A university president makes a case against cowardice

Some personal highlights:

"They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university."

"People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath."

"I don’t have to agree with the mayor to get the fire department to come put out a fire. And that’s what they’re saying to these international students: “Well, you came to this country. What makes you think you can write an op-ed in the newspaper?” Well, what makes you think that is, this is a free country. "

Valuing Palestinian lives is not supporting terrorism.

Sure, hopefully we all value Palestinian lives. I certainly do. Where the consensus breaks down is what does that mean in practice? Should Israel be allowed to attack terrorist organizations in Palestine? If so, is there an "acceptable" level of civilian casualties (collateral damage)? Does that level change if the terrorists intentionally use civilians as human shields, for example by using a hospital as an operating base or launching rockets from civilian residential neighborhoods?

To be clear I am not attempting to defend war crimes or terrorist activity or anything like that. I'm just pointing out that simply valuing Palestinian lives is rather meaningless and empty unless it translates into action.

I don't normally get into this type of political debate but ...

>Should Israel be allowed to attack terrorist organizations in Palestine?

yes. I think actual terrorists should be eligible for being attacked anywhere. The real question you didn't ask is who gets to label what is and is not a terrorist? Black Panthers were considered terrorists in the US in the 60s and 70s but heros to the Black community now. In the US, again, our founding fathers were all considered terrorists by Britain.

>If so, is there an "acceptable" level of civilian casualties (collateral damage)?

The "acceptable" level of civilian casualties or collateral damage is zero. With the understanding that accidents happen, but all plans should be for zero.

>Does that level change if the terrorists intentionally use civilians as human shields

No. This routinely happens in the US over the years where criminals or even terrorists take hostages on a plane, bank, school, hospital, or other place with innocent people. We do not drop bombs on the building killing all the innocents to get at the evil-doers. Have you noticed that no country in the Western civilized world would even consider that? Modern military should be able to go in and do surgical strikes or a surrender. Hell, in the US, we have small towns with volunteer SWAT teams that do this routinely with basically 100% success rate.

I think the biggest problem, which is covered in most war-time conventions, is that you should treat civilians and innocent people the same as you would treat your own innocent civilians. This is somehow being argued that it does not apply in the middle East or Ukraine or Russia where people just remotely drop bombs and blame "human shields".

Not too long ago the US would be ashamed to admit it even did something like this, because it seems like incompetence or cowardice, but now we support it somehow?

That is such an unrealistic and out of touch comment that I barely know where to begin. The USA (and its allies) killed millions of enemy civilians in WWII. This was not an accident; military leaders knew exactly what they were doing and were proud of it. Strategic bombing campaigns leveled cities. Submarine forces sank unarmed merchant vessels with all hands. This was considered acceptable to win the war. Should we now hold other countries to a different standard?

Hamas is a terrorist organization. There can be no possible debate about that point.

Real life is not like what you see in the movies. Modern militaries are in no way able to consistently do surgical strikes with no collateral damage. That is magical thinking.

Your comparison with civilian law enforcement is so specious that I suspect you're not even commenting in good faith. There no "volunteer SWAT teams", that's not a real thing (the officers on those teams do volunteer for the duty but they get paid). SWAT teams aren't tasked with fighting their way through hundreds of terrorists to capture a suspect; they're generally up against no more than a few criminals armed with small arms. And it's unfortunately fairly common for law enforcement to accidentally shoot innocent bystanders or hostages.

It's cheap easy to criticize and claim the moral high ground when you don't have to make hard choices or deal with the consequences. Again I'm not attempting to justify war crimes but the decisions get a lot messier when you step away from your computer and operate in the real world.