As soon as it was reported earlier today that around 40 Gazans (later reduced to 30) had been killed when the Israelis fired on an UNRWA school in Gaza, the usual suspects could scarcely conceal their joy. At last! An Israeli massacre. The BBC straightaway parroted the Hamas/UN line – that hapless Gazan ‘refugees’ had taken shelter from the bombs in the school, only to be struck by Israeli missiles which had scored a direct hit on the school.
But according to the Israelis, something rather different had happened. Palestinians had fired mortar bombs from the school grounds at the Israeli forces; the troops had returned fire – and had ignited booby-trapped bombs at the school, causing the horrific casualties. As the Jerusalem Post reported:
According to the IDF, among the dead were members of a Hamas launching cell, including operatives Immad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar. The infantrymen returned mortar shell fire into the schoolgrounds, the army said. Defense officials told the Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in triggered the secondary explosions which killed scores of Palestinians on the site.
If that is so, the Palestinians in this school appear to have been killed by their own bombs, with which they had been planning to kill Israeli soldiers -- but which instead blew themselves up as a direct result of their attempt to kill Israeli soldiers. Far from hapless refugees seeking shelter from the violence, they were Hamas terrorists actively perpetrating violence. And they were using those who were indeed sheltering in the school, once again, as human shields. In other words, this was another act of depravity by Hamas, who are the people who should be held responsible for today’s terrible events.
But despite all this information now being known, the BBC is still peddling the same line. A short while ago, I watched a jaw-dropping report on BBC World. It started by sneering that the Israelis had claimed they were not targeting civilians – but that now this was the most deadly incident yet. In other words, it implied in barely concealed triumph, Israel was indeed targeting civilians. This was maybe the single most deadly incident in Gaza, it said breathlessly, and would add critical weight to calls for a ceasefire. But why should it, if this was simply a case of Hamas firing on the Israelis and being fired on in return?
Then it interviewed an Israeli who talked generally about Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields; and with only a cursory reference to Israeli ‘claims’ that mortars had been fired from the school, it made no mention at all of the suggestion of secondary explosions. The prize for the most stomach-churning hypocrisy, however, must go to John Ging, director of operations for UNRWA, who was all over the airwaves spluttering that conditions in Gaza were ‘horrific’ and that nowhere was safe for civilians there. But surely what’s horrific is that UNRWA’s own school was being used to wage war upon the Israelis – a point about which, as far as I can see, no-one has asked him. And this is hardly the first time this has happened.
As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Israeli army has released a video taken in 2007 showing terrorists firing mortar shells from outside this very school that school – precisely what appears to have happened today. And at least one other UNRWA school has been used for exactly the same purpose in the past.
Now the UN and others are screaming for an inquiry into the Israeli attacks on this and another school that was hit. But it’s UNRWA itself that should be the subject of an inquiry; here (via LGF) is a revelation from Reuters that Awad al-Qiq, the headmaster of another UNRWA school in Gaza who was killed in an Israeli air-strike last May, moonlighted as a rocket-builder for Islamic Jihad. Palestinian terrorists have for years used UNRWA vehicles and facilities, and have built up their entire terror infrastructure under the noses of UNRWA officials who have simply looked the other way.
In short, UNRWA’s behaviour has long been an absolute scandal and an advertisement for the bankruptcy of the UN and the appalling role it has played as an accomplice to terror – a role which literally blew up in its own face today.
Update, January 11:Ha'aretz today is saying that a preliminary IDF investigation has concluded that Hamas had fired a rocket from a yard adjacent to the UNRWA school; one of their mortar shells returning fire went astray and hit the school. The IDFadd however they believe the casualty figures from the school were grossly inflated. The UNRWA were therefore correct to say no rockets were fired from their premises on this occasion, although it is not at present known whether the Hamas rocket-firing squad was based within the school.
Last night’s BBC TV News at Ten featured a highly partisan report about Gaza by Jeremy Bowen. Making no mention of the direct hit yesterday by a Hamas rocket on a kindergarten in Ashdod (which was empty for fear of precisely such an occurrence) Bowen concentrated heavily on the growing civilian casualty toll among Palestinians, making no acknowledgement of any Hamas operatives among these figures. The piece de resistance of this item was a report from Gaza’s Shifa hospital by a Gazan BBC producer, Rushdi abu Alouf. He claimed