The Value of Human Life and Proportionality

Despite the attempt to protect civilian lives, the Israeli military actions in Gaza focused on permanently removing the threat of Hamas, will nevertheless result in a massive loss of civilian lives purposedly endangered by Hamas. The pictures on the TV screen will be hard to watch and the world will demand proportionality when it comes to the Israeli response. This demand is based on two premises: that every life is equally sacred, and that this is the Israeli revenge for the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, thus (according to “an eye for an eye” principle) the numbers of dead should be roughly proportional.

Both premises are wrong, and so is the demand for proportionality.

Most life-loving societies, Israel included, agree that the life of one person should not be given a preference over the life of another, regardless of gender, origin or religion: The value of any life of everyone is the same. However, there is a universally accepted exception to this rule. If a person shows a clear intent to murder another person, this equality no longer holds; police in every country would not hesitate to kill the perpetrator, if it prevented the murder. The life of the person pointing a gun with the intent to kill is universally considered much lower than the life of the person at whom the gun is pointed. In fact, if 20 people with guns show clear intent to murder one person, the lethal force would be justified (and more likely) to prevent any one of them from accomplishing their task. Courts around the world harshly penalize intent to murder, whether it was perpetrated or just attempted.

The intent of Hamas terrorists to murder, maim, rape, behead, burn and perpetrate other atrocities against civilians on the morning of October 7th was clear and undisputable. Applying the same judgement as a policeman trying to prevent murder, if we knew of their plans a day earlier, it would be the moral obligation to kill all the Hamas terrorists if this was the only way to save the 1,300 murdered and desecrated, thousands of injured, and hundreds raped or abducted. “All” implies that their numbers, 2,000 or 10,000, should not matter, as the loss of life of prospective murderers is immaterial when the goal is to prevent pre-meditated murders. Proportionality claim makes no sense in this case.

Hamas terrorists have no consideration for the lives of Gazan civilians and hide among them. Thus, while preventing the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians, some Palestinian civilians will inevitably die. It is hard to establish clear moral guidelines to determine the justifiable loss of civilian life to prevent the loss of civilian life (abstracting from the fact that many Palestinian civilians assist Hamas and openly celebrate the atrocities). Let me suggest the following thought experiment to make it personal.

You are standing at the entrance of your house, where your entire family hides. You hold a machine gun. You know for sure that among a group of 20 people advancing toward your house, there is one carrying a hidden bomb aiming to murder everyone inside. You do not know who he or she is. You have less than a minute to decide how to protect your family. What do you do?

You can ask everyone to walk away, so they do not endanger your family. If 19 people do that, you can apprehend or kill the terrorist, saving everyone. This is what the Israeli army is trying to do now by calling for civilians from Gaza City to move south and separate from terrorists.

But what if the other 19 strongly support the intent of the terrorist and continue advancing toward your house. You have a few seconds to decide. What do you do?

I don’t know what action is moral in this situation, but I am pretty sure what most people around the world would do. They would shoot to stop the advancing group, killing as many of them as necessary to remove the imminent mortal danger to their families. This act would leave deep psychological scars, but they would neither hesitate nor regret doing it to save their families. And they would be totally justified by society. Would you hesitate? An even more difficult question is: What if the other 19 are forced by the terrorist to advance? My guess is that most people will do the same, despite the incredibly difficult moral dilemma. They would not think about proportionality when saving their children.

The premise behind the proportionality argument, that the current operation is about revenge, is dead wrong. Israel is not trying to kill Palestinian civilians to avenge our civilian deaths—quite the opposite. The easiest way was to drop bombs on every building from which Hamas was launching rockets to kill more civilians, but Israel did not do that. Even during Hamas’ murder rampage, the Israeli Air Force was still warning Palestinian civilians and giving them time to evacuate before demolishing these buildings.

