Not Even Close

                                               Air raid precautions with a difference
                                                           

With many of the conflicts raging around the world, it’s extremely difficult to make a firm judgment as to war guilt.

In the Ukraine, for example, Russia and the Ukrainian separatists carry perhaps the greater part of the guilt. The separatists because many of them are clearly Russian regulars sent in to fight a proxy war and the Russians themselves clearly aim at the dismemberment of a sovereign state. But that said, the Ukrainian government itself bears much responsibility for alienating its Russian speaking population. And what about the EU policy of expansion east which directly led to the putsch of the previous democratically elected president and so to the current fighting.

Then there’s Syria and the impossible search for virtue in either the tyranny of Assad on the one hand or the Islamist blood lust on the other.

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict as presented daily on the news seems another such conflict. On the one hand, most are aware that Hamas started it by intensifying their missile barrage of Israel. But on the other, Israel possesses an overwhelming military superiority and according to most reporters is using its vast array of modern weaponry to massacre innocent civilians many of them children.

But, in fact, few conflicts are as black and white as that between Israel and Hamas  (from the perspective of a modern secular, democrat). Judging the merits of the Israeli invasion of Gaza needs no Solomon because it is not even close to being a tough call as to which party is closer to the angels.

The Israelis were pressured to provide the Palestinians with land in return for peace. Every bien pensant  considers that this is the only way forward to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict.

So in opposition to the wishes of the Israeli people the government of Ariel Sharon decided on withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Palestinian leaders now had the chance to better the lives of their people, and plenty of money to do it with. Palestinians received and still receive more aid per capita than any other people on earth. From the very beginning though it was plain that neither Fatah in control of the Palestinian Authority or even less Hamas who won democratic elections in Gaza in 2007 have any interest in the welfare of their people or in building a country.

Religiously inspired Jew hatred makes it extremely unlikely that Palestinians will ever want to live in peace with their Jewish neighbours. As a simple illustration of this whilst the very numerous Jewish communities across the Arab world have been annihilated since 1948, Israel possesses a substantial and thriving Arab minority. Why do the liberal left parrot on about Israeli apartheid and never trouble themselves with the fate of ancient Jewish communities from Baghdad to Alexandria? The question answers itself. They are anti-Semitic.

Palestinian anti-Semitism is religiously inspired because Jew hatred is mandated by The Koran, the hadith and by the personal example of that paragon of men, Mohammad (he oversaw the decapitation of several hundred Jews personally).

With that in mind, Fatah and then the even more virulently Jew-hating Hamas from its takeover in Gaza in 2007 have prepared for and waged war with Israel.

Ever since 2005 there has been a constant and ever increasing rain of missiles, murderous infiltration raids and kidnappings.

Now you may very well sympathise with the Palestinians and say, as many on the left do, that their attacks are understandable and justifiable given the occupation of their land by the Israelis since the 1920s.

But you would be wrong. Do these leftists really believe that nobody is a legitimate resident unless their forebears lived in the same territory a hundred years ago? If you applied this ridiculous argument to Britain or America you could argue that substantial immigrant groups ought to be expelled for occupying the native territory of Britons or Americans.

The argument that they would never think of applying to immigrants from the third world to the west is only deployed here because they hate Jews. These days it’s not mostly traditional blood libel, Jew-hating. Most leftists hate the Jews simply for being western and successful and so making the Arabs look bad. It’s just another aspect of their own self-loathing that makes them feel so good about their moral character.

So really, what would any country do if it was under constant attack from its neighbour and had the military capability to do something about it?

Any country in this situation would be doing precisely what the Israelis are doing now. Well, not quite precisely, because no military in history has taken so much care to avoid civilian deaths as the IDF does. No armed forces on earth have dropped so many warning leaflets, made calls and sent so many text messages to warn people of the imminence of attack. No country is more considerate of its enemies than Israel.

Why, then, I hear the leftist interlocutor in my head ask are there so many civilian casualties. Two points. Firstly there aren’t. All the MSM news outlets uncritically cite the “Palestinian Health Ministry” figures that the vast majority of casualties are civilian. This is simply a lie. Much more reliable independent figures suggest that something like half of the deaths are Hamas fighters. Secondly, many of the very substantial civilian deaths and injuries that remain are due to the Hamas human shields policy. This is not only through the use of schools and hospitals to store and launch their ordinance. There are also very trustworthy sources which indicate that civilians have been forced to remain in threatened locations, so that their corpses will play well in the western media. Lastly, it’s in the disgusting nature of warfare in a built up area that there will be substantial non-combatant deaths.

But even if the Israelis were much less careful in their prosecution of the war and there were consequently many more dead mothers and kids the responsibility would still lie unambiguously with Hamas.

Whatever the merits of their case, when they continuously prosecute a war against the vastly superior military might of the Israelis they bring down on their people the totally justified Israeli response.

So Hamas bears almost the entire moral responsibility for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Much of the rest is borne not by Israel but by western media. When the BBC and CNN et al hammer home day after day their emotive cartoon message that Israel is using its vast military superiority to massacre children they achieve three things.

First, they convince the otherwise uninformed that Israel is in the wrong and pursuing an evil agenda.

Second, they ensure that Hamas will continue to use Palestinians as human shields because they are never held to account in western media for this disgusting and evil policy.

Third, that Hamas or any other Palestinian government will never be forced to accept reality and learn to live with its Jewish neighbour as long as western propaganda results in moral and material support for their cause.

The Israel/Gaza conflict is not even close to being difficult to interpret. On the one hand, there is a modern, democratic and western state that respects the rights not only of all its own varied population, but even shows a heroic respect for its enemies. On the other, there is a cruel, bigoted theocracy whose only aim is cruelty and murder and whose very founding charter makes clear that it will never tolerate the existence of Israel. And if Hamas possessed the military capability of Israel, who doubts that it would enact another Holocaust.

This is not even close to being difficult to call.

And yet morally repugnant western reporters who are well aware of the nature of the two combatants use emotive images of dead and maimed children to further the lie of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of the Israelis. The Palestinians are indeed victims, but victims of their own leaders, Hamas, that they themselves voted into power and of a religion that institutionalises bigotry.

If western journalists were truly liberal, tolerant and supportive of democracy, they would hammer home this reality, and western governments would then be able to turn off the aid spigot and moral support for the evil murderers of Hamas, and then there might, just might, be the possibility of a permanent peace in the Middle East.