The most moral attack: Taking out terrorists and almost no one else

When pagers detonated across Lebanon, they injured thousands of Hezbollah members and almost no one else.

The calculus is very simple.

A ceasefire was in place on October 6th.

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251. They broke the ceasefire.

The Houthi-controlled government in Yemen began launching drones and missiles at Israel on October 19th, and attacked naval and shipping vessels in the Red Sea, in order to protest Israel’s response to the murder of Israeli citizens. They broke the ceasefire.

On September 17th, 2,750 Hezbollah terrorists were injured in Lebanon and 12 (as of this publication) were killed when their pagers detonated simultaneously around 3:30 p.m. Whoever did this — Israel has confirmed nothing, though Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Iran assert that Israel is to blame — performed an almost unimaginably successful feat of espionage and undercover warfare.

The international community regularly castigates Israel for supposedly being “indiscriminate” in its war against Hamas in Gaza. That is patently absurd, as Israel has been extraordinarily careful in aiming at terror targets and avoiding civilian casualties. Because Hamas embeds itself in the civilian population as a matter of principle, there have been thousands of Gazan civilian deaths — every single one of which is the moral and legal responsibility of Hamas. Yet the numbers of civilian casualties, given the reality of Hamas’s tactics, is historically low. As retired US army officer John Spencer has said, “Israel sets the gold standard in terms of preserving civilian lives.” Yet so many people who know better assume incorrectly that any civilian deaths are Israel’s responsibility and deserve moral opprobrium. In saying this, they reveal their own ignorance or, equally likely, their ingrained antisemitism.

Israel is certainly not perfect, but its conduct during this war in Gaza will be reviewed for years as a model of ethical urban warfare against an enemy that actively tries to maximize the number of noncombatants killed. Those who wantonly and foolishly accuse Israel of genocide (without even understanding the meaning of the term) do not realize (or don’t care) that demanding that not one civilian be killed while a terrorist army hides behind those civilians leads to a future where every terrorist can act with impunity, simply by hiding in the midst of civilians.

Either that, or these impossible rules only apply to the Jewish state.

Then the United Nations’ special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, announced that the attack via pager against Hezbollah terrorists was “an extremely concerning escalation.”

Let’s recall: Hezbollah has launched more than 8,000 missiles at Israel over the past 11 months, trying to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible — for the express goal of supporting the terrorist murderers and kidnappers who killed nearly 1,200 innocents on October 7th. Hezbollah has no real territorial designs on Israel, other than wanting the entire Jewish state eradicated, along with every Jewish individual who resides therein. (Once that is achieved, they will come for the rest of the Jews, who live elsewhere.) Israel has done nothing to offend Hezbollah or Lebanon — other than to exist — and Hezbollah plans to punish it for the temerity of not disappearing.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah was attacked in the most discriminating manner imaginable: its operatives were attacked with explosive pagers that were the exclusive possession of Hezbollah terrorists. If a Lebanese citizen was not affiliated with Hezbollah, he or she did not possess an explosive pager. A more moral and ethical undercover operation against terrorists cannot be imagined. Even those who castigate Israel for the civilian deaths in Gaza should be impressed.

Yet the UN representative predictably complains about “an extremely concerning escalation.” Her vacuous and amoral remarks are laughable, and must serve as a perverse reminder to terrorists and terrorist states across the world:

When you start a war against innocents, you do not get to complain in the event that the victims of your aggression decide to “escalate.” And when the country whose citizens were slaughtered and terrorized fights back, you do not get to decide the random red lines behind which that country is forced to stand.

You chose to start it. That doesn’t mean you get to decide how it ends.