The real reason for this operation is to prevent tens of thousands of future deaths of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The real reason for this operation is the prevention of tens of thousands of future deaths of Israelis and Palestinians alike. If Hamas is allowed to survive and stay in power in Gaza, it will continue to terrorize and impoverish the population, brainwash their children to become martyrs, continue perpetrating attacks on Israel, killing many innocent civilians, while its leaders enrich themselves and live comfortably elsewhere. Israel will have to respond, and many more innocent Palestinians will die in repeated rounds of fighting. We have seen it many times before. Moreover, Hamas’s “success” (staying alive) will embolden Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations to perpetrate similar attacks, thus causing many deaths of Israeli and Lebanese civilians. The proportionality demand, therefore, must weigh the lives of the Palestinian civilians that will be lost shielding Hamas terrorist during the current operation, against all the civilian lives saved in Israel, in Gaza and West Bank, and in Lebanon for decades to come. Had Israel eliminated Hamas many years ago, tens of thousands of lives would have been saved already.

We must learn from the world’s response to ideologically genocidal regimes that controlled Germany and Japan and inflicted unimaginable terror and destruction on hundreds of millions of people in many countries. Germany was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, which would have brought truly catastrophic consequences to the world. What was the morally justified loss  of civilian lives to stop them? We don’t have a clear moral answer to this question, but we do know what happened, and it did not involve any discussion of proportionality.

The degree of destruction and death toll inflicted on these two countries was horrific. However, the Allied countries did not and do not feel that what they did to stop the horror was disproportional or excessive because the alternative was much worse. After the war, the entire decision-making cohort of German officials either committed suicide, were executed, or jailed for a long time, and the two countries were occupied for decades. In both cases, this was followed by the deep political reform and reconstruction efforts, and by the education of the population about the horrors perpetrated in their names. Both were aimed at making sure that no similar regime could ever rise again. Today, Germany and Japan are peaceful, democratic, prosperous countries, focused on the future, and their people are grateful for being released from their former regimes. Just imagine: Tens of millions of German and Japanese lives could have been saved if the world intervened earlier.

The same logic should apply to the equally genocidal regime in Iran that terrorizes and murders its citizens, especially women, threatens and attacks countries in the region, and perpetrates terrorists acts around the world by supplying financing, weapons and training to murderous terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Just like Hitler, they openly call for extermination of Jews and of the State of Israel, and for the destruction of the Western way of life. Instead, the world tries very hard to accommodate them, allowing Iran to use proceeds from its oil to develop weapons of mass destruction that will make them invincible. Iran is wise not to cross the line that Germany and Japan crossed, as long as it doesn’t have the nuclear immunity. Today the world does not want to deal with Iran, tomorrow the world will be afraid to deal with nuclear Iran, no matter how crazy it acts. Millions of lives will be saved, if the world treats the genocidal terrorist regime in Iran as it treated ISIS, whose ideology is no different from that of Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza: Hezbollah and Hamas.

Like ISIS, Hamas proudly states its intent to destroy and kill anyone who does not follow their interpretation of militant Islam. But unlike ISIS, Hamas managed to attach their murderous intent to the Palestinian people’s aspirations for self-determination, and many Palestinians and others around the world buy this blatant lie. After 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas had every opportunity to build a prosperous and peaceful region, showing the world that Palestinians, when given a chance, can self-determine through economic, cultural and societal development and become peaceful neighbors. Showered by billions of dollars, Hamas did not build a prosperous economy, but converted Gaza into a terror base, never asking its population whether they want to fight or co-exist. It spent billions of dollars stolen from Gazans enriching its leadership, buying, smuggling, and making rockets to attack Israel, digging tunnels to kidnap Israelis, and training terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank to perpetrate attacks against Israeli civilians.

Imagine a country in Europe threatening neighboring countries with terror and annihilation based on their national traits and killing their civilians. Wait, we don’t have to imagine it, the name of that country was Germany, and it also had plausible excuse for its behavior, just like Hamas claims to have: the humiliating defeat in WWI. Hitler’s aspirations were clearly stated but the world did not want to listen and tried to appease Germany or even collaborate with it. We all know what happened and how many tens of millions of people had to die because of that appeasement.

