Posted on 06/25/2002 11:31:23 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Honor to Gila
There is a reason why civilized countries punish the many for the actions of the few
Last week, we heard the kind of news thousands of us have heard over the past few years, that one of our very dearest, most cherished friends had been killed by a Palestinian terrorist.
We had known Gila Kessler since she was a girl of eight or nine. Even then her beautiful smile and charm made everyone love her, and as she grew up she lost none of her charm. She visited our house often, babysitting for our kids, borrowing our car, or talking with us about her plans and dreams and worries.
She always thought that we were too kind to her, but the truth is that she came with such a spirit of warmth, openness and good cheer that there was nothing we wouldn't have done for her. We have lost a great friend.
What can we do for Gila and for the hundreds of other innocent young people slaughtered while waiting for a bus or eating a sandwich or celebrating a holiday? In the culture we live in, there is nothing we can do. The most we can do is to wish or hope that these things will not happen again.
But how likely is that? And is that all we are entitled to wish for? Nothing can bring Gila back now. But what about punishment?
There is a reason why civilized countries punish. It does not bring back the victims, but it does do them honor.
But whom do you punish? In a case like this, where the killer was willing to blow himself up, it seems that there is no one left to punish.
Should we punish his family? Should we punish Palestinian leaders? What about innocent Palestinian civilians? It seems to me that a case can be made for all of these, and not just on prudential grounds.
WE ALL know that the only way to preserve peace is through deterrence. Deterrence means convincing the other side that if it performs an act of violence, a far greater act of violence will be done to it.
This was the rationale behind the nuclear deterrence that the US developed during the Cold War. It prevented actual war with the Soviet Union only because the US was ready and willing to use nuclear weapons if pressed: Nuclear weapons are highly imprecise, and cause terrible civilian casualties.
But without that threat and the willingness to act on it, it is doubtful war could have been avoided.
The problem with deterrence is that it cannot be a bluff. When you don't use it for a long enough period of time, you lose it. In order to maintain a plausible threat, one must be willing to use weapons of deterrence once one sees that threats are not working.
This is the situation Israel is facing today. Israeli and American threats have been made so frequently and acted on so rarely that they no longer carry any weight.
When was the last time we told Yasser Arafat that this is his last chance? If he thought we were bluffing, he was right; and now he knows he was right, he never can take us seriously again.
In order to restore the peace, we will certainly have to act on our threats and this means more than just expelling the PA chairman. Unfortunately, it means inflicting casualties.
That is the way you win wars. That is the way that the US beat Japan, and it is the way it beat Germany as well. Neither the French, nor the Dutch, nor the Norwegians all of whom have plenty of suggestions for Israel today inflicted many casualties in World War II, and that is why they lost the war.
No one would like to win a war without inflicting casualties more than the Jewish people. But there is no such thing.
The Jewish people have suffered so much from the unprovoked violence of others that they are almost unwilling to reply with violence, even when severely provoked. But this is part of being a sovereign state: You have to be able to decide when to use military force, knowing full well what that means. And in a democratic country, the responsibility for that decision falls inevitably on all of the citizens.
Everyone would like to pinpoint terrorists and cause no damage to civilians. But aside from the fact that this is virtually impossible to do, it is not at all clear that it would put an end to terrorism.
The pool of willing candidates from which terrorist leaders recruit new murderers seems unlimited. Eliminating the present crop of terrorists is like cutting off the heads of the Hydra: For every one we eliminate, two more may well come to replace him. And these new recruits will come precisely from the ranks of those innocent civilians that we are worried about harming.
But is it right to use collective punishment on civilians, if that is the only way to restore peace? Of course it is. In our situation this is especially true, since we are not dealing with innocent civilians.
The idea that collective punishment is off-limits is based on the idea that there is no collective guilt. This idea became popular after World War II, when the Germans claimed that they could not be held responsible for the crimes committed by individuals within their society.
This was a very useful notion because it was clearly impossible to actually punish the entire German people for what they had done even though they may well have deserved it. So it was convenient to say there is no such thing as collective guilt.
But how true is that? A society which approves of terrorist attacks against civilians to the degree that the Palestinians do (surveys put this support at between 80%-90% percent of the Palestinian population) certainly deserves to be blamed for the outcome of these beliefs and attitudes.
The line between civilians who celebrate terror attacks by handing out candies to their children and to the terrorists themselves is not a line of great moral significance.
For these reasons, Israel does not have to be particularly concerned about doing what all nations do in order to win war and establish peace. Our only reasons for hesitation should be pragmatic rather than moral.
But here we may be exaggerating the risk. We have to say it again and again: Europe is not a military threat, and neither are the Arab states at least not yet.
We cannot wait for approval from Europe, or even from the US, but if we act on our own initiative to restore peace, we will quickly see how they come around to our point of view.
And in doing so, we will not only bring peace and stability back to our region, we will also do honor to Gila.
The writer is a classicist at Bar-Ilan University, specializing in political thought.
The pool of willing candidates from which terrorist leaders recruit new murderers seems unlimited. Eliminating the present crop of terrorists is like cutting off the heads of the Hydra: For every one we eliminate, two more may well come to replace him. And these new recruits will come precisely from the ranks of those innocent civilians that we are worried about harming.
But is it right to use collective punishment on civilians, if that is the only way to restore peace? Of course it is. In our situation this is especially true,
since we are not dealing with innocent civilians"
The entire of our civilization has been blindfolded to the concept that an army does not have to be organized, nor does it have to consist just of men. We seem to be unable to deal with idea that even civilians can be dangerous, even children, and little old ladies who coo words of love to their children even while swaddling them in bomb belts.
The entire of our civilization has been blindfolded to the concept that an army does not have to be organized, nor does it have to consist just of men. We seem to be unable to deal with idea that even civilians can be dangerous, even children, and little old ladies who coo words of love to their children even while swaddling them in bomb belts.
What is very difficult for me to understand emotionally is this idea of families who willingly sacrifice their children for such limited amounts of money, not that any amount money would ever justified such a sacrifice.
What would be the value of any funds in a social scheme in which one only raises one's children as hard bullets. Why are these parents not wondering that their rulers who demand such sacrifices as their only proffered solution to their problems while the rulers live life styles of the rich and famous? Do such animations, abominations have any right to exist? Do they actually suck the same air as even the lowly rats who dutifully nurture their own young? Are there any mothers of any species who would submit to such practices? It is like a mother who refuses to nurse her babe and instead eats it, not because she is even starving, but because someone told her that she must.
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