Israeli self-defense and the unprincipled exception

Scott at Powerline writes:

An Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza appears inevitable at the moment. In the past few days approximately 100 mortars and rockets have rained down on southern Israel from Gaza.

Gosh, I guess Hamas has finally gone “too far.” Fifty or 70 mortar shells and rockets fired into Israel from Gaza over a period of a few days is ok by the Israelis. And the same rate of attack going on for month after month is ok by the Israelis. But a hundred such attacks in a few days—well, that’s too much! That’s going over the line! There’s a limit, after all! Having become thoroughly left-liberal and universalistic, having become a people without chests, the Israelis no longer believe in their nation’s inherent right of self-defense. They will only defend themselves when the enemy’s aggression becomes literally unbearable, when the imperative to take action becomes an unreflective, instinctive necessity, not a matter of right and duty. Then the Israelis will act, not on the basis of the non-liberal moral principle of self-defense (because liberalism prohibits any appeal to non-liberal moral principles), but on the basis of the unprincipled feeling, “We just can’t handle this any more, we’ve got to do something.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 26, 2008 04:45 PM | Send