Shoot, Don’t Shoot

During the firing range training at the police academy you have a portion called Shoot, Don’t Shoot. The purpose is to train officers to recognize when it is appropriate to fire their weapon. This is strictly a PASS/FAIL course, and you cannot finish the academy until you pass. If you make the wrong decision and are judged to have died, your error will be explained to you. If you shoot an innocent person you automatically fail and have to repeat the course.

Everyone has the right of self-defense, but there are limits. If someone is pointing a gun at you, you would normally have the right to fire. If that person is standing in the middle of a grade school class, you do not fire, because the probably of an innocent person being injured or killed is too high.

No one is saying that Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself, but it is required to factor in the probably of killing the innocent.

The latest incidents are rather remarkable in that they are not terrorist attacks. I don’t think anyone doubts that both Hamas and Hezbollah have committed acts of terrorism, but not this time. Both groups pulled off military reconnaissance raids against military targets with the goal of acquiring prisoners. It is a standard form of raid that every army uses. There were no civilians killed during these raids.

For those who don’t follow events concerning Israel, the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel was installed some time ago, and tunnels under it were probably in place before it was completed. The Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] often conduct searches for tunnels when they make raids into Gaza, because they are aware they exist.

Hamas did not dig a tunnel to make the raid on the IDF; they used an existing tunnel. The Hezbollah raid was also a target of opportunity, as they had no way of knowing that Israel would leave an isolated unit exposed to attack. They saw an opportunity and took it. The IDF is in need of a shake-up because this shouldn’t have happened. They were caught flat-footed twice within weeks, and some measure of the over-reaction is embarrassment among the Israeli military for some very basic mistakes.

These are mistakes of arrogance because the IDF has no credible opponent and hasn’t for decades. None of its neighbors has the air or armor to invade Israel, and hasn’t had it since the end of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

Let’s inject a reality check on the Arab-Israeli problem.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War is simple and straight forward, the Arabs were the aggressors after the incredibly stupid manner in which the state of Israel was imposed on the area. After going through the process after World War I, anyone who thought the Arabs were going to peaceably accede to another imposition on their territory was clinically insane, and the result was predictable.

In the Suez Crisis of October 1956 to March 1957, the UK, France, and Israel were the aggressors.

The press releases for the Six-Day War of June 1967 would have people believe that the Arab states were on the verge of attacking Israel, but that’s absurd. Israel was the aggressor, and it attacked while half of the Arab military was engaged in the Yemen civil war. That’s why it only took six days and Israel was able to occupy such large areas.

The unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty was an attempt to mask the reality that there was no immediate threat to Israel when they began attacking their neighbors. The attack resulted in the death of 34 American sailors on a clearly marked vessel in international waters.

The War of Attrition during 1968-70 in the Sinai, was an Egyptian attempt to regain some of the status it lost in the Six-Day War.

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was the last major effort of the Arab states to conquer Israel. There hasn’t been a serious military threat to Israel since the end of that war, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union eliminated a major source of funding and materiel¹.

That wasn’t the end of the wars. The 1982 Lebanon War started in a very similar fashion as the current conflict, with an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. During the course of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the death of reportedly 2000 people in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of September 1982 resulted in the removal of Ariel Sharon as the Israeli Defense Minister, and the birth of Hezbollah to oppose the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.

Israel is not apt to find peace when it goes around creating new enemies, and refuses to talk to those affected by its policies. When a state refuses to engage in diplomacy, it leaves war as the only method of dispute resolution.

If the United States acted like Israel, we wouldn’t have these problems today, because the state of Israel would have ceased to exist shortly after it attacked the USS Liberty.

Lurch’s post at Main and Central convinced me to comment on this. Remember, my problems are with the governments of Israel that think it’s perfectly reasonable to plant spies in the United States and to kill American service men, while expecting the government of the US to veto resolutions condemning their actions at the United Nations and to given them more foreign aid than any other country. Sooner or later, the US needs to start weighing the real costs of supporting Israel’s decisions on the US.

1. Materiel is not a misspelling, it is a specialty military term that covers everything you need for an army except the people.