The Knights of the Double Standard

There are occasions on which the moral dilemma, difficult and painful as it may be, requires that a decision be taken. In genuine moral dilemmas there is no easy or good decision. For example, which is better: to allow the best of our fighting men to be killed in order to prevent deaths in villages in southern Lebanon and be the most moral army in the world, or to wipe out villages which harbor Hizbullah terrorists, save our boys’ lives and be considered less moral?

Which is the right thing to do: to use limited forces and thereby prolong the fighting, increase the number of rockets raining down upon us and the number of civilian casualties on our side, or use deadly fire power, feel less moral and bring the decisive hour and the cessation of hostilities nearer? The basic dilemma is very simple: is it right to pay a high price in blood and money in order to gain the moral high ground when faced with an enemy who cares nothing for morality.

Europe, which invented the double standard, describes us in any case as child murderers and town destroyers, while shedding crocodile tears over the bitter fate of Lebanon-a country which has always provided an acquiescent base for terrorism, against which it has never taken any action beyond saying, “it’s not me, it’s him”.

The knights of the double standard don’t bat an eye at the thousands of Katyushas which have been raining down on the heads of residents of the north, destroying their homes and their lives. The self righteous who bewail the destruction of the Hizbullah building in Beirut contemplate the ruins of Cohen’s house in Haifa in silence.

As far as they are concerned, we are never right and never moral. Whatever we do, we are the baddies. For this reason, what they say and do is irrelevant to questions of morality. This dilemma, therefore, is one we have to work out among ourselves, and only among ourselves.

When we fight against a terrorist organization which, like its patron, declares over and over that its objective is to wipe us out, is it not both logical and legitimate that we should arrive at a moral compromise with ourselves? Is it not right that we take a conscious decision to lower our moral standards in order to strike at an enemy whose morals bear comparison with those of horse thieves and drug dealers?

I have no problem with being less moral in my own eyes if this can save the life of a single boy in Golani. For myself, I’m prepared to hail down hellfire on the Hizbullah terrorists, their aides, their collaborators, all those who turn a blind eye to them, and everyone who so much as smells of Hizbullah-and their innocent bystanders can die instead of ours. In the wake of the Bint Jbeil disaster we can’t afford the moral luxury of surgical operations which end up in the surgical ward in Rambam Hospital. We are in the middle of a war, and we have to win this war by trampling Hizbullah underfoot and everything it represents. We have to strike hard-and we can allow ourselves to feel good about it.

We have to put aside the bewailing and the self flagellation on the part of all manner of frustrated film directors and self-declared cultural heroes. We have to ignore the reflections and the impertinence of those broadcasters whom the camera and the microphone inflate to the dimensions of a super-chief of staff.

We have to look the soldiers and their commanding officers in the eye, thank them and let them do what they best know how to do. And they do know. You’ll see.