Correction of mistakes
Letter
to the editor, by Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, April 18, 2024
Thank you to columnist Michael Zwaagstra (The Carillon, April 4, 2024) for providing a positive review of my new book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War.
I wrote that little book because there is so much poor thinking about the terrible war between Israel and Gaza (led by Iran-backed Hamas), a war that is now (as I write this letter) threatening to expand directly with Iran.
Sadly, the need for my book was confirmed by a recent letter to The Carillon by Rick Loewen (Columnist justifies infanticide, April 11, 2024). Mr. Loewen makes three serious mistakes, which I wish to correct.
Mistake 1
Loewen says Hamas did not start the war with Israel.
Correction
On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists (and Gazan civilians) illegally crossed the Israel-Gaza border and brutally murdered 1200 Israelis, injured many more, and kidnapped over 200. If this isn’t starting a war, what is?!
Mistake 2
Loewen tries to redirect the blame for starting the war from Hamas to Israel by claiming Israel has been “imposing its brand of apartheid on the Palestinians for years.”
Correction
In fact, there is no apartheid. Israel is a democracy in which Arabs and other minorities have full rights.
Loewen should take a look at the short PragerU video Is Israel an Apartheid State? And he should take a look at the National Post article “It is not apartheid: A quick debunking of the most obvious lies about the State ofIsrael.” [For a deeper dive, also see Chosen People Ministries article Is Israel an Apartheid State?]
Mistake 3
Loewen accuses Zwaagstra—and, by implication, me—of justifying “baby killing.”
Correction
No, we are not justifying baby killing. We are discerning the moral culprit of the death and destruction in Gaza. The moral culprit is Hamas, not Israel. This takes intellectual effort, which is sadly lacking in Loewen’s letter.
Yes, in war many innocents are killed. This is a tragedy. But for Hamas it’s a strategy.
Hamas (who murdered Israeli babies on October 7th) hides behind and knowingly sacrifices its own civilians (including children) in its fanatical and genocidal war to exterminate Jews. In fact, Hamas has no qualms when its own rockets land on its own people (including a hospital) as long as it can lie to gullible Western media by saying the rockets are from Israel.
Remember Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital? Western media, believing Hamas, blamed Israel. But the rocket came from Gaza, not Israel.
Remember Israel’s Barzilai hospital? Probably not. Much Western media was silent about the fact it was struck by at least three direct rocket hits from Hamas.
Because of the horrible images of dead Gazans supplied to us daily by Western media, we might be tempted to think Israel’s military response is not proportional. But this misunderstands proportionality, which is what Hamas wants. (This has been called the CNN Effect, employed by Hamas, whereby the horrific images of bloodshed play on the oft-emotion-based moral reasoning of Western observers, thereby thwarting sober-minded moral discernment.)
Proportionality in war is not mathematical equality (one side rapes and murders 100 people, so the other side rapes and kills 100 enemies in response). Rather, it’s complex: It involves weighing, on the one hand, possible deaths on one’s own side if opposing military targets are not struck, and, on the other hand, possible deaths of civilians on the other side if the military targets are struck.
Because Hamas, which is supported by the majority of Palestinians (and Iran), has vowed to commit October 7th over and over and over again—to wipe out Israel—Israel has been forced by Hamas to defend itself against Hamas by striking Gaza. And this is no easy task, because Hamas has spent nearly 20 years embedding its fighters in hundreds of kilometers of tunnels located under Gaza’s hospitals, homes, schools, and mosques. And this task is all the more difficult because Israel is attempting to target Hamas without targeting civilians (even though many of those civilians have aided Hamas in building its war machine). To Israel’s credit, the civilian-combatant death ratio is low when compared to other cases of urban warfare in recent history.
Hamas knows that Israel has a duty to protect Israeli citizens from annihilation and Hamas knows that many Gazan civilians will be killed in the process, yet Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel and continues to wage war on Israel, continues to hold Israeli hostages, and continues to hide behind Gazans.
Michael Zwaagstra’s and my work is, then, not a justification of baby killing, as Loewen alleges. Rather, it’s a justification of not allowing a death cult—Hamas—to murder millions of Israelis and sacrifice Gaza in the process.
In other words, proportionality in war involves careful reasoning, which is, in Loewen’s letter, missing in action.
On the notion of proportionality in war, which needs careful examination—not superficial or biased examination à la Loewen—I encourage a look at my book. The pdf version is free and can be downloaded at my blog APOLOGIA. [The book is also presented, chapter by chapter, as instalments on my blog.]
Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba.
