Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right by Amelia Rehrig

    I remember exactly where I was the morning of Saturday October 7th, 2023. I was on the bus traveling to play Stevens Women’s Soccer’s rival team, the Misericordia University cougars. I was a frequent sleeper during our bus rides to avoid getting car sick, or even worse, bored, but that day I was wide awake, buzzing with anticipation for our upcoming match. About halfway into the four hour journey to Dallas, Pennsylvania, I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram when I saw the first post. 

It was a graphic video of a young woman laying in the trunk of a hummer, with her arms tied behind her back. Her body was covered in mud and blood, with a particularly large pool on her pants between her legs. Even if she wasn’t restrained, I doubt she could have ran or cried for help. Her body seemed limp as she was dragged by her hair out of the trunk and paraded around to the front of the hummer, while her captives cheered.

When I saw this video, my stomach instantly dropped. As I continued to replay the video over and over again, I felt it crawling back up my throat. I frantically began googling and clicking every news source reporting on what was going on. From what I gathered, Hamas, an extremist militant group residing in Palestine, had launched an attack on Israel. The woman I saw had specifically been taken from an Israeli nature festival, where Hamas indiscriminately attacked, raped, and killed festival goers. I immediately empathized, in complete horror, with all the young people, much like my friends and I, who were victims at the festival. As I continued throughout my day, onto one of the biggest matches of the season, I was distracted, unfocused, and filled with a deep and utter sadness. But as we know now, the events of Saturday October 7th, 2023 were only the catalyst for more, and arguably more horrific, atrocities. 

Since October 7th, Israel has launched an aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza, the area where Israelis have historically displaced Palestinians after forcing them off their land in the region. As of December 10th, 2023, these bombings have left at least 17,700 Palestinians dead and more than 48,800 wounded, while the Israeli death toll has remained relatively constant at 1,147 since Hamas’s initial attack (Pietromarchi, Virginia, et al.). Although the campaign in Gaza is part of Israel’s War Against Hamas, in retaliation for the attacks on October 7th, anyone can see that the loss of civilian life is unacceptable. However, Israel has been able to continue its mass-slaughter in the pursuit of Hamas because Hamas carried out the initial act of “unprovoked” terrorism. 

Bombing in the Gaza Strip (Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor)

You might be wondering, as am I, how on earth could the rest of the world turn a blind eye and let this happen? And as an American, how could our nation, one so proud to proclaim that we usher in peace, democracy, and freedom for all, continue to back Israel while they kill so many innocent non-combatants? I believe it's because Israel is following in our bloody footsteps, retracing the choices made by the U.S. government in their response to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.

On that day, more commonly referred to as 9/11, terrorists associated with al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, hijacked commercial airplanes and used them as weapons to destroy the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and damage the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia (National September 11 Memorial & Museum). These attacks aimed to cripple the spirits of the American government and people, by attacking the seat of our military, the Department of Defense, as well as the seat of the American dream, The Big Apple. In the 9/11 attacks, 2,977 civilians were killed, marking the greatest loss of life on U.S. soil from a foreign attack (National September 11 Memorial & Museum). The U.S. government’s response, much like Israel’s, was in the form of retaliation in the Middle East that lasted the better part of 20 years. 

Retaliation, the word I’ve used to describe the Israeli and the U.S. government’s responses to non-domestic attacks, is actually a technical term for a special type of military action. Although most think that war and conflicts are wrong and shouldn’t be encouraged in any way, there are dozens of doctrines and laws on a global and national scale that outline how states can wage war. Retaliatory war falls under international and domestic regulation, and usually begins with a reprisal attack. These reprisal attacks, legally, should be proportional in response to the initial terrorist or foreign attack (Bouchet-Saulnier, Françoise). 

But as we’ve seen in the cases of U.S. and Israeli government retaliation, these reprisals are not always proportional. The primary routes to police retaliation and reprisals are through enforcing international law. The United Nations Charter and doctrine of the Geneva Convention are some of the most effective tools at doing so. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter outlines acceptable circumstances in which a nation may enforce retaliation, and specifically states that it may only do so for individual or collective self-defense (Bouchet-Saulnier, Françoise). The Additional Protocols of the Geneva Convention further elaborate on these rules with an emphasis on the condition that retaliation spares civilians and protected entities, such as medical facilities, critical infrastructure, and natural resources (International Committee of the Red Cross). 

Although these international regulations seem self explanatory, U.S. violations have been well documented post 9/11. Civilians have been reported to be killed in their own homes, public markets, and on roadways, and rather than to have been unintentional collateral damage during targeted operations, they have been killed by bombs, fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and drones (Watson Institute). No matter the intention, these actions clearly were not necessary to promote U.S. security and self defense, so why haven’t we been held accountable?

