After a highly contentious trial, a young Israeli sergeant named Elor Azaria was convicted of manslaughter for the shooting of a downed terrorist. David Horovitz responds to the verdict, the public calls to pardon Azaria, and the ethical quandaries that the IDF—and the Israeli body politic—must face on a daily basis:

Members of Israel’s security forces—primarily our eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old sons and daughters—are required to grapple with moral dilemmas [of the utmost difficulty] all the time, and often with an urgency, a split-second imperative for a decision, in circumstances [that are] unexpected, [with little] recourse to precedent. . . . Facing the ongoing lone-wolf Palestinian terror wave, for instance, our troops must make instant decisions about drivers and pedestrians approaching them at roadblocks, people walking past them on the streets. Are they slowing down? Did they hear my shouted order to halt? What’s in their bags, what’s in their pockets, what’s in their hands? Is that a phone, a knife, a gun? Do nothing, and you may die, and other innocent Israelis may die. Do something, and an innocent Palestinian may lose his or her life, and yours will forever turn on the incident.

The Hamas and other terrorists who target Israelis are seeking to kill us. They make no secret of that; Hamas is avowedly committed to destroying Israel altogether. But that ambition also involves seeking to destabilize our society, to make daily life here fraught, angst-filled, and ideally, from their point of view, ultimately untenable. And it involves corroding our society and its values, attempting to render our efforts to maintain our own morality in the face of their murderous hostility so costly as to be unsustainable. . . .

The struggle not only to keep this country secure, not only to keep its people safe from harm, but to do so while insistently seeking to act morally—even, ironically, as much of the international community despicably accuses us of doing the reverse—is relentless and so very complex. . . .

Azaria’s actions were an aberration. . . . The very fact that [he] was tried, painstakingly tried, in an unimpeachably credible Israeli court of law represented reaffirmation of Israel’s determination to preserve its morality—its insistence on preventing our enemies, our terrorist foes, from reducing us to their cynical, murderous depths.

Between December 27 and January 6, terrorists in Gaza fired rockets at Israel almost every night. On Monday, one rocket struck a home in the much-bombarded town of Sderot, although no one was injured. The rocket fire had largely halted last spring, and for some time barrages were often the result of Israeli forces closing in a Hamas unit or munitions depot. But the truth—which gives credence to Ran Baratz’s argument in his January essay that the IDF is struggling to accomplish its mission—is that Hamas has been able to rebuild. Yoni Ben Menachem writes that the jihadist group has been “producing hundreds of new rockets using lathes smuggled into tunnels that remain operational in Gaza.” Moreover, it has been replenishing its ranks:

According to Israeli security officials, Hamas has recruited approximately 4,000 new fighters over the past month. This rapid expansion bolsters its fighting capabilities and complicates Israel’s efforts to apply military pressure on Hamas to expedite a hostage deal. Hamas’s military recovery has allowed it to prolong its war of attrition against the IDF and adopt tougher stances in hostage negotiations. The funds for this recruitment effort are reportedly from the sale of humanitarian-aid packages, which Hamas forcibly seizes and resells in Gaza’s markets.

In fact, Ben Menachem writes, Hamas’s rocket fire is part of the same strategy:

By firing rockets, Hamas seeks to demonstrate its resilience and operational capability despite the IDF’s prolonged offensive. This message is aimed at both Gaza’s residents and the Israeli public, underscoring that Hamas remains a significant force even after enduring heavy losses [and] that Israel cannot easily occupy this region, currently a focal point of IDF operations.