After 18 years of continuous rocket and terrorist attacks culminating with the horrors of October 7th, Israel finds itself in exactly same position as the Allied forces in 1944-45; the genocidal Hamas regime, must be annihilated at any cost, and its core members and leaders brought to justice if possible, or eliminated. The only way for the Palestinians to be truly liberated is to follow the example of post-war Germany and Japan. When this happens, the State of Israel, alongside many other countries, will be there to help rebuild and finally allow the Palestinians to focus their self-determination on building a bright future for their children rather than obsessing on how to destroy the future of our children.  

The only way for the Palestinians to be truly liberated is to follow the example of post-war Germany and Japan.

Let me go back to the value of life. Just like any country, Israel cannot and will not accept the murder of its citizens. Israelis are focused on life, a strange habit that we share with other liberal democracies. Hamas is focused on death, and so are its supporters: our death. This implies that the only reasonable ratio of Palestinian loss of life to the Israeli loss of life is the one unacceptable to the Palestinian side, which would prevent the loss of life of both. Israel simply cannot settle for anything less, not because we don’t value Palestinian lives, but because we value the lives of our citizens so highly. We cannot accept the simplistic proportionality argument because Hamas does. If Hamas leadership living comfortably in Qatar is happy to have five or 10 Palestinians in Gaza die to kill one Israeli, we cannot accept these prices. We do not set this price; Hamas does, and in the past, Israel has tried desperately to find what this price was to create a deterrence, and to avoid the loss of life altogether. Recent atrocities had proven to anyone not brainwashed by Hamas rhetoric, that this attempt was a failure, as for Hamas the loss of life of Palestinian civilians is not a cost but a benefit. Thus there is no price that will deter Hamas from trying to murder us. The best statement of this fact comes from the prominent Jordanian-Palestinian businessman and former senator Talal Abu Ghazaleh’s interview to NBN TV (Lebanon) on October 12, 2023:

“Death for Israelis is strange and loathsome. We, on the other hand, welcome death. A Palestinian carries his son on his shoulders, with a headband on his forehead, which his father inscribed: ‘Martyrdom Seeker.’ This is a man who says: ‘I want my son to die.’ A mother that says: ‘I have given birth to six children, so that three could die in the revolution. I gave birth to children so that they would be martyred.’ This does not exist in the Jewish mentality. You cannot defeat someone who wants to die. People who flee death cannot defeat people who seek death.”

Hamas is focused on death, and so are its supporters: our death. Hamas does not care about Palestinian deaths, it welcomes them.

He is right on all counts: that our culture protects children and does not want to see them die; that Hamas is happy to let thousands of Palestinian civilians die to get a good PR, and, most importantly, that one cannot deter people who seek and celebrate their own death by threatening them. The only possible conclusion from these facts is that any past attempts of trying to reason with Hamas were as futile as the appeasement of Hitler. No more. Hamas, with its thirst for Jewish blood and suffering and its praise of death of its own citizens, will never allow peace. It is crystal clear now that the only way for Israel to protect the lives of our citizens, and of tens of thousands of Palestinians, is to physically wipe out any trace of this pure evil, so it can never raise its murderous head again. No cost of the current operation is too high; as with Hitler, the alternative is a catastrophic loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives.

The world must understand this simple fact that Israel’s fight is not against the Palestinian people, but to remove the genocidal gang that terrorizes Gaza. Those demonstrating for Palestinian right of self-determination should beg Israel to annihilate Hamas, which is the absolute obstacle to any conflict resolution. We are not asking the world to participate in the elimination of Hamas—our citizens will do this favor to Palestinians and the world. We only ask the world to understand that this is the absolute necessity, just like the necessity of physical elimination of Hitler’s entire regime and prevention of its recovery. Countless lives on all sides will be lost if we don’t finish this job now.

Cries of the future Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese civilian victims must be heard today.