Whose Fault Are Those Gazan Deaths?
by Walter Block
Whose fault are those greatly regrettable noncombatant deaths now taking place in Gaza? Are these tragedies due to Israel, which is acting in self-defense? Or to Hamas, which initiated the war with its atrocious behavior on October 7, 2023, and uses those civilians as shields?
Suppose I were running at you, knife poised, ready to kill you, with my infant child strapped to the front of me in a baby hold-all. Your only choice is to shoot me, or die.
You can’t run, I’m faster than you and your back is against the wall in any case. I repeat: Your only choice is to shoot me, or die.But, if you shoot me, my child perishes too, because the bullet must pass through him to get to me.
If you don’t shoot me, you die.
If you gun me down, you also kill an innocent civilian, my two year old child.
Which would you do?
If you chose the first, you’re an idiot, a pacifist, a masochist.
If you choose the second, my innocent child dies. But whose fault would be this child’s death? Yours? If you say it is yours, that is, Israel’s, all I can say to you is to offer you this joke: Do you know the difference between a kitchen and a bathroom? No? Well, then, don’t come to my house.
If you make this second choice, and blame yourself for my child’s death, in like manner I say to you, do you know the difference between offense and defense? Between the initiation of violence and the defense against the initiation of violence? Between justice and injustice? Of course you do not. Then I say to you, don’t get into philosophy. Don’t get into law. Don’t get into politics because you are as ignorant of this subject as is the person who can’t tell a toilet from a kitchen fixture.
When my child dies, thanks to you shooting me and him, the both of us, the blame is entirely mine, that is Hamas’. Netanyahu, Israel, the IDF, have nothing whatsoever to apologize for, if rationality is to prevail. The defenders of the only almost fully civilized country in the Middle East (they are human, they sometimes make mistakes) does not have anything to apologize for regarding the deaths of some 35,000 Gazan deaths (these are Palestinian statistics, so must be taken not only with a grain of salt, but with a bucketfull). The Israelis need not apologize, even, for the recent, tragic, mistaken deaths of those people under their protection. This is ALL the fault of Hamas. They are the instigators of this drama. They are the initiators.
What about the claim that, yes, Hamas is indeed at least partially responsible for the present carnage, but so is Israel? Yes, the former group started this particular ball rolling, but, after all, it is the latter group that is now for the most part pulling triggers, bombing and killing people. This is the moderate position, and it attracts the acquiesence of many.
It is totally fallacious, however. Return to the case where I was attacking you with a knife, and, quite properly, you shot me to death as the only way to save your self. My entirely innocent child lost his life in this altercation. Do you mean to sit there and tell me that we are both accountable for this terrible tragedy? That you have even partial guilt for killing the both of us, given the limitations of the example? No, no, no, a thousand times no, you are entirely innocent, along with Israel. Rather, I bear 100% of the guilt for this otherwise completely unjustified murder of an innocent child, along with Hamas. It was I and I alone who was in the process of trying to kill you. It was I, and I alone, who strapped that baby onto my chest. I bear the entire guilt, thank you very much. It was Hamas, and Hamas alone, that embedded itself into the civilian population, and used its women and children as shields, as I did to you when I attacked you.
If Hamas, God forbid, wins this war, there will be an October 7, 2023 ten thousand times over. Israel will disappear, and all the Jews in it, and elsewhere as well when Hamas gets around to it; they will be heinously tortured and then murdered. That will be the fate of the Christians too, along with the Muslims found guilty of cooperation with the Jews. If Hamas puts down its weapons, and releases its hostages, there will be no more killing. There will not be a single, solitary person who will lose his life. And this would have been the case, also, had Hamas surrendered and released its hostages on October 8. Israel has the death penalty on its books, and some of those despicable terrorists richly deserve to be so served, but, so far, this country has executed only one man, Adolf Eichmann.
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