So Israel has to sit back and allow rockets to be fired at will against them. Why didn't I think of that? I would hate to live under your rule because it means that you are not going to do the very best to defend your own citizens because it also means doing your best to eliminate threats. The fact of the matter is that no country on the planet has done as much as possible to protect civilian lives as Israel and ignorant people like you can simply complain from your safe position and accuse Israel when you don't have no clue about the situation. If you are fired upon you are allowed to respond to the threat. If you aren't able to respond to the enemy whenever they attack you then you might as well just surrender.
Why do you resort to binary "all-or-nothing" conclusions? I don't think anyone here is saying that Israel should sit back and do nothing about the threat of rocket fire from Gaza.
That said, consider that the rockets fired from Gaza aren't resulting in hundreds of deaths of Israeli citizens. Partly due to the nature of the rockets themselves, and also Iron Dome. It's been a modest success, intercepting rockets that could have threatened Israeli citizens. That's awesome, and I'm glad the system is working*.
*EDIT: The rest of my post is definitely crossing a grey line, as there is quite a robust debate over the effectiveness of IronDome. I certainly don't know who has the right numbers, but here's sentiment that I find compelling:
Uzi Rubin said:
How can it be that more than 2,200 rockets of all kinds have been fired at Israeli population centers since July 8, but there have been so few casualties? Just one person has been killed by a Grad rocket, and he was hit in an open desert area not protected by Iron Dome.
Postol theorizes that it is Israel’s civil defense system that does the work — that people, warned in time by sirens, take cover and are saved. Yet this does not explain why so few rocket strikes are registered in the large population centers that Iron Dome is designed to protect. Of the hundreds of rockets fired at the city of Ashdod to date, for example, only 12 hit residential areas.
Source:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/08/05/iron-domes-success-in-israel-is-ironclad/
The few rockets that haven't been intercepted were determined to be not worth intercepting as they'd land in unpopulated areas. Sounds like a good cost/benefit calculation to me.
So Israel is routinely intercepting these "threats", neutralizing them, yet still sees the need to accept hundreds and hundreds of innocent civilian casualties in order to eliminate a threat
that's already being handled nearly perfectly. That's the immorality here, this is the reason Israel is harming itself more than it's harming Gaza.
If there were no Iron Dome I'd likely agree that the IDF has a moral obligation to the citizens of Israel to prempt a rocket launch, even if that means some innocent bystanders happen to die in the assault. But the way things are now, Israel doesn't need to bomb a hospital, school, or apartment building just because a rocket was launched from the courtyard. Because that rocket will be neutralized before it is able to inflict any (non-monetary) harm on Israel.
Yet they kill the civilians anyway.
That's the problem - Israel's response is entirely disproportionate to the threat. The threat of rockets is very low owing to Iron Dome and the nature of the rockets themselves.
Now, I think I will try to protect your civilian life. I believe the first step is to drop a big bomb on your head, no?
