The difference between civilian and combatant casualties

A response to widespread moral confusion as Israel responds to Hezbollah

In the immediate aftermath of the pager detonations, I have encountered yet more layers of moral confusion out there in the Australian public.

Having not yet recovered from the revelation that so many of those in my orbit harbour either sympathies or outright support for Hamas, I found myself shocked yet again that the narrative was being inverted to pit Israel as ‘the terrorists’. With DARVO in mind, Jews around the world were again made to feel as though we owe the world an apology for Israel’s surgical targeting of known terrorists.

While demonising Jews worldwide for Israel’s very real human rights violations, the suggestion that taking out top Hezbollah brass so surgically and so cleanly somehow constitutes cause for further reprisals boggles the mind.

It was Hezbollah’s firing of over 8000 rockets over the past 11 months that compelled an Israeli response. I’m yet to hear a rational argument for any nation appeasing this kind of assault.

When joining an army, or a terror cell for that matter, one makes a calculated risk in which one’s moral convictions to join said cause are weighed against the potential for this decision to cause injury to either oneself or ones loved ones.

Hezbollah is a terror cell largely comprised of men who have willingly signed up to a paramilitary organisation (calling itself the "Jihad Council”) who believe, among many other things that belong in centuries past, in the elimination of Israel and the establishment of a Caliphate. While Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel, each member of its organisation has a target painted on their back. This is how wars work.

The difference between terror cells and armies is that members of terror cells continue to intermingle with civilian populations. This makes targeting them without harming civilians almost impossible, something that both Hamas and Hezbollah so cynically use to their advantage.

For a member of Hezbollah, every member of the public within their vicinity becomes a human shield without their knowledge or their consent. Imagine being part of an army where each soldier worked remotely, constantly surrounded by their friends, neighbours, and family?

Combatants’ consent to being at war. Civilians do not. The reason armies wear uniforms is so that they can be distinguished as those who have consented to fighting a war. Terrorist organisations, however, consider civilian populations as expendable—be they camouflage, human shields, or fair game.

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So whose responsibility is it to keep civilians out of harm’s way when terrorist organisations like Hezbollah attack countries whose defence is presided over by an army?

If you drink drive, you’re putting others at risk.

If while drink-driving you end up in a head-on collision with a truck, is it the truck driver’s responsibility to have kept your passengers safe?

If you’re a member of Hezbollah, you make a choice to attract the ire of whomever you’re pledged to destroy.

As a member of Hezbollah, like a drunk driver, you put those around you at risk.

To argue that Israel bears more responsibility for the safety of Islamist extremists’ human shields or calculated collateral is to want to live in a world where this kind of strategy is recognised as legitimate and is encouraged.

Terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah want you to mistake human shields for deliberately targeted citizens.

Two Lebanese children were killed when Israel targeted thousands of Hezbollah operatives.

Let’s consider an equally horrifying scenario:

Two children in the back seats of a car stolen by a drunk driver died this week after the vehicle veered into an oncoming truck.

To argue that those who put children in the firing line have no duty of care nor responsibility for their safety is nothing more than an invitation for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to continue embedding themselves within civilian populations.

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Many media outlets have omitted the fact that Hezbollah has fired over 8000 rockets into Israel since October 7. There are hundreds of acres of wildfires ravaging northern Israel and at least 60,000 Israelis have been forced out of their homes. Hezbollah militants should consider themselves lucky to have been targeted with such precision.

And who are Hezbollah? Imagine the opposite of every progressive social justice movement, rolled into some unholy ball of chewed gum being enforced with modern weapons supplied by Iran.

Most curiously, Hezbollah seem to have high levels of sympathy from the West’s most sordid—people educated by algorithms with no duty of care to the user, wearing scarves and yelling rhyming couplets about Intifadas into megaphones. People who think that by nailing themselves to a crucifix made of Iranian proxies that they might somehow atone for their own colonial shame. People who this week waved Hezbollah flags and held up pictures of the recently killed Nasrallah in Melbourne’s CBD.

While Jews around the world prepare for Rosh Hashana and the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, the moral confusion surrounding Israel’s right to exist only grows more intolerable. 

Here are just a few links to videos and photos of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel leading up to Mossad’s retaliatory attack this week. I repeat, this is (a fraction of) what is being responded to—what is being resisted:

A 300 rocket barrage from last month - definitely worth checking this out

Another barrage of rockets in April this year

Lebanon setting Israel on fire for the best part of a year