From Nasrallah’s speech:
Fourth, as regards the issue of rockets and settlements, I would like to
emphasize that our rocket bombardment of the settlements in the north, or
beyond Haifa or Tel Aviv – since we are speaking openly – are a reaction
but not an action. If you attack our cities, villages, civilians and
capital, we will react. Whenever you decide to stop your campaigns against
our cities, villages, civilians and infrastructure, we will halt our
rocket attacks on the Israeli settlements and cities. Naturally, we prefer
that the gunfights, if there are going to be any, are between the troops
and on the ground in the battle field. We will be the masters and men of
this battle.
Now, Nasrallah here admits that they are bombarding settlements and cities, which is contrary to the laws of war. But western leaders approach Nasrallah’s moral level from below.
Can anyone imagine a western leader saying something like this, making attacks on civilians conditional on the other side attacking civilians, and refusing to attack civilians otherwise? Western leaders instead claim that all the civilian deaths are the unfortunate byproduct of the need to kill “terrorists”. But they admit and know no other way of waging war.
If we’ve discarded the Geneva Conventions, Nasrallah’s offering a way back to them, via tit-for-tat.
Now I know you’ll say that Nasrallah is insincere. But how could that be known if his offer is never taken up? If he is insincere and we stop slaughtering civilians and they keep firing rockets, will something have been lost?
Hizbollah has made overtures that it wants to confine the fight to combatants. To some degree this is belied by the rockets but it is attested to by other actions on the ground. It is utterly disgraceful for the more powerful side to refuse these overtures. It gets even more disgraceful when we then call them “cowards” for being killed by us.
Instead of ceasing our own barbarity – a ceasing whose primary result would be a massive alleviation of human suffering and ought to be done for that reason alone, and whose secondary result would be a chance to test if Hizbollah is sincere about wanting to fight on the battlefield – we’re trying to kill the person who made the offer, and a whole lot of other people besides.
In our wildest dreams of success, can we really think those who come after the people we slaughter will give us a better offer than this one?
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate