10 soldiers and the wounding of dozens be considered anything short of full justification for a massive reaction.

While the world has stood largely silent as Israelis have been targeted - not just now, but for 58 years – outrage greets any and all Israeli response.

Whatever one's views of the appropriateness of the IDF's response to contemporary events, a fair-minded perspective of events must place them in the context of the regional and historical realities.

Opposing the existence of the Jewish state is the overwhelming foreign policy priority of all but two of Israel's neighbors - and those two only tacitly co-exist with Israel. With the full force of Iran's theocratic state and alarming levels of moral, financial and military support from across the Islamic world, Israel's five million Jews face near-monolithic opposition from Islamic regimes representing more than a billion people. The United Nations and its associated international bodies are controlled by countries that oppose Israel's existence. Israel's legitimacy is challenged at every turn. Israeli citizens are banned from full participation in world affairs, from sports associations to academia to the UN. Israel, which has repeatedly placed its security and its very existence on the line in a succession of fruitless bids for lasting peace, is nevertheless depicted internationally as the aggressor, the warmonger, the source of the violence.

Critics say Israel's pariah status is a result of Israeli actions. In fact, all of these realities, including Israeli actions, stem directly from the Arab, Islamic and much of the international community's refusal to accept the Jewish people's right to national self-determination and to defend itself against genocidal external (and occasionally internal) assault.

Current events in Israel and its neighborhood are catastrophic and tragic. But they are not, in the context of a full historical understanding of this conflict, disproportionate.

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