• To stress that the long history of terrorism has forced Israel to become the world’s leading expert in defensive
measures.
• To stress that Israel sets a high priority on humanitarian values but is constantly forced to weigh those values against its security needs.
• To correct much of the misinformation surrounding Israel’s counterterrorism measures by breaking them down into categories and accurately describing them.
• To give students a sense of the dilemmas Israel and individual IDF soldiers face as they defend themselves against terrorists who target civilians and who use human shields for protection from Israeli counterterrorism operations.
• To show how effective Israel’s counterterrorism measures have been. |
1. Think of other conflicts. What defensive measures have been taken to spare civilian populations in these conflicts?
2. What do you think about the defensive measures that Israel has adopted? To what extent do you think they are humanitarian? To what extent do you think they are effective? What other measures can you suggest?
3. How do you think the U.S. or other democracies would react if their civilians were regularly attacked by terrorists and their cities were being shelled by rockets? What policies would you recommend to protect your citizens?
4. The rules of war were established to regulate how established national armies fight one another and to protect civilian populations and prisoners of war. Today, Israel finds itself in an asymmetric war, fighting nonstate terrorist groups that do not follow the accepted rules of war. How is this kind of war different? What new principles and rules should be established for this kind of asymmetric warfare?
5. When a government determines defensive policies, how much should it put its own civilians and soldiers at risk in order to spare or ease the lives of innocent civilians of the other side? What principles should it establish for making these decisions? |
