Israel is justified in attacking Gaza

Israel is justified in attacking Gaza, we learn, because "This is done to protect its citizens" and because "All Hamas needs to do to end the fighting is agree to halt all bombings and halt the smuggling of rockets into Gaza" and because after the "certain" but unarticulated "amount of time" it takes Israel to feel sure that "the rockets and attempts to acquire rockets have stopped", Israel will end the illegal blockade. Because Hamas has the ability to effect this, Pro reasons, "only" Hamas "can end this fight". And if that conclusion were logical (incidentally it's absurd), who wouldn't agree with Pro that Hamas, but not Israel, were at fault? We derive from the above an unusual notion of justice: a) An act is justified not by its expected consequences, but by its hoped-for consequences. b) Collective self-defense justifies collective punishment on a disproportionate scale. c) The party that initiated hostilities should dictate the terms of the cease-fire. d) One and only one party to a cease-fire should be allowed to re-arm. Additionally, we derive the following conclusions about Israel: e) Its professed motives are its actual ones. f) It wants a cease-fire. g) It lacks free will. Counter-argument A: Clearly an act is justified not by its hoped-for results, but by its expected results. I would not be justified in dropping an anvil on my child's head, hopefully, regardless of whether I hope it will save his life or not. Hopefully, my act would be judged by the fact that dropping an anvil on a child's head is almost certain to have the opposite effect. Perhaps it's this sort of common sense that led the majority of Israelis, when polled just prior to the Israeli offensive, to oppose it. Rocket attacks during the period of the cease-fire prior to the lethal Israeli raid (a 5-month span), after all, were at 2% their previous level. Israelis in the Qassam radius were, after all, speaking positively and hopefully about the relative peace. If Gaza were to continue firing rockets at the pre-raid rate, they would never effectively reach the number that have been fired since, given that Israel expects to have in place technology rendering Qassams impotent by 2010. No wonder Israeli Jews are among those protesting in the streets. No wonder Israeli soldiers are being jailed for refusing to participate. Many Israeli citizens (conscripts, to be exact) are expected to die in the next phase of the assault. In that regard, Israeli soldiers have much more in common with Palestinians (who are likewise barred by Israel the option of leaving Gaza) than with Qassam victims, who have the freedom to evacuate the Qassam radius, just as Palestinians were forced to do 60 years ago. Israel, of course, has no intention of assisting such evacuation, as it would be the definition of "protecting its citizens". But, Qassam rockets having such a low casualty rate, the major threat to the Israeli population is long-term. The massacring and starving of the Gazan population is, as Bush put it, only likely to attract a new generation of "recruitiments" to the "death to Israel" side of the debate. Counter-argument B: The self-defense argument becomes even more flimsy when we reflect that Israel, in its effort to "protect its citizens", is killing Gazan and foreign innocents at a rate of 167 per Israeli civilian; that includes the zero Israelis who died in the period of the cease-fire, and the Palestinian total doesn't include non-elderly men, nor does it include the many dying. Additionally, 2,433 Gazan women and children have been wounded in the past 2-3 weeks alone; the total killed and total wounded in the entire 8-year history of Qassam rockets (including, crucially, those fired by groups independent of Hamas) are only small fractions of those figures. How does one justify harming thousands of civilians in order to "protect" a few? If it is difficult for you to remove race from the equation, how about an analogy? If a serial killer were systematically picking off members of my family, would I be justified in dropping atomic bombs on cities where I suspected him of hiding? Counter-argument C: The cease-fire was first broken 3 days after it was signed, when Israel still hadn't lived up to the minimum blockade-loosening requirements. 2 days later, Israel killed a leader of Islamic Jihad (and another Palestinian, possibly a civilian). Then Islamic Jihad fired 3 retributive rockets into Israel, predictably resulting in no casualties. Despite Hamas' public denunciation of the attack, and later arrests, Israel intensified the blockade from that point on. Finally, Israel killed 6 Hamas on Gazan soil, after which rocket attacks increased dramatically. We can take Israel's bare speculation (that Hamas allowed the early rocket attacks) on faith, but it's irrelevant to Israel's prior breach of the agreement. Why should Hamas extend the olive branch, when last time they had their arm cut off for it? Counter-argument D: In your capacity as impossibly dovish spokesman for Israel, you offer a cease-fire in which Israel is allowed to continue importing offensive weaponry, free of charge, from the US. But Gaza will not be allowed to re-arm. I've got an idea for a cease-fire: we give Gaza control of its own shores, Israel's shores, its own airspace, and Israel's airspace; then later, when Gaza's sure no Apache helicopters are being smuggled in, Gaza ends its blockade against Israel. Pretty crazy, right? Counter-argument E: Israel's careless handling of the cease-fire isn't sheer stupidity, of course. First, it's useful to remember that, while Israeli citizens are killed in retribution for Israeli hawkishness, no Israeli prime minister has ever been killed except in retribution for dovishness (Rabin's assassination at the hands of the Israeli far-right). The current Defense Minister is of that unlucky party (Labor), and the current Foreign Minister is defected from the Right and in a coalition with Labor. Both have prime ministerial aspirations and both were (prior to the offensive) losing ground in the polls to the Right's Netanyahu. Additionally, the military (under same Left coalition) was embarrassed in Lebanon in 2006 and is dying to end its losing streak. That most Israelis were opposed to the recent invasion is unimportant to a smart politician: in a race to fill the gap between you and your opponent, it's difficult to lose your base; even if you do, base votes will go to no one (or, in a multi-party system, to a coalition partner), whereas swing votes would have gone to the opposition. And it's particularly difficult for incumbents to lose in this situation. So maybe this Israeli equivalent to the Democratic Party took a page out of LBJ's playbook and put an "unprovoked" attack ("cease-fire" rockets) in perfect proximity to the upcoming election. But Israelis, like Americans during Vietnam, are very sensitive about draftees coming home in body bags. So Israel is undertaking a very cautious siege and will evidently stand at a distance and spray white phosphorus bombs until there's not a single living creature left. What we've seen is nothing: foreign journalists are banned by Israel. Even UN relief workers have gotten the message that they're not welcome. It's tough to take the Israeli government seriously, for example, when the Defense Minister calls the bombing of the UN compound "a mistake", apparently not aware that the Prime Minister is going with "miltants firing from the windows" this time. Counter-argument F: The idea that Israel wants a cease-fire of the kind you describe is belied by Israel's denunciation of a UNSC1860, which included all the terms you posit. Israel would rather complete "the objectives of the operation", which evidently include making Gaza unlivable. Counter-argument G: If someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to murder, and you do it, our justice system will call you a murderer: the decision is still yours.