The war between Israel and Iran‘s gang of proxies is a testbed for new tactics and technology, so it is only right that it is also a stage for ethical examination. On April 1, we saw the double image of hi-tech warfare in all its fatal accuracy — followed by another double image of ethical confusion, the cognitive dissonance of the Western liberal conscience. Early in the day, a precision strike by Israeli warplanes destroyed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing two Iranian generals, five senior Syrian officers, and a Hezbollah officer. That night, Israeli drones hit a convoy of three cars in the Gaza Strip, killing seven civilian members of the World Central Kitchen charity.
“Israel bombed an Iranian embassy complex. Is that allowed?” Amanda Taub asked in the New York Times. Taub had to admit that it is. The Iranian and Syrian officers were meeting with “leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad” to plan the next stage of their war against Israel. Diplomatic buildings, such as hospitals, homes, and schools, lose their immunity if they are used for military purposes. Iran, Taub coyly admitted, has “long blurred the lines between its diplomatic missions and its military operations in the Middle East.”
Hitting an Iranian Consulate was both lawful and right. The destruction of the WCK convoy was both lawful and wrong. The Israeli government apologized immediately and announced a full inquiry. Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, called it a “misidentification at night during a war in a very complex condition.” The IDF actively supports WCK’s food distribution in Gaza, so this was clearly an incident of “friendly fire.” Still, the left-wing media immediately imputed murder in the first to Israel. Fair-weather friends such as Canada and Britain issued theatrical demands for the accountability that the Israelis had already promised.
The WCK vehicles did not just look like military targets because they were in a warzone in the dark. They looked like military targets because the Palestinians, like the Iranians and all terrorists, deliberately dissolve the difference between civilians and military. Palestinian terrorists move armed men, weapons, and hostages in ambulances and civilian vehicles. They store weapons in schools, mosques, homes, and United Nations buildings. They turn hospitals into command centers. They fight in civilian clothes, flee in women’s burkas, and lie about their casualties. They trash international conventions of war and then cry loudly to credulous and biased Western media.
While liberal Western law divides uniformed soldiers from civilians, Islamic jurisprudence tends to divide combatants from noncombatants. A person who takes up arms becomes a combatant without donning any uniform other than a balaclava, and he reverts to noncombatant status once he stows his AK-47 behind the fridge. The Islamist militias define all Israelis, and all Jews anywhere, as combatants whether they wear a uniform or not. Left-wing Westerners of no fixed religion and infinitely flexible ethics have adopted this argument: All Jews, wherever they live, are defined as combatants in Israel’s wars. This is a license for domestic terrorism.
President Joe Biden did not release a statement after Israel hit the terrorist confab in Damascus. The Pentagon assured the Iranians that it had “no involvement,” so please don’t fire more rockets at Americans. But the president did release a statement on April 2 saying he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the WCK workers’ deaths. Or perhaps he didn’t. On the same day, he was asked about a statement issued in his name on Easter Sunday, enjoining us to join him in celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility.
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“I didn’t do that,” Biden said. I believe him. The people who like to say “Not in my name” seem to say all kinds of things in his name while he’s asleep. And he doesn’t seem to care at all. They didn’t say anything at all in his name that night, either, when dozens of anti-Israel extremists marched on a synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey. The synagogue was hosting an event for Zaka, an Israeli charity that pieces together the remains of terrorism victims so that they can receive a religious burial. The Jews of Teaneck turned out to defend their town, waved the Stars and Stripes, and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The leftists and Islamists waved the Palestinian flag, brawled with the police, and screamed in Arabic. They are importing the pathologies of the Middle East into American politics.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), both of whom have recently lectured Israel on its tactics, also stayed schtum about the excesses of the Democrats’ base. The rioter’s “by any means necessary” and the terrorist’s “resistance” (muqawama, to use the Arabic original) are licenses to target noncombatants as combatants and ultimately an invitation to the war of all against all that characterizes Arab societies. The Democrats have ridden this ethically challenged tiger for decades. We should all be outraged and heartbroken.
