Cezary Podkul: Support should not equal blind faith

Last week, Stephen Morse wrote a column urging support for Israel in its fight against Hezbollah. It is a just fight. Hezbollah -- a terrorist organization with a lengthy history of attacks against Israel, the United States and other Western targets -- attacked a sovereign state in its own territory. And the arsenal of Katyusha rockets that it had amassed and unleashed upon Israel represented a strategic threat that could no longer be ignored. So there are certainly just grounds for being supportive of Israel.

But support for Israel ought never to equal blind faith in Israel, its government or its military. And this is precisely the mistake that Morse and many Israel supporters have made: They turn a blind eye to Israel's faults. Instead, I advocate being supportive of Israel, but with a critical eye to where it errs.

Naturally, in accepting this premise, the obvious point of contention would seem to be where Israel errs and where it falters.

But it's not.

And that's precisely the point: Far too many Israel supporters seem to think that Israel can do no wrong. It's the mentality that Israel's right to defend itself is the right to do whatever it wants to defend itself. The mentality that if the Israeli Defense Forces bomb a building or kill 10, 20 or 30 innocent civilians, then they must definitely be justified in doing so. The mentality Israel has the right to kill as many innocent civilians as it takes to achieve its goals.

Compound that with the equally flawed belief that criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and you've got a recipe for a dangerous sort of blind faith that espouses supporting Israel at any cost, in every event, at every turn.

Israel's military operations in Lebanon provide a prime example of how myopic such blind faith can be.

Of course Israel had every right to strike back and defend itself against Hezbollah's aggression. But it certainly did not justify a response of the magnitude that we've seen. Roughly ten times as many Lebanese as Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting. Officials estimate that 80% of Lebanon's major highways and 95% of its bridges have been damaged by Israeli raids. And Israeli planes have struck telecommunications and television towers, as well as milk-production plants and a Procter & Gamble Co. distribution warehouse, not to mention a United Nations outpost.

The list goes on, but the point is that when I do recite any of this, Israel supporters most commonly either shrug it off as the cost of war or say that "it sucks."

It doesn't just suck.

It is morally reprehensible and wrong, both from a deontological perspective and from a utilitarian perspective. By destroying Lebanon at a crucial time when it had just recovered from a lengthy civil war, rebuilt, started to lure foreign investors and rid itself of Syrian overlordship, Israel has sown the seeds of more hatred that will fuel the ranks of Hezbollah in the future. The paralyzing scope of Israel's response to Hezbollah will thus ensure the greatest misery for the greatest number, and the cycle of violence will continue to spiral.

Of course none of this is news, and I don't pretend to have a solution to the Middle East conflict. But I do think that the above is reason enough not to give Israel a moral and military carte blanche to do whatever it feels necessary in the name of self-defense.

And I'm not being anti-Semitic by just picking on Israel. Rather, I believe that no country ought to be given that much free reign from either criticism or responsibility -- not even the United States.

Imagine, I've been told, what would happen if the United States were attacked by a terrorist militia from Mexico or Canada, with Katyusha rockets raining on an industrial center like Chicago, killing people and causing damage.

It is profoundly frightening to hear so many of my friends who support Israel -- most of whom I consider people of great intellect -- say that there might not be a Mexico or a Canada after that because we would nuke them to hell. How could the destruction of a whole country for the acts of a few ever be justified? No rational, self-respecting American would stand for it.

At the same time, however, no matter how lacking such carte-blanche moral justifications may seem, Hezbollah's moral ground is nonexistent. In that sense, Israel will always have the moral upper hand over its aggressors.

Let's hope, though, that for the sake of precious lives in both countries, Israel supporters everywhere will realize that this moral upper hand is not a free hand.

Guest columnist Cezary Podkul is a College and Wharton senior from Franklin Park, Ill. His e-mail address is cezary4@sas.upenn.edu.

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