In fact, collateral damage – the accidental killing of civilians during military conflicts – is itself allowed by international law, provided the actions that caused the civilian deaths are not, according to Dr. Bell, excessive in relation to the military need. But the fact that deaths occur in civilian populations – even what might be perceived as excessive deaths – are not in and of themselves indicative of violation of international law, and, says Dr. Bell, “if a state, like Israel, is facing aggression, then proportionality addresses whether force was specifically used by Israel to bring an end to the armed attack against it.”
An odd student organization on American campuses, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), seeks the “liberation” of what it considers to be its rightful ancestral homelands. For MEChA, that mythic land is something called “Aztlan,” a territory that inconveniently includes much of the Southwest of the present-day United States, from Washington State to Texas and great swaths of territory in between.
In language eerily similar to the PLO Charter, MEChA claims a right to lands allegedly stolen from it by imperial powers. Aztlan “became synonymous with the vast territories of the Southwest,” says the MEChA charter, “brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny. It also initiated the rebirth of our consciousness as indigenous people, whose history and heritage have overcome the forces of European colonialism in order to inspire us today.”
Assume for a moment that a radicalized element of MEChA decided to act on its “reconquista” ambitions and repeated terrorist attacks had taken place against Texas border towns. At the same rate of casualties per capita that Hamas has caused in Israel, those 400 Israeli dead in a nation of under six million would be the equivalent of some 19,000 dead American civilians.
Can anyone doubt that our government would justly and firmly respond to such domestic terrorism with formidable wrath and might? Would we hesitate to eliminate the leadership of such a horrific enemy?
Of course we would not hesitate, nor would we countenance the criticism of the international community that cautioned us against possibly inciting further terrorism or in being heavy-handed in protecting our own citizenry from harm – just as Israel has, appropriately, largely ignored world opinion critical of its actions in Gaza.