January 4, 2009.
And so now begins the second and most difficult stage. Inside Israel, there is
both determination and dread as tens of thousands of Israel’s conscript army
are called to the front.
Untold numbers of these soldiers will lose their lives as the result not
merely of the genocidal aims of Hamas (and its Iranian puppet-master) but also
the indifference and pusillanimity towards Palestinian terror displayed by world
governments over the past six decades of Israel’s fight for survival, along with
the active encouragement of genocidal Islamists by leftists, Jew-haters,
Muslims and useful idiots who were on such thuggish display yesterday in the
co-ordinated demonstrations in British and other western cities.
Such people have made no protest at the bombardment of Israeli towns by
more than 6000 rockets in the past six years, deliberately targeting innocent
civilians. They have made no protest at the way Hamas has used Gazan
civilians as human shields, situating its murderous arsenals beneath apartment
blocks, in schools and hospitals and mosques in order to maximise the numbers
of civilians killed (in order to manipulate all-too pliable western opinion). No,
their protest only starts when Israel finally takes the military action aimed at
stopping this genocidal barrage.
The worst thing is the moral inversion, in which the murderous victimisation of
innocent Israelis is ignored while their murderers are described as ‘civilians’
when they are finally killed by the Israelis – who are demonstrably taking care to
avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. Tragically, civilians always die in
wars; and unfortunately there will undoubtedly be more civilian casualties in
Gaza – along with deaths among Israeli troops – as the war goes on.
But the frenzied misrepresentations, double standards and moral
inversion fuelling a hysteria in the west which in turn can only incite more
genocidal violence are simply depraved. Particularly striking in its malice is the
way in which the treatment of wounded Palestinians in Israeli hospitals is
ignored – while news of the barbaric behaviour of Hamas in Gaza’s hospitals is
airbrushed out of the picture. At WSJ’s Opinion Journal, James Taranto noted
that a report of this scene in a Gaza hospital that appeared in the New York
Times a couple of days ago:
“Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their
function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal
bloodletting under way. In the fourth-floor orthopaedic section, a woman in her
late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband.
She was turned away and left the hospital.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending
to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the
left side of the head. Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in
24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been
in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the
prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their
trials were short-circuited…”
Nor will many in Britain or the west be aware of this:
“Dozens of Gaza Arabs are being treated in Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital at the
same time terrorists are bombarding the city. The medical facility, the largest on
the southern coast, is in the line of rocket fire, and medical staff often have to
stop caring for patients and run for cover during air raid warnings. The 500-bed
Barzilai Hospital has close ties with Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, Barzilai deputy
director Dr. Ron Lobel told the Associated Press. ‘It might seem completely
absurd, but we have the privilege to be doctors. Our medical ethics do not
distinguish between patients. We treat whoever needs to be treated,’ he said.
One Gaza Arab woman refused to identify herself to AP because of fear of retribution by terrorists if it were known that her
two-month-old granddaughter is being treated in an Israeli hospital. ‘I am very
sad and hurt. We want peace, not war’, she said as Israel began retaliating
after hundreds of Arab rocket and mortar attacks, some of them lethal.”
The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the better
Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down upon it.
What other country in the world would show such restraint in the face of more
than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens – 6000! – that it took seven years
before going to war to put a stop to it?
What other country would treat individuals – including proven terrorists –
from that enemy territory in its own hospitals? What other country would
continue to provide essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies
who continued to fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to
go to war to stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of
civilian life that it contacts the population in enemy territory – even households
containing identified terrorists – to warn them to flee from the imminent
bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled
moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is?
Israel’s behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate. This conflict is revealing
just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not. The
President of the Czech Republic, who is also the incoming president of the EU,
has emerged in the former camp, declaring stoutly that Israel’s behaviour is
both just and necessary. France’s president Sarkozy, however, has called upon
both sides to stop hostilities – a moral equivalence which effectively gives
Hamas victory by requiring Israel to abandon the defence of its citizens.
Similarly in Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has repeated his call for an
immediate cease-fire – while Prime Minister Gordon Brown, according to this
Telegraph piece, has apparently complained to Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert
that “too many people have died”.
Would that be, perhaps, too many Hamas terrorists who have died? Would
Brown have preferred that more of them continued to live so that they could
carry on murdering more Israelis? In startling contrast Farid Ghadry, President of
the Reform Party of Syria, has written:
” We Arabs must be the ones to stop Hamas and Hizbullah, rather than support
their demonic and twisted logic of resisting development, enlightenment, and
progress of the region. Even when development and enlightenment stare them
in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their honor,
the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of fulfillment
and accomplishments.
So while we abhor violence of all kind, Israel’s campaign against Hamas
must continue to the bitter end not only for the sake of peace but also to help
Arabs realize they have a choice: Destroy like Gaza or develop like Dubai. Will
this happen soon? Maybe not, but if a wake-up call and a nudge, once in a
while, to pierce through the fog of deceit perpetrated by Syria and Iran is what
it takes to see the light, then we stand by the West and Israel in the only hope
that an Arab Renaissance in the Levant may actually have a chance of
resurrection.”
Alas, many in the west don’t stand with Farid Ghadry. They stand instead with
Hamas. Whatever platitudes they mouthe, it is clear that they really don’t want
Israel to survive at all. The moral dividing line in this battle is very clear.
Those who stand with Israel are on the side of morality, justice, and
civilisation. Those in the media and public life who denounce Israel for having
the temerity to defend its people are the fellow-travellers of barbarism. Having
done so much to embolden and strengthen Hamas and Iran, who are playing
them for suckers, they are continuing to stoke the fires of irrational hatred and
genocidal hysteria.
As Israeli soldiers die, along with the Palestinian victims of Hamas
whether as ‘collaborators’ or human shields, their blood will be on these
hypocritical western hands.