Editorials

One of the most heart-rending dialogues in English literature is a short scene in Macbeth.  

A messenger tells Macduff,  

“Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes 

Savagely slaughter’d.” 

“My children too?” Macduff asks, unbelieving.  

“Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief,” says his colleague Malcolm. But revenge against the childless Macbeth won’t cure Macduff’s pain:  

“He has no children. All my pretty ones? 

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? 

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam 

At one fell swoop?” 

“Dispute it like a man,” says Malcolm. 

Macduff replies: 

“I shall do so;  

But I must also feel it as a man:  

I cannot but remember such things were, 

That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, 

And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,  

They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, 

Not for their own demerits, but for mine, 

Fell slaughter on their souls.” 

Reports of events in Lebanon over last weekend were poignantly reminiscent of this scene. A web search on the words “dead children” brings up many different accounts, one more painful than the next, of the death of 37 little ones in a refugee house in Qana. “There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men,” the U.N. humanitarian chief said, calling for a cease fire. His estimate was that a third of 600 dead in Lebanon were children. Both sides in the conflict have repeatedly looked to heaven to take their part, as did Macduff, but as he recognized, the slaughter of the innocents was not because of their own faults, but was caused by the warring adults on both sides.  

The Israelis at first seemed to announce a 48-hour ceasefire in order to let the blood settle, but what they gave with one hand they took away with the other. NPR “Morning Edition” host Renee Montagne did a stellar job on Monday of nailing Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, who told her that Israel is not under “a full suspension” of aerial bombing but will target only “immediate threats,” including Hezbollah missile launchers and command-and-control headquarters. “Excuse me, then, that sounds like no suspension at all,” said Renee: “Has the air campaign so far not been about getting Hezbollah? Surely you’re not intentionally targeting civilians? So what’s the difference?...Given that Hezbollah hides behind civilians… how can Israel continue to pursue a military strategy when so many civilian deaths are inevitably part of it?” she asked. The general’s responses were mostly double-talk, ending with a suggestion that no army before had ever hidden behind civilians. “You see, we’re fighting a war—a horrible war—against an enemy that has no divisions, has no tanks, has no war plans,” he said.  

During the American revolution the revolutionary army hid among civilians, but the British army didn’t retaliate by shelling cities.  

As we learn from Macbeth however, deliberately killing the families of the enemy does have a long history in warfare. Renee’s question still hangs in the air: what’s the difference between intentionally killing civilians and inevitably killing civilians? 

Relentless syndicated cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall last Thursday tracked the history of collective punishment of civilians from the time of Nazi Germany (50 civilians executed for each German soldier killed) to the present day. He estimated that as of the time he wrote (July 20) more than 500 Lebanese civilians had been killed by Israeli bombs, while 15 Israeli civilians had died in Hezbollah rocket attacks and 14 Israeli soldiers had died in combat. Last weekend’s death toll probably changed the numbers but not the ratio of Lebanese civilian deaths to Israeli deaths, about 30 to 1, by Rall’s estimate. Are these deaths inevitable or intentional, and is there a moral difference? 

One of the handful of correspondents who periodically accuse this paper of anti-Semitism suggests that our editorial opinions are formed by listening to KPFA. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but we rarely listen to KPFA. We do listen to the BBC on KALW in the middle of the night, and we sample the world press and radio in English and French on the Internet from time to time. But when KPFA (which my correspondent must listen to avidly) seems to be converging with world opinion from many different sources, with the exception of the usually tame and cowardly U.S. media, intelligent people should recognize that something new is going on.  

We don’t have to go farther than our local newsstand to see how the invasion of Lebanon is playing out around the world. The headline on Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle was “Israel Pauses Air Strikes After 37 Children Killed.” Well, no. The strongly pro-Israel Chronicle only wished that had happened, but as Renee Montagne’s interview with General Nehushtan Monday morning revealed, Israeli leaders didn’t end up displaying such good sense after all.  

Many Israelis are aware of the perilous path their leaders are placing them on, but are powerless to stop them. There are many eager Malcolms urging Israelis and Arabs to “dispute it like a man,” but there are also many sensible voices around the world, Jewish and non-Jewish, saying that the blood of slaughtered Lebanese children will be the seed of future Islamic martyrs.  

What genuine support of Israel means could be summed up by the public service ad cliché, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” Real friends don’t let friends jump lemming-like off cliffs, in pursuit of the “medicine of great revenge” ostensibly for two captured soldiers. Sooner or later Israel and its neighbors will have to come to terms.