In a column on August 19, 2005, about Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, Charles Krauthammer asked: “What about the rockets? . . . For months, Palestinians have been firing rockets from Gaza into towns within Israel proper. The attacks are momentarily in suspension, but with the enhanced ability to smuggle in weapons from Egypt and with no Israeli patrols looking for them, the attacks will resume and get far worse.”
So far so good. Krauthammer then asked:

What to do? . . . Israel should announce that henceforth, any rocket launched from Palestinian territory will immediately trigger a mechanically automatic response in which five Israeli rockets will be fired back. . . .

Israel would decide how these five would be preprogrammed to respond. Perhaps three aimed at the launch site and vicinity, and two at a list of predetermined military and strategic assets of the Palestinian militias.

. . . After but a few Israeli demonstrations of “non-massive retaliation,” the Palestinians themselves will shut down their terrorist rocketeers.

Something roughly resembling this very silly scenario happened on Wednesday. Israeli forces had on Tuesday morning left the Gaza town of Beit Hanun after a six-day operation there aimed at stopping Qassam fire. On Tuesday evening, not wasting any time, Palestinians fired four Qassams from Beit Hanun at the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant, commander of the southern district, told Israel’s Channel 2 News that early Wednesday morning there was intelligence of yet another rocket attack on Ashkelon from the same area of Beit Hanun. To prevent it, officers had ordered artillery volleys of twelve shells each at two targets some distance from the populated parts of Beit Hanun.

Of the twenty-four shells, twenty-one hit their targets. But three went awry—apparently because of a malfunction in the aiming mechanism of one of the cannons—and hit a residential area, killing nineteen Palestinian civilians.

The world reacted quickly. EU external relations chief Benita Ferrero-Waldner said, “The killing this morning of so many civilians in Gaza, including many children, is a profoundly shocking event. Israel has a right to defend itself, but not at the price of the lives of the innocent.” Italy’s foreign minister Massimo D’Alema said, “This morning 18 people, women and children, were massacred...an escalation of violence I think is unacceptable.” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said, “The Israeli attack is a blow to regional peace efforts, and will create a cycle of violence.” UN secretary-general Kofi Annan called the event “shocking” amid calls to convene the Security Council.

On the Palestinian side, PA president Mahmoud Abbas called the incident a “horrible massacre.” Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad said, “Israel is a bloody state that was established on blood and it never finds comfort unless there’s bloodshed. Israel should therefore be wiped off the map.” Hamas chief Khalid Mash’al said in Damascus, “All Palestinian groups are urged to activate resistance despite the difficult situation on the ground. Our confidence in our military wing . . . is great.” Israel went on maximum alert amid eighty warnings of terror attacks.

Although the various world officials did not, like the terrorist spokesmen, call for revenge attacks or annihilating Israel, they showed no more ability than the terrorists to make moral discriminations. Their use of words like “killing” and “massacre” and “attack” all carried the clear message that the deaths of the civilians were not accidental but intended by Israel. None of the officials said:

Since Israel left Gaza and totally removed the “occupation” that supposedly was the cause of the terrorism, the terror organizations have reacted by shelling Israel from Gaza nonstop with the express aim of killing, injuring, and terrorizing as many men, women, and children as possible simply for being Israeli Jews. In response Israel has shown remarkable restraint, waiting over half a year even to allow any of its forces to return to Gaza. Since then Israel has conducted painstaking operations in places like the Gaza-Sinai border and Beit Hanun aimed at terrorists, weapons smuggling, and weapons supplies while seeking to minimize harm to civilians as much as possible, thereby increasing the risk to its own soldiers.

Israel has shown this restraint even against terrorist enemies who do not shrink from recruiting hordes of women and children to surround them and give them protection. Israel has, of course, more than enough firepower to give the Kosovo treatment to the Philadelphi Route or Beit Hanun, but instead has consistently upheld the highest moral standards possible in warfare. We cannot, however, expect Israel to adhere to such standards forever, especially when they are asked of no other country and start to verge on the suicidal. The purpose of war is not, after all, to protect the enemy’s population, but to protect one’s own population and enable them to live normal lives.

Although the incident of the misfired artillery shells in Beit Hanun took a tragic toll and is regrettable, we do not expect Israel to show either perfect, angelic restraint or perfect operational precision, especially when, as in this case, it was reacting to the imminent danger of another rocket attack on one of its cities. The Palestinians should know that we do not have infinite patience for their aggression and will not expect Israel to tolerate it indefinitely instead of finally putting its own interests, wellbeing, and survival first and doing whatever is necessary to stop it.

To acknowledge that this statement is a fantasy is to acknowledge that so was Krauthammer’s—or anyone else’s—vision of how Israel would protect itself once it had turned Gaza totally over to terror. Whether one uses ground incursions or firepower, there is no way to conduct warfare without harming the other side’s civilians. This is all the more true when dealing with a densely populated area and with terrorist enemies who use civilians for cover—civilians, moreover, most of whom intensely sympathize with the terrorists.

The world, however, gives Palestinian civilians a valence well beyond any others, more, for example, than Sudanese or Israeli civilians. That means Israel got the worst of all worlds: with strong American and European encouragement and approval, it left itself both more vulnerable to attack and less able to respond. The result is a spectacle of ongoing violence that constantly stokes the flames of the world jihad. But the West and its institutions would rather let it continue than let Israel act against it.