Israeli force can stop the rockets, but for how long?

[muriel_volestrangler]

The disproportionate response has increased Arab hatred, alienated the world, and brought criticism from many Jews

In one of the tractates of the Talmud - that vast repository of rabbinic law and lore - there is a discussion about the difference between killing in self-defence and murder. A man came before the eminent Babylonian sage Raba and said that he had been ordered by the governor of his town to kill a third party in order to save his own life. Was he permitted to do so? No, ruled Raba, the principle that if someone intends to kill then you kill him first only applies if thereby the life of the intended victim is spared. Otherwise, "Say not that your blood is redder than his; perhaps his blood is redder than yours." Even in extreme circumstances we should comply with certain rules of moral conduct that enable societies to function and sovereign states to maintain relations with each other.

War, too, has its own rules of limitation and restraint, enshrined in just-war theory, the Geneva conventions and international law. Prominent among them is the doctrine of proportionality: that the response to aggression should be commensurate with the act.

It would be true to say that Israel has always taken a robust attitude towards reprisals. Zionist policy from pre-state days was to respond to Arab attacks with double force, as a deterrent. David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, was the supreme exponent of this approach. Yet, interestingly, shortly after Israel's stunning victory in the six day war he counselled returning almost all of the captured territories because, in his view, after such a comprehensive thrashing the defeated Arab nations would leave Israel in peace for at least a decade. Moshe Dayan was dispatched to his desert kibbutz to tell the old man to pipe down. Piecemeal colonisation of the West Bank followed, in retaliation for Arab refusal to recognise or negotiate with Israel, which is why almost 40 years on there are 250,000 Jewish settlers on Palestinian land and no resolution in sight to the claims of Palestinian statehood.

The present eruption in Lebanon is the latest in a long list of major wars, smaller campaigns, two intifadas, terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and targeted assassinations that have bedevilled the region since 1967. Both peoples have been corrupted by the situation. Neither can claim moral superiority.
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· Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg is emeritus rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, and author of The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1839937,00.html

Goldberg is right that Hizbullah does not represent a threat to Israel's existence, and that a solution to Palestine is vital for Israel's long term security, while the current conflict is building up more enemies for the country.