Depravity and double standards
An excellent analysis by David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post ponders the tragic dilemma facing Israel:
Hamas gunmen are commandeering ambulances and taking children out with them to battle, according to Israeli security sources. At every moment, with every use of firepower, there is the potential for Palestinian civilian casualties. As they mourn the loss of five soldiers, IDF commanders are well aware of the mounting Palestinian civilian casualty toll. They are bitterly cognizant of the reality in which Israel is blamed internationally for every such death - ratcheting up the international protests and the international pressure for a cease-fire. This impacts Israel's leverage as it seeks acceptable terms for a halt to the fighting - no matter that it is Hamas that has deliberately located its offensive capabilities in the heart of the Gazan populace.
Indeed, for large swathes of western opinion there is virtually no depravity Hamas can commit which will even be reported, let alone condemned; yet when Israel goes to war to defend itself against slaughter the west is consumed by hysterical rage, so much so that it quite clearly would rather Hamas was allowed to survive to continue its murderous rampages. As this horrific video obtained by Jihadwatch shows, this is the kind of thing to which the west is turning a blind eye: Hamas men apparently literally dragging off children at random to be used as human shields.
As Alan Dershowitz notes, Hamas’s ‘CNN’ strategy is working. The casualties are referred to as if they are all civilians, whereas according to Israel and even the UN the vast majority are Hamas operatives; and blame for the deaths of actual civilians is apportioned not to Hamas who have used them as human shields but Israel for firing at the terrorists hiding behind them.
The world simply doesn’t seem to care when Arabs and Muslims kill large numbers of other Arabs and Muslims, but a qualitatively different standard applies when the Jewish state kills even a relatively small number of Muslims and Arabs in a war of self-defence.
The international community doesn’t even seem to care when Palestinian children are killed by rocket fire — unless it is from Israeli rockets. The day before the recent outbreak, Hamas fired an anti-personnel rocket at Israeli civilians, but the rocket fell short of its target and killed two Palestinian girls. Yet there was virtually no coverage and absolutely no protests against these ‘collateral’ civilian deaths. Hamas refused to allow TV cameras to show these dead Palestinian children.
Nor have there been protests against the cold-blooded murders by Hamas and its supporters of dozens of Palestinian civilians who allegedly ‘collaborated’ with Israel. Indeed, Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israelis, but you wouldn’t know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.
Steven Plaut makes a similar point about the pathological and obsessive double standards applied to Israel:
Over the years, 65,000 people have been killed in the war with the Tamils in Sri Lanka, almost all of them civilians.Meanwhile not a single Solidarity-with-the-Tamil-Tigers protest has been organized on a single Western campus or in a single downtown square. Jewish leftists have not taken to the streets to demand an end to the war of aggression against the Tamils. Leftist websites have not proclaimed every injury of a Tamil civilian to be a Nazi-like war crime by Sri Lanka and an act of genocide.
The Eurocrats have not pontificated about how the Sri Lankan response to terror was out of proportion. The BBC did not describe the Tamil suicide bombers as activists. The International Solidarity Movement has not sent in protesters from the West to try to defend the terrorists. Communists and fellow travelers have not organized flotillas of boats carrying aid to the terrorists to ‘break the siege.’ Hundreds of non-governmental organizations claiming to be concerned about human rights have not rushed aid to the terrorists in the name of humanitarian concerns.... Those silly, naïve Sri Lankans ignored all the sage advice and just went ahead and solved their problem of terrorism with a military solution.
Indeed: the Sri Lankans long ago understood the point that the post-national, post-moral, post-rational west simply cannot grasp -- that asymmetric warfare can only be solved by military means.
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
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Brennen Bearnes
January 7th, 2009 9:02pmI stopped after "excellent analysis by David Horowitz".
colonel madd
January 7th, 2009 9:19pmSecond clip shows a man lifting a child very quickly out of a road and joining a group of other people standing near a wall
Confabulating this into a human shield is quite a stretch
D
January 7th, 2009 9:19pmMelanie Phillips quoting David Horowitz quoting anonymous sources; how could the story be anything but true.
dominic
January 7th, 2009 9:30pmI honestly never thought I would live through a period of world history where sheer fascism, cloaked in a veil of religious authenticity, is literally given a free reign by the world's media. Wasn't the build up to World War 2 enough to put the civilised world on alert to history repeating itself? And yet here it is happening before our very eyes - the third islamic jihad is underway, aided and abetted at every turn by a post modern liberalist media that is ignorant of history and incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. What will it take - Mumbai, 9/11, 7/7, the Phillipines, Sudan, Mauritania, Algeria, Bosnia, Somalia and yes Israel before people realise what is at stake here? Islamic fascism is on the move again, and Israel should command support from all people that oppose jihad and religious tyrrany.
Thomas Marongoni
January 7th, 2009 9:35pmInteresting, western media can't report what is going on in the west, I don't think they will report much about the East or the South, sorry to hear that Melanie, it is unfair world we are living.
logdon
January 7th, 2009 9:37pmBrennen Bearnes
January 7th, 2009 9:02pm
I stopped after "excellent analysis by David Horowitz".
Obviously a man who seeks enlightenment? Try another blog if you need the same old same old. Plenty out there parroting the Hamas line.
