Over the past several years, we have been witness to a global phenomenon whereby harming peaceful and unarmed citizens has become legitimate in the eyes of states or territorial entities that are mainly ruled by radical Muslims.

Thus, the Taliban organization, founded by Osama Bin Laden, after taking over Afghanistan, did not hesitate to dispatch terrorists, mostly of the suicidal variety, to every corner of the world. 

Obviously, the most horrible act of terror perpetrated by this organization was the attack on the World Trade Center Twin Towers in Manhattan, N.Y., USA, where some three thousand men, women and children- all innocent citizens - were murdered in this terrible event, when suicide-pilots flew their planes directly into the towers that were occupied at the time by thousands of people.

In the same way, HezbolIah, for all intents and purposes, controls Lebanon, using the country as if it is its private property, launching thousands of rockets into the State of Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. During this war, Israel tried to destroy the Hezbollah terrorists, who were incessantly attacking the citizens of Israel with a wide and diverse range of acts of terror and intimidation.

The same tactics are employed by the Hamas organization, another terrorist group, which controls the Gaza Strip as its autocratic governing body, and which attacks Southern Israel with rockets, mortars and small arms on almost a daily basis.

Each time the IDF tries to retaliate in kind, Hamas launches as many rockets and missiles as it can to the southern part of the country, directly targeting civilian-populated cities and settlements in order to cause as much damage and as many casualties as possible.

In exactly the same manner, Iran, controlled by the most radical Shi'ite form of Islam, constantly declares its intention to act against the citizens of Israel should Israel dare attack its nuclear facilities presently under construction. Iran's leaders have even threatened to turn the city of Tel Aviv, the business capital of Israel, into heaps of rubble within the framework of "retaliatory measures" that Iran plans to take against Israel, should the latter decide to attack the nuclear reactors within Iran's sovereign territory.

Therefore, when acting against such acts of terror, which clearly violate all international treaties dealing with the rules and laws of war, must and should the enlightened world only take measures that correlate with the most honorable laws of human rights?

When a state (or terrorist entity) attacks the citizens of a peaceful country, can the latter only do its best to find, like a needle in a haystack, the specific suicide terrorists concealed within the civilian population, or can the country under attack retaliate against the citizens of the terrorist state as a clear deterrence, which may prevent future attacks on its own population?

Indeed, standard international law protects civilians/citizens during wartime, forbidding their injury or harm by the country under attack because of the hostile actions perpetrated against it. This law is followed in enlightened states, and applied unilaterally even in the face of opposing forces of terror in a11 its varieties.

Here is what the International Court of Justice ruled on this issue:

"States must never make civilians the object of attack 1/ (Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons [1996J ICJ Rep. 226,240).

In fact, this standard principle found unequivocal expression II1 Article 51 of the First Supplemental Protocol of the Geneva Convention in 1977:

If the civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack".

However, can the enlightened world continue to remain aloof and act only according to the enlightened directives of international law, which forbid causing harm to an aggressor nation's citizens who are not involved in the warfare, while the citizens of a civilized nation are under attack by terrorist entities controlled by radical Muslims, and who take refuge among innocent civilians and use them as human shields?

It is therefore sometimes the cruel choice between the death of peaceful citizens of an enlightened nation versus the death of citizens of the terrorist entity - among whom many provide cover and protection for terrorists and as well as raising their own children to be the same.