The federation employees are defenseless civilians. You cannot kill them as proxy targets to anyone. Moreover, it is wrong to reduce the federation's complex ties with Israel -- cultural, historical, religious -- to a single political act. The Seattle attack is a reprehensible crime. No one in his or her right mind would argue differently.
So why is it that the Israeli mainstream, and many Americans, condone the collective punishment-by-proxy of Palestinian civilians? Since January, the Israeli government has punished Palestinians for voting Hamas into power, by denying them money that is theirs and increasingly isolating them from the world. But Palestinian votes for Hamas must not be reduced to political support for certain racist clauses in its charter. The vote has many other aspects -- not least of which is the oppression Palestinians have suffered under Israeli military rule.
Since January, Palestinian suffering intensified, and Qassam rockets started flying into Israel again. IDF escalated its responses, kidnapping prisoners and causing dozens of Palestinian civilian deaths. This led to the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. The IDF immediately destroyed Gaza's only power plant, demolished major bridges and completely sealed Gaza off from the world, stranding thousands of Palestinians on the Egyptian border in the sweltering heat. Eight civilians died while waiting to return, including a dehydrated baby.
In Lebanon, we see more of the same. After the Hezbollah raid that reignited the front, the IDF's chief of staff vowed to turn Lebanon "20 years back" -- in reference to the total destruction from civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. His words became reality, with the IDF bombing infrastructure across the land; for example, Beirut International Airport. According to Israel, the Lebanese deserve this for their leadership's failure to rein in Hezbollah.
Morally speaking, there is no difference between the death of Gaza civilians due to direct or indirect Israeli actions, the killing of eight Israeli Railways employees by a Hezbollah rocket that hit their Haifa depot, the killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians by IDF airstrikes and Pamela Waechter's murder. All are murders of defenseless civilians, explained as political punishment-by-proxy.
Assaf Oron is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington. The PI article is an edited translation of an article that originally appeared on the Israeli news portal www.walla.co.il.
