The city of Fallujah west of Baghdad used to be a vibrant hub of Jewish life during talmudic times and was even the place where the famous Pumbedita Yeshiva took root (using the former name of the city). After the US invasion in 2003, the Bush administration handed over control to the Shiites even though the vast majority of the residents there were Sunni. This resulted in the city becoming a counterinsurgency hotspot and in 2004, after the US forces came under repeated attacks, it responded with resolve: the city was cut off from water and power; large swaths were carpet-bombed in an effort to eradicate the terrorist centers and their area of operation. Thousands of residents died in the aerial bombings, and eventually, the city was left all but empty.
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The Battle of Fallujah was only a drop in the bucket. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - most of them noncombatants - have died since the 2003 invasion; tens of thousands of them were caught in the crossfire when US forces were hunting down Saddam Hussein's forces or the Islamic State terrorists.
Fighting terrorism and tyrannical regimes has a price. In Afghanistan, for example, half of the 70,000 noncombatants were killed by the US and its allies during the 20-year military campaign there following 9/11.
This is also the case in Syria, where civilians are not only killed by deliberate attacks of the Bashar Assad regime, but also by the airstrikes carried out by the US-led coalition against ISIS. According to various estimates, some 20,000 civilians have died as a result of collateral damage in this campaign the West has been waging.
Of course, the US administration has forcefully resisted any effort to prosecute its fighters, granting them immunity from the International Criminal Court.
In Israel's case, the number of Palestinian noncombatants who have been unintentionally killed by Israeli troops in Judea and Samaria is in the single digits. But the US State Department is quick to condemn such events whenever they are reported and even demands an investigation and to hold the Israeli soldiers fully accountable. US officials are very good at not seeing the forest for the trees. That is, they ignore the fact that the Palestinians are waging an armed insurgency in Judea and Samaria by means of terrorism that is directed at IDF soldiers the Israeli civilians there.
Do the US officials expect Israel to adopt the US tactics, which are just a softer version of the Russian methods used against Chechnya in the 1990s and now in Ukraine? Do they expect us to conduct an all-out assault on the entire area where the terrorists operate and to send forces in to clear the area after all the structures had been destroyed?
Killing noncombatants is sad and unfortunate, and everything should be done to avoid it. But this is war and à la guerre comme à la guerre. But it turns out Israel is not allowed to do what the US or Russia do.
By treating radicals with kid gloves, the US has helped bring down the Shah in Iran and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and now this policy is undermining stability in Saudi Arabia. Does no one in Washington ever learn the lessons of the past? If American officials don't want to help, at the very least they should not obstruct.
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