Professor: "What happened to an eye for an eye?"

Saree Makdisi, a UCLA English professor and defender of Hamas Islamofascists in Gaza asks "What happened to “an eye for an eye?” He, like many in the main stream media, believes Israel's response to Hamas firing thousands of rockets into civilian areas in Israel over the past couple of years is excessive. He apparantly believes that for every rocket Hamas fires on civilians in Israel that doesn't kill someone, Israel should limit its reaction to firing one rocket on Hamas civilians that doesn't kill someone.

He apparantly doesn't care that he selectively quoted only a portion of this principle of justice. He doesn't care that the Old Testament justice of "an eye for an eye" was applied to a one-on-one personal transgression - only after those who attempted evil were duly warned and eliminated from their midst. It did not apply to attacks by one nation upon another. It would be suicide for Israel to apply that principle to a neighboring government whose charter calls for the eradication of Israel and elimination of Jews. Sigh. But that is obviously what Saree would prefer.

The "wise" professor ignores "the rest of the story" told in Deuteronomy which reads:
"The judges [Israeli leadership] shall inquire diligently, and if the witness [Hamas] is a false witness and has accused his brother [Israel] falsely [Hamas accusing Israel], then you shall do to him [destroy him] as he had meant to do to his brother [Hamas means to destroy Israel based on Charter via missiles, but misses]. So you shall purge [eliminate] the evil [Hamas] from your midst. And the rest [other Islamists] shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."
(Deuteronomy 19:18-21, English Standard Version)
(For the nitpickers out there I must state the obvious: I added the annotations in the brackets to draw the analogy.)

These additional verses present a much clearer basis for Israel's action against Hamas, don't you think?

Professor Makdisi also prefers that Jews and Islamists share Palestine equally, sans a nation called "Israel." Another UCLA professor doing hash? He ignores that Jews are descended from the land of Palestine, therefore "Palestinians." Jews are entitled to their own states as much as Muslims are entitled to theirs. Why can't Muslims have... oh wait, they have Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, and Somalia - with Islamic political systems gaining in many neighboring countries through violent Jihadi practices.

After locating his makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu e-mail address, I wrote him the following answer to his question:

"In you article titled "What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel" you ask "what happened to an eye for an eye?"

Not being Jewish, but familiar with the concept, I can gander a guess. Here it is.

First, there are many times more Islamist Palestinians who want to annihilate Jews than there are Jews. An eye for an eye would exhaust Jews a lot quicker than it would exhaust Islamist Palestinians. Israel likely sees that as a losing ratio. A thousand eyes for one eye would be closer to parity and justice.

Second, Islamist Palestinians appear to have little regard for human life. The murder of their own people for violating their repressive principles of conduct is no secret out here in the civilized world. Neither is their liberal use of human shields and purposeful terrorism via indiscriminately aimed rockets into civilian areas, and Islamic propensity to recruit and deploy human bombs.

Your message loses its potency in its hypocrisy."