Hamas Heroes - An extended commentary

"The Hamas movement announces its full responsibility for the Jerusalem operation," a Hamas official told Reuters in Gaza. A Hamas operative successfully killed 8 students before being killed himself.

Let's be clear on what has happened here:

A sovereign government (Hamas in Gaza), in prosecuting a war against another sovereign government (Israel), successfully infiltrated a soldier across the border into a school in Israel and killed 8 civilians (students at the school) before the soldier was killed himself. Hamas is celebrating this action and has labeled the soldier a hero.
I believe everyone (both Hamas and Israel) agree that this is what occurred.

The Israeli government and Hamas are at war. I cannot see this described any other way when one side of a conflict is celebrating the intentional and planned death of another nation's civilians by it own soldiers. It seems, based on this admitted and intentional action, that there is nothing Hamas is unwilling to do to the Israeli populace in an effort to achieve its goals. I have intentionally left out the reasons for this war, whether the action was in response to other actions by Israel, whether the nation or the border itself is legitimate, whether Jews should be allowed to live in the Middle East (or at all), or any of the muddier aspects of this conflict. I am focusing purely on the act itself, which was specific and achieved an intentional result.

I am not a military strategist, but I am willing to assume that Hamas is achieving some military goal through this soldier's act. Perhaps this it will be this act, when combined with many other acts and a successful overall strategy, that will win the war for Hamas. Let's assume this is true. Let's give Hamas the benefit of the doubt and assume that this sort of action leads to less bloodshed in the long run and will give the Palestinian people the land and lives they believe they have always deserved. That this act will lead to justice for the Palestinian people as they see and desire it. If this is true, we may continue to condemn the action, but we cannot reasonably expect Hamas to remove this military option from the table or cease this strategy.

But I don't like it. I think killing civilians, with the intention of killing civilians, is utterly reprehensible. So the question becomes, "How can this strategy be removed from the table?" Obviously, this strategy forwards the goals of Hamas or they wouldn't be doing it, admitting it, or celebrating it.

I have the obvious answer. Whatever actions Israel has been taking to prevent this strategy are not working. These actions will not work until Hamas says, "We will not try to kill Israeli civilians," or at least "The soldier who crossed the border was not ours," as Iran says on a regular basis in Iraq. To get Hamas to say this requires Israel to bring Hamas to the negotiating table, even while the nations are at war. These negotiations will be over how the war will be prosecuted. Since Hamas will never voluntarily go to the negotiating table, it would require Israel to negotiate unilaterally until Hamas comes around. For example, if Israel said, "Every time a soldier comes from Gaza, successfully kills Israeli civilians, and is admitted to by Hamas, the nation of Israel will react by notifying the populace of the the first town on list A, that they have one week to evacuate before the town becomes a replica of Dresden." This sort of strategy was very effective in ending the resistance of the Japanese (who intended to fight to the last man) to coming to the negotiating table at the end of World War 2. Japan had suicide bombers of their own and a tremendous devotion to their cause. After "Fat Man" landed on Nagasaki, the Japanese lost their will to fight.

Of course, Israel can afford to be kinder and allow residents to evacuate before obliterating a town. I have a suspicion that by the time the 4th or 5th militarily strategic town had been razed to the ground, Hamas would no longer be sending soldiers into Israel.

Is this a moral solution? Not great. Is this an acceptable answer? Maybe. Is this overkill? Very likely. Would this create a humanitarian disaster? Probably a small scale disaster. Is it morally reprehensible to destroy civilian property (and likely unintentionally kill civilians in the process)? I think so. I think this may not work at all. But what is clear is that, for Hamas to stop attacking Israeli civilians, the strategy of killing civilians must be shown to be a losing strategy. Hamas must WANT to stop killing civilians, even though it may mean they are losing what they have considered a effective strategy to prosecute their war with Israel. Ideally Israel should not lose its own humanity in the process.

If the USA had not dropped atom bombs on Japan in 1945, how many more lives would have been lost? Those cities were both strategic and civilian targets. The issues involved here are far from clear. I just can't get past the idea that the Rape of Nanking or the intentional execution of civilians by Hamas is a strategy that should be allowed to survive in war during the "Pax Americana." As Churchill observed, history is written by the victors, and I'm awfully glad we won that one.