Kevin
January 7th, 2009 9:40pmThe Liberal West will lose the jihad because, from its inception, Liberalism was not an independent movement; rather, it was a rebellion against Catholicism. It took power in the West by promising that it would be 'more Christian than Christianity'. It did this by attacking the
idea that the use of force is necessary in the defence of civilisation (whether it be through the criminal justice system or the just war). Having thrown these weapons away it knows that it cannot take them up again without destroying itself and risking that Catholicism will return to fill the void. Far better, in Liberals' minds, to surrender to the jihad than to let Jones back.
steve
January 7th, 2009 9:51pmMatthew Roberts
January 7th, 2009 9:56pmThat's why you will remain ignorant Brennan
Chris
January 7th, 2009 10:02pmAnd you think that makes you a clever boy, does it, Brennen?
Augustus
January 7th, 2009 10:05pmAsymmetric warfare is often defined as terrorism. But there are, of course, also those who hold the view that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. But in the case of the Hamas it is plainly obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that they are not waging a conflict of resistance against Israeli aggressive action, but have been conducting an insurgent rocket bombardment from the Gaza Strip. In other words unadulterated terrorism.
Abraham Rabinovich, reporting from Jerusalem says:
"The 'secret weapon' Hamas has hinted at unleashing is apparently a long-range rocket that Israeli officials expect to be aimed at Tel Aviv. Hamas leaders have warned that they have 'surprises' in store for Israel, and members of its military wing have said they possess rockets that can reach deeper than those fired recently, which have a 50km range. The longer-range rockets are believed to reach about 70km, which would put Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor at Dimona within reach."
Although the reactor has been 'hardened' to sustain any bomb strike short of 'bunker busters', the Tel Aviv metropolitan area is too big to miss. and as far as is known, these long-range rockets have not yet been neutralised by the Israeli airforce.
As Condoleeza Rice said at the UN Security Council. Random cross-border rocket firing is intolerable, and no country here (at the UN meeting) would tolerate it.
The plain fact is that Hamas has exploited a six month cease-fire so that it could smuggle in rockets with double the range of its previous arsenal, and which are smuggled in via tunnels under the border between Egypt and Gaza. In pulling out of Gaza four years ago Israel lost control of the 11km border strip. Since then hundreds of tunnels have been dug under the border.
But what's the use of all this diplomatic toing and froing to ensure that Hamas doesn't rearm? They should be crushed, pure and simple, and then perhaps the Palestinians will have a case, and a chance of a settlement.
Norm
January 7th, 2009 10:13pmIt strikes me that everyone in these video's is wearing civilian clothing yet carrying weapons. How can we tell the difference between fighters and civilians.Obviously that's the plan.
stublore
January 7th, 2009 10:40pmYou should have kept reading then, as he makes some very good points about the TT vs Gaza and the media and political response.
john doe
January 7th, 2009 10:43pmWell said Dominic.
John Lochrie
January 7th, 2009 10:54pmNice Post....keep it up !!!! Good job
John Lochrie
Edward
January 8th, 2009 12:59amThe tactic of Hamas fighters in civilian clothing has been used by hezbullah in hijacked Lebanon before.
Hamas/Hezbullah/Al Qada fighters in civilian clothing put all civilians in jeopardy and is a clear violation of Geneva Conventions.
Peter Wilson
January 8th, 2009 3:56am"An excellent analysis by David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post..."
There's a typo in the above--the link is to a Jerusalem Post article by David Horovitz (with a V), not David Horowitz (with a W) of FrontPageMagazine.
Michael B
January 8th, 2009 4:18amTo be kind, one must be content with being bemused by the facile sneers and the contentedly incurious quality as reflected, for example, in the first three comments in this thread, reminiscent of engorged dung beetles.
Hundreds of thousands killed by Arab Muslims in the Sudan, hundreds of thousands killed in the Congo Republic, Zimbabwe, the Tamil Tigers, etc. - and the world passes by, barely noticing, or pretending to notice, pretending to care. And a death cult fueled regime in Gaza, firing rockets, mortars and other munitions against Israel over a period of years - that too receives virtually no hand wringing attention, even to the contrary, as reflected in al Beeb's and other MSM-styled reports. Then there's Mohammed al Durah, the well advertised, well promulgated blood libel, having monumental import.
But Israel defending itself against Iranian proxies as represented in Hamas and Hezbollah - at that point the hand wringing concern commences. Tragi-comic farce and tragedy writ large as entertainment for the willfully morally obtuse.
Posturing and posing, pretending to care. Another lifestyle choice in the age of Rathergate, Chris Matthews, Eason Jordan/CNN in Iraq, the BBC - accompanied, predictably, by a prepossessed sneer.
Rebel Saint
January 8th, 2009 11:27pmWhilst I'm in doubt that Hamas (and any other Islamofacists) are capable of such despicable things, in all fairness, the 2nd part of the video clip is ambiguous to say the least and hardly proves the point
Miranda Rose Smith
January 9th, 2009 8:46amI sent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a fax a few days ago, urging him to ignore the U.N. and world opinion. I've been saying for years that that's Israel's only hope of survival.
Carl
January 10th, 2009 12:13pmThe "horrific clip" from the utterly unbiased clearly shows a brave man pulling a child out of the line of fire. If you take your goggles off you would notice other people behind the child, crouching to protect themselves.