“A woman walks past the scene of a bomb attack in Baghdad Jan. 29, 2007” (Watson Institute)

The U.S. government utilizes a trove of tactics to secure its global position and avoid persecution. Besides U.S. alliances with much of the globe through ties in NATO, NORAD, OAS, and ANZUS, to name a few, the U.S. leverages its position of power within the United Nations to its personal gain. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. possesses one of the only five veto powers on the council. Regardless of the stances of the other fourteen members of the council and greater United Nations consensus, the U.S. has the ability to shoot down resolutions to protect its own interests and the interests of its allies. As recently as December 8th, 2023, the U.S. utilized this power to veto a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war that had the backing of thirteen of the fifthteen members (Kelemen, Michele, et al.). Famously, in the attempt to gather more global support for U.S. operations in the Middle East, then Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a speech to the security council. This speech was later found to be riddled with falsehoods and based on ill-informed intelligence which were touted as “backed up by sources - solid sources” at the time (Mitchell, Jack). Although this speech did not succeed in persuading the council to pass a second resolution backing military action, no nation stood in the way of the U.S. as it deployed forces to Iraq and later Afghanistan.

Besides these “diplomatic” methods on the global stage, the U.S. government can force global inaction through its dominant military and economy. A report from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation showcases the exorbitant amount of funding provided to defense spending, with the ten next top spenders totalling less than the U.S.’s budget.

U.S. Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries

Although this data is from the 2022 fiscal year, the U.S. defense budget and military resources in recent history have continued to be mammoth in comparison to other nations, acting as a sufficient deterrent.   

After outlining some key international and humanitarian law as well as domestic U.S. policy, and explaining how the U.S. government has exploited their power, you may still be wondering why I would begin this complex commentary with my experience witnessing wrongdoing against an Israeli citizen? Aren’t they also “the bad guys” along with the U.S., taking advantage of their global connections and military power? I do this because those raw emotions I felt for that Israeli woman, are as equally devastating as those I feel for the children of Gaza. I can’t call out a specific example, but anyone with internet access can find countless photos and videos of Palestinian civilians missing limbs, reduced to ash, clinging to their last breath with their organs exposed, or simply staring off into their now desolate neighborhoods witnessing and experiencing destruction everywhere. Every human being is worthy of life. The death or pain experienced by one person should not be compared or evaluated against another, but universally condemned. 

Retaliatory attacks are not a solution to wrongdoing, but a perpetuation of the death and suffering experienced by victims of the initial attack. I guarantee that if you asked the victims who were killed at the World Trade Center, civilians who were simply at work trying to make their living, if they condoned the deaths of 432,093 civilians as a direct result of the U.S. post 9/11 they would disagree (Watson Institute). Many would most likely want those responsible for their killing to be held accountable, but not a massacre of the innocent, just like them.

Work Cited:

Bouchet-Saulnier, Françoise. The Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law, Doctors Without

Borders, 2013, https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/reprisals/

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. “Israel Hits Gaza Strip with the Equivalent of Two

Nuclear Bombs.” Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, 2 Nov. 2023,

euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-Strip-with-the-equivalent-of-two-nuc

lear-bombs. 

International Committee of the Red Cross. “What Objects Are Specially Protected under IHL?”

ICRC Blogs, International Committee of the Red Cross, 14 Aug. 2017, 

blogs.icrc.org/ilot/2017/08/14/objects-specially-protected-ihl/

Kelemen, Michele, and Alex Leff. “The U.S. Has Vetoed a Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution in the 

U.N. Security Council.” NPR, 8 Dec. 2023, 

www.npr.org/2023/12/08/1218332312/israel-hamas-war-us-ceasefire-veto-un. 

Mitchell, Jack. “20 Years Ago, the U.S. Warned of Iraq’s Alleged ‘Weapons of Mass

Destruction.’” NPR, 3 Feb. 2023,

www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-un-weapons-mass-destruction. 

National September 11 Memorial & Museum “Events of the Day: What Happened on the

Morning of September 11, 2001?” National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 

https://www.911memorial.org/learn/resources/911-primer/module-1-events-day#:~:text=T

he%209%2F11%20attacks%20killed,single%20day%20in%20American%20history.

Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “U.S. Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries.” Peter

G. Peterson Foundation, 24 Apr. 2023, 

www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison. 

Pietromarchi, Virginia and Siddiqui, Usaid. “Gaza Death Toll Surpasses 17,700 as Israel’s Attack

Continues.” Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 10 Dec. 2023, 

www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/9/israel-hamas-war-live-us-veto-of-un-ceasefi

re-effort-draws-condemnation. 

Watson Institute. “Civilians Killed & Wounded.” The Costs of War, Watson Institute for

International and Public Affairs, Aug. 2023, 

watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20post%2D9

%2F11,a%20result%20of%20the%20wars.