Jonathan Kay, National Post

Published: Tuesday, August 08, 2006

 

 Late on Saturday night, an Israeli commando unit landed by helicopter on a

beach near the Lebanese city of Tyre. None of the soldiers wore military

markings. All had grown beards, so observers would think they were just

another group of Hezbollah jihadis.

 

After landing, the soldiers made their way to a building that housed a

three-man Hezbollah rocket-launcher crew. From intelligence reports, the

commandos knew the trio was holed up in a second-floor apartment.

 

The Israeli commander was the first through the door, and promptly took a

bullet through a lung. The Israelis fired back. When the smoke cleared, all

three Hezbollah members were dead. The Israeli commander was still

breathing -- but only barely. Another commando was also seriously wounded.

 

As the commandos left -- their two wounded on stretchers -- they were

attacked by Hezbollah gunmen spilling out of nearby buildings. Israeli

helicopter gunships hovering nearby laid down a covering fire, allowing the

commandos to retreat to their original landing area. After a military doctor

performed emergency surgery that saved the commander's life, the whole team

flew back to Israel.

 

These mission details sound like something out of a Hollywood film. But the

truly amazing part of it is that the mission happened at all. Instead of

risking the lives of its most elite soldiers, Israel easily could have

dropped a bomb on the building and taken out their targets while they slept.

 

Why didn't Israel do just that? Because as well as serving as a barracks for

Hezbollah, the building also contained civilians. And Israel didn't want to

spill their blood. Hezbollah may wage war while hiding behind women's skirts

and baby rattles. But Israel stubbornly adheres to a more humane creed.

 

This is not a new policy that Israel adopted in response to the July 30 Qana

bombing. Israeli soldiers employed the same humane methods in one of the

first major engagements of this war.

 

On June 26, Israeli infantrymen assaulted the outskirts of Bint Jbail, a

major Hezbollah hub near the border. Israel could have flattened the town

easily prior to its soldiers' advance -- it lies well within range of its

army's artillery, not to mention the Israeli air force. But according to a

high-ranking Israeli officer, the carpet-bombing option was ruled out

because several hundred Bint Jbail civilian residents had ignored Israel's

warning to flee. As in Tyre, Hezbollah was using them as human shields.

 

 The result? Battalion 51 of Israel's Golani Brigade was ambushed by dozens

of Hezbollah gunmen wielding anti-tank missiles. In the hellish close combat

that followed, eight Israeli soldiers died. Like the 23 Israeli soldiers who

lost their lives in the warrens of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, the men

of Battalion 51 died so that Arab civilians could live. Not one of Israel's

enemies would have taken the same risks under similar circumstances.

 

Nor is Israel simply following the letter of international law. A Hezbollah

rocket crew can kills dozens, or even hundreds, of Israelis with a single

volley. Demolishing that apartment building in Tyre arguably would have been

a proportionate, and entirely legal, Israeli response to the threat posed by

its occupants.

 

Moreover, Israel had warned the residents of Tyre to evacuate many times.

Most of those who remain in the city are Hezbollah supporters. Last week,

Haidar Fayadh, a Tyre cafe owner, told The New York Times: "Everyone has a

weapon in his house. There are doctors, teachers and farmers. Hezbollah is

people. People are Hezbollah." Luckily for Fayadh, Israel doesn't take him

at his word, or he'd be dead and all of Tyre would be a smoking ruin.

 

 By this point in the war, some readers will have heard enough about media

bias. Still, I can't help but marvel at the other-worldly impression people

are getting. The Israeli air force has flown 9,000 sorties during  this war.

The handful of tragic instances in which Israel has mistakenly attacked

civilian targets are treated as war crimes. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has

launched more than 2,000 missiles at Israel, every one of them deliberately

targeting Israeli civilians. (The group's Syrian-made 302mm rockets are

packed with tens of thousands of ball-bearings, the objective being to

disfigure those who aren't killed.) But the only time this is reported is

when the rockets actually hit someone -- in which case the fact is cited not

as an indictment of Hezbollah's barbarism, but as testament to its strength

and the purported futility of Israeli strategy.

 

 This appalling double-standard goes beyond media bias. It reflects a deeper

sense that pervades our entire society. After watching Arab terrorists kill

innocent Jews for two generations, we have become inured  to their methods.

It is simply taken for granted that anti-Israel "resistance" movements will

sink to the lowest possible level as soon as the shooting starts. Killing

civilians. Hiding rocket launchers in homes.  Shooting from mosques. All of

this is unsurprising -- expected even -- so none of it makes the news. Let

Israel mistakenly kill civilians while  fighting back, on the other hand,

and it's time to stop the presses.

 

It's unclear which side will be seen as the victor in the current war. But

even before the shooting began, Arab militants could claim a perverse sort

of triumph: liberation from the humane standards the world normally applies

to the armies that fight wars. It is a triumph that Israel, and all

civilized nations, can be proud of having forsaken.

 

 jkay@nationalpost.com

 © National Post 2006

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