In President Skorton’s most recent Sun column, he rightfully encouraged members of the Cornell community to engage in reasoned discussions on the current events in Gaza. If we are to have a constructive dialogue, though, we must acknowledge the facts and discard the lies and double standards. Unfortunately, several recent Sun articles are plagued with numerous such fallacies. I am compelled to write this piece to address a few of those faults.

One recent article questioned whether Israel is even justified in responding to the 8,250 rockets that have landed in Israel since 2001. Apparently, Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which reserves to every nation the right of self-defense against armed attacks, doesn’t apply to Israel. The author went on to decry Israel’s response as “disproportionate” without describing why or defining proportionality as a legal term. Should Israel launch 8,250 rockets at Palestinian civilians to preclude claims of disproportionality? Hamas’ ideology is purely genocidal — its charter demands the destruction of Israel and its leaders call for the annihilation of Jews from the world. In the name of proportionality, perhaps this author would be happy if Israel adopted a similar genocidal policy. (Those who absurdly claim that Israel is somehow already engaged in genocide ignore that the Palestinian population in Israel has soared over 30 percent in the past 10 years and that Palestinians enjoy a higher rate of growth in Israel, and even more so in the West Bank and Gaza, than the rate of growth in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan.)

More interesting is this author’s neglect to describe what a proportionate response would be. I pose this question: If terrorists controlled Long Island and launched over 8,000 rockets at Manhattan, Westchester, Brooklyn, etc. what would you do? Israel unilaterally withdrew from all of Gaza in 2005 in hopes of achieving peace, but only got more rockets. Years of Israeli restraint have been interpreted by Hamas as weakness and have only increased the attacks on Israel.

One article mentioned a “wall” that covers “every inch of border,” while another questioned if the “wall” really makes Israel safer. First, the security barrier around Gaza is a wire fence, not a wall. Similarly, less than 5 percent of the West Bank security barrier is a wall — designed to prevent sniper fire in problematic areas — and the rest is a chain-linked fence. Second, this security fence, built in response to the intifada, has irrefutably made Israel safer. Between 2001 and 2004, Israel endured 128 suicide attacks — an average of roughly one suicide attack every 11 days over the course of four years. Which nation would tolerate that? Since 2006, there have been six suicide attacks. This startling drop is not coincidental, nor is it for lack of trying on the part of Palestinian extremists. As Ramadan Abdallah Shalah of Islamic Jihad admitted in March, the security fence does indeed frustrate terrorists’ efforts to carry out suicide attacks.

The aforementioned articles are misleading and are notable for what they excluded. They mentioned Palestinian civilian casualties in the recent fighting, but failed to acknowledge the indisputable proof that Hamas used civilians as human shields — operating in and around mosques, schools, hospitals and apartment rooftops — while rigging civilian homes and even a zoo as booby traps. The authors also disregarded that on the first day of the conflict, Hamas officials ordered its fighters to remove their uniforms to avoid detection by the IDF. This is because Hamas knows that Israel goes to great lengths to prevent harming civilians.

Some months ago, the IDF called Abu Bilal al-Ja’abeer, a senior member of Hamas, and told him that they would be targeting his house so he could evacuate his family. Although Israel knows that this advance warning will spare the life of the very criminals that terrorize Israelis, it does so to prevent civilian casualties. Al-Ja’abeer proceeded to call women and children via loudspeaker to go to his house to cause the IDF to abort the airstrike. A similar story is true of Abu al-Hatal and Othman al-Ruziana, both of whom rushed civilians to their homes to serve as human shields. If Israel purposefully targets civilians, as Hamas claims, why does Hamas employ this tactic and why does it work in cancelling airstrikes? Moreover, why do Palestinian women and children run to these houses? Either they are suicidal or they realize the truth, which is that Israel does not target civilians and that they are safe. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas MP, spoke the truth when he stated in a February 2008 speech, “[the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist[s].”

Erecting double standards, these articles found no fault with Hamas. It’s fine that Hamas killed scores of Palestinians to oust Fatah and take control of Gaza. It’s fine that Hamas killed numerous Palestinians in a crackdown on Fatah loyalists in early August. So brutal is Hamas that during the fighting in August, nearly 180 Palestinians ran to Israel for refuge — a telling sign of how Israel treats civilians and of how Hamas treats political dissidents. It’s fine that over the past weeks, Hamas has tortured and killed dozens of Fatah activists for “collaborating with Israel,” without evidence or trial.

There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the IDF. Hamas terrorists deliberately target Israeli civilians with thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks. The IDF, meanwhile, acts defensively and in doing so, sometimes accidentally harms civilians while pursuing terrorists — terrorists who operate from civilian infrastructures with civilian clothing — despite the IDF’s best efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas has no regard for any civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian. Last week, the UNRWA condemned Hamas for hijacking by gunpoint over 200 tons of humanitarian aid designated for Gaza civilians — an accusation that Israel and the PA have long leveled against Hamas —causing the UNRWA to suspend its aid operations. Does anyone think that if Israelis created a human shield, it would deter a Hamas attack? The very notion is ridiculous.