Note: the rebuttal was written in French, then translated by the author.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/picking-a-side-in-israel-palestine_b_5602701.html
3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?
This is the single most important issue that gets everyone riled up, and rightfully so.
Again, there is no justification for innocent Gazans dying. And there’s no excuse for Israel’s negligence in incidents like the killing of four children on a Gazan beach. But let’s back up and think about this for a minute.
Why on Earth would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?
When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties (we’ll get to that in a bit) repeatedly draws allegations of a “disproportionate” response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.
How can any of this possibly ever be in Israel’s interest?
If Israel wanted to kill civilians, it is terrible at it. ISIS killed more civilians in two days (700 plus) than Israel has in two weeks. Imagine if ISIS or Hamas had Israel’s weapons, army, air force, US support, and nuclear arsenal. Their enemies would’ve been annihilated long ago. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers?
3) “Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?”
The question asked by the author here is quite logical on its surface: since killing civilians causes image problems to Israel, why would Israel voluntary kill civilians? The question is asked as if it were rhetorical, and yet there are several other answers than “But that’s impossible!”, which is implied by the article.
Several concomitant strategies by different actors could explain the murder of Palestinian civilians:
a) The first is a government strategy, whose aim is to break the Palestinians’ will to revolt, in accordance with the idea that if one exacts an intolerable price to revolt, then there will be no revolt. That principle is at the heart of the concept of collective punishment, and that’s nothing new or proper to Israel. Killing civilians – not every possible civilian, but killing some civilians – or at least not caring whether or not there are civilians during a military operation in Gaza would pertain to this strategy to the same extent as the use of Skunk in the West Bank (http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/03/06/idf-skunk-cannon-odorizes-west-bank/ ), or the blockade on Gaza. And a UN report ( http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf ) mentions the implementation by Israel in Lebanon of what it calls the Dahiya doctrine, which is exactly that.
b) The second strategy is more complex, it is linked to IDF military practices. The “We were caught unprepared” report (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA477851), which is mainly about the 2006 war against Hizbullah in Lebanon but also mentions the Palestinians, exposes practices aiming at instilling a “consciousness of defeat” among the population, which could be achieved by killing civilians disproportionately.
c) The third strategy would be individual, on the level of IDF soldiers themselves, who have been shown to having killed Palestinan civilians in the name of vengeance, or to take out their frustration at losing their fellow soldiers (see the bottom of the article at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/soldiers-palestinian-civilians.html
The author of this article seems to believe, in the last paragraph, that the only reason that one could invoke for which Israel would want to kill civilians would be a mere desire to kill civilians. That’s not the case. But from the fat that Israel does not kill EVERY civilian in Gaza, it does not follow that Israel or the IDF does not deliberately kill civilians.
In any case Israel does not own up to these strategies, and that is why it produces a lot of propaganda in order to either whitewash or relativize the fact that far too many civilians are killed. Israel has found another way to counter the stain to its image caused by the deaths of civilians: its immense PR effort.
So that’s why the author’s question/answer #3 is a diversion, and it is falsely naïve.
Parlance Province 