After the posting of my article, “DESTROY THE ENEMY: Time For The Gaza First Plan”, I received a large volume of comments and feedback, mostly very positive, but as is often the case when a sensitive nerve is struck, I received a few responses complaining about my willingness to harm the non-combat enemy in Gaza, otherwise known as civilians. Here is my response to one such letter:

Dear Yaakov,

Concerning your letter in which you said ” I just read a comment on FB and they posted an article that u wrote advocating killing all the Palestinians”(emphasis mine).

People may interpret as they wish, and that often stems from their own biases, but I suggest that you read my words more carefully. The above words are a misquote.

What I said is as follows:

It should come as no shock that the boys were murdered, for this is the mentality of the Islamic terrorist that is sworn to the destruction of Israel and doesn’t distinguish between soldiers and civilians.

We Jews are different. We respect life. However, in a time of war, the rules are not the same, and we are certainly in an ongoing war for our survival.

Nonetheless, an enemy is an enemy and the only way to win this war is to destroy the enemy, without excessive regard for who is a soldier and who is a civilian. In Dresden, in Berlin, in Nagasaki, and in Hiroshima, the Americans and/or their allies massively bombed enemy-controlled cities into submission, killing hundreds of thousands of enemy civilians and causing the enemy’s political leadership to surrender.

Last but not least, we Jews will always aim our bombs primarily at military targets, but there is absolutely no need to feel guilty about “disrupting the lives of”, and killing or wounding enemy civilians who are almost entirely Hamas and Fatah supporters. Yes, it is absolutely relevant to point out that they are staunch supporters of two of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations that are sworn to Israel’s destruction, and therefore, they are our enemy.

As the Allies did in WWII, and as I wrote in the article, the rules of wartime are different, and indeed, we are in a state of war. I, for one, am not prepared to put our civilians’ nor our soldiers’ lives in danger in order to protect the enemy civilians.

Reprinted with author’s permission