Law and terror

I’ve blogged about this incident before:

On Sept. 6, Yaalon felt heavy, not happy, when the prime minister favored his recommendation over Dichter’s: Mission aborted. Sharon called off the strike to decapitate Hamas, Yaalon said, because Sharon demanded “no civilian casualties.”

Yaalon stood up and opened the bedroom door.

“Where’s Dad?” he could hear his daughter ask.

“He’s busy saving the state of Israel,” his son said.

Dichter was seething. “I’m not going to let it happen,” he said, standing in the command center. The decision to hold fire, he recalled thinking, “was unprofessional and counterproductive.” And he had done some math of his own. For every suicide bomber or terrorist caught, Dichter calculated, you saved 16 to 20 lives and 100 other people from being injured.

Dichter called the prime minister. “Arik, it’s a huge mistake,” Dichter said, using Sharon’s nickname. “We must drop the bomb on this house. The arch-terrorists will never meet like this again.”

It comes to mind because of a recent statement by Gen. Doron Almog. Almog was targeted by anti-Israel activists and forced to stay on a plane in England, because he would have been arrested for war crimes had he disembarked.

He gave a talk in London last week. But it was a videoconference. In it he noted:

On Wednesday, Almog addressed a conference in Westminster, central London, titled “Ending Impunity or Decreasing Accountability: Averting Abuse of Universal Jurisdiction.”

To show that the IDF deferred to the judicial system, Almog said that while he headed the Southern Command, he requested the demolition of a certain house in Gaza. His request was turned down by the legal echelons of the IDF.

In June 2006, that house served as cover for the tunnel from Gaza into Israel that was used to kidnap Gilad Schalit.

1) When Hamas or Fatah engages in terror, they do not defer to courts.
2) When people canonize Rachel Corrie they are honoring someone who was aiding terrorists at the time she was inadvertently killed.
3) Israel has developed a doctrine for fighting terror and reducing the risk of collateral damage. (I would add that this goes beyond what is required by the Geneva conventions.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.