Israel right to defend against terrorism

By Spencer Patrick

Brett Weingold's piece in Wednesday's paper was mind-boggling. He says, “It is difficult to accept Israeli claims of virtue when the blood of innocent Palestinians is shed by their armed forces.” Weingold somehow sees a moral equivalence between the accidental deaths of civilians and the intentional targeting of civilians. Israelis target terrorists who hide among the civilian population. When a civilian is killed it is a tragic accident.

On the other hand, Palestinian terrorists groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, intentionally choose to murder innocent women and children to advance their political cause. The two are not equal.

Weingold also parrots what Chomsky said in his speech a couple of weeks ago, “Conflict is necessary to distract [Israel's] population.” Wrong. Israel is defending itself from an enemy that targets innocents. To claim that the conflict is meant to distract is not only false, but it also is disrespectful to the many victims of terrorism.

Spencer Patrick is an Undergraduate Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.