Letter

I posted this here:

This is certainly true, and there is no doubt that Israel is trying to minimize civilian causalities. But the important thing to realize (if you accept the premises that the number of civilian casualties must not exceed the number of civilian lives ultimately saved, and that Palestinian lives are morally equivalent to Israeli lives) is that very, very few Israelis have died from Hamas rocket fire. The Israeli government surely knew that its actions would result in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians -- that Hamas likes to hide behind them doesn't mean that Hamas is responsible for their deaths. If an attack on Gaza kills 500 Palestinian civilians in three weeks but saves 5 Israeli lives over the next year, can the attack really be called moral? If its goal were to topple the Hamas government (which would probably save more lives than it took), then perhaps it could be, but as matters stand I think it is a serious moral mistake to support the Israeli attack.