NY Daily News

July 25, 2002

[Une traduction française de ce texte est vivement souhaitée : traduction@reinfo-israel.com].


Israel says it didn't know civilians would be killed in the Gaza air attack that wiped out Hamas leader Salah Shehada. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem says the incident was caused by bad military intelligence. "It is quite clear that [Israel's] assessments are not as accurate or as fail-safe as we would like," said spokesman Daniel Taub. Some generals have been calling American reporters in Israel to deliver the same message.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Fire a 2,000-pound bomb at an apartment house in the middle of the night, and you have no right to be surprised by the results.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer correctly called the raid "a deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be located."

Fleischer also described the attack as "heavy-handed," and so it was. Israel went after one of its enemies and got him. It wasn't trying to kill civilians, and it surely would have preferred to kill Shehada in a gentlemanly duel at high noon, but war doesn't work that way.

Especially not this war.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called the attack "a massacre no human being can imagine." But Arafat is the one who set the rules of engagement. From the start of the Intifada, he and his Hamas allies have killed civilians. How exactly did he expect that Israel would reply?

Still, this is not a matter of moral equivalency. Morality in wartime is not a game of arithmetic. What matters are the values and aims of the combatants. Israel wants - or wanted, until the current intifadeh began – a compromise, a peace deal and a democratic future. The Palestinians want what they call justice, which in Arabic means Israel's extinction.

In the name of justice, Shehada ordered the deaths of dozens of people. As a result, he became a walking dead-or-alive poster.

He knew this, but it didn't stop him from moving with his wife and daughter into a crowded apartment building. Maybe he thought they would provide him with a human shield. Maybe he supposed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would care more about the safety of the Shehada family and their neighbors than he himself did. Shehada is what passes for a mastermind in Hamas circles, but he got this one really wrong.

Sharon called the attack in Gaza "one of our biggest successes." Among the first things you learn in the Israeli Army is the ancient Hebrew doctrine of preemption: "If a man arises to kill you, get up earlier to kill him."

Sharon is an old soldier and a very early riser.

Is he sorry about the casualties in Gaza? Sure he is. As sorry as President Harry Truman was about the Japanese in Hiroshima. As sorry as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was about the dead in Dresden, Germany. As sorry as President Bush is (and should be) about collateral damage in Taliban territory. A little bit sorry. But not nearly sorry enough to let the bad guys win.

Of course, "bad guy" is a relative term. Shehada was a beloved figure in Gaza. Tens of thousands attended his funeral and shrieked for revenge. Sharon heard them and shrugged. Islamic holy warriors don't need additional motivation to kill. Besides, Sharon is busy preparing more Hamas funerals.

No. 1 on the hit parade is Mohammed Def, a Jew killer with even more notches than Shehada. Def lives in Gaza, too, and he's been on the run for a long time. But there are no longer safe havens, and soon enough he will be spotted.

When that happens, I wouldn't want to be in Def's shoes. Or his house.