Assumptions

Big Jake and little Phil are in the sandbox. Phil gets upset and throws sand in Jake's face. Jake proceeds to wail on Phil with a 2x4.

Jake is in the wrong, that much is clear. Even if Phil did start it, it was Jake who went too far, clocking poor little Phil like that.

This is a pretty straightforward case of right and wrong. Wouldn't it be nice if major international conflicts could be reduced to this clear-cut case, extrapolated into clarity by a few simplifying assumptions?

That's not how real life works. Surely you already knew that - most of my audience is older than me, and nearly all are wiser. I tell you, then, that real life doesn't have these Lowest Common Denominator analogues because over the past 10 days, my world has been aflood with just such analysis.

I am speaking, of course, about the Gaza conflict. Jake is Israel (a biblical reference... get it?) and Phil is the Palestinians (seriously, work with me here). The near-universal consensus among my contemporaries is that Israel's actions are disproportionate, inhumane, genocidal, and even Nazi-esque. The near-universal consensus among my contemporaries is wrong.

The problem that we Westerners have in trying to conduct some sort of level-headed discourse is that we have basic underlying assumptions about the situation, and that these assumptions are informed by facts of varying veracity. That was my diplomatic way of saying learn the facts. Learn the facts before you condemn self-defense as villainy. Learn the facts before you compare Israel to the Third Reich. Learn the facts before you say things that are patently false.

Let's tackle some of the assumptions. One of my favorites is the idea that Israel is "occupying" Gaza and the West Bank in an effort to expand its borders. This supposed land-grab serves as proof that Israel's intention is to drive the Arabs out and usurp the territory.

I could refute this by referring to the 2000 Camp David summit, in which Israel put 94% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza on the table. I could refute it by reminding you of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2004. Instead, I'll just put the so-called occupation in familiar terms:

When American GIs are stationed in Europe, where do most go? Germany
When American GIs are stationed in the Pacific, where do most go? Japan
Is America occupying the countries it defeated in WWII?

Another fun assumption to rebut is the claim that Israel is targeting civilians, or even that Israel isn't minimizing civilian casualties.

Civilian casualties are terrible. I won't even try to diminish their import by comparing them to the 6 million civilian deaths in WWI, the 48 million civilian deaths in WWII, or even the 39-55,000 civilian deaths in the Bosnian War. Because every civilian casualty is terrible, and the bell tolls for thee, and so on. So Israel should be doing everything it can to limit civilian casualties.

It should, for example, use the highest-tech weaponry, to maximize the penetration of explosions while minimizing breadth. It should spend a year gathering intelligence on the location of Hamas infrastructure, to target only the combatants. It should call the at-risk civilians before attacking, to get them out of harm's way.

If Israel had just followed all of these completely reasonable precautions, then the civilian casualties would have been kept low... like, say, 6% of the casualties on the first day.

The way I see it, Hamas had two options after that first salvo from Israel. They could:
(a) stop firing rockets into Israeli towns
(b) continue firing rockets into Israeli towns.
Hamas chose (b), and honestly, it was a pretty savvy move. In doing so, they framed their own actions as resistance to Israeli aggression, as spitting in the face of Israeli tyranny in the spirit of "Don't Tread On Me" and "Live Free or Die". They relocated, deeper into the heart of non-combatant populations, and continued firing rockets at Israeli civilians. The only downside was that their human shields had a nasty habit of dying, but hey, it was the Israelis doing the killing.

There have been very few Israeli casualties. There have been many Palestinian casualties. The rockets are therefore just the Palestinians' desperate attempts to fight back - which is our next faulty assumption.

Hamas is not your run-of-the-mill political party. Their charter, their self-authored, easily-amendable charter, their racist and genocidal charter, has been translated to English for our convenience. I've taken the liberty of collecting some highlights.

• "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
• "With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein ... there is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."
• "Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason"
• "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
• "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."
• "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Hamas does not want peace, unless that peace comes by means of Israel's destruction (and as a bonus, the death of all Jews... which I'm pretty sure is genocide). But don't take their word for it...

As just a small example of Hamas' conduct, let's look at the 6-month cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that expired in December. In honor of this cease-fire, Hamas markedly decreased the number of rockets they fired at Israeli towns... so now they were only launching a few rockets every week. They also took advantage of the cease-fire to smuggle longer-range rockets into Gaza, perhaps because deep down, they really wanted to extend the cease-fire. For reals.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians showed their hand when the cease-fire reached its expiration date: Israel declared its desire to extend the truce, and Hamas said "no thank you, here are some rockets instead".

The civilian casualties are mounting not because Israel is firing indiscriminately into the Gazan populace, but because Hamas is hiding their equipment and combatants deeper and deeper among the civilians. This is in direct opposition to Article 28 of the Geneva Convention, which states that the presence of civilians "may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations"... fyi.

You may be wondering why so many of my sources are Jerusalem Post and YNet, which you may not think are as neutral as the New York Times or the Guardian. Well, my answer is best expressed as follows:

I am skeptical of Western news coverage
In closing, I want to remind you of one very important thing. This isn't a movie, and it's not a sport. The Palestinians aren't a ragtag team of hockey-playing misfits coached by a reluctant Emilio Estevez, and the Israelis aren't Ivan Drago.

The underdogs aren't automatically the good guys. You need to look deeper, to get the facts, to decide for yourself what is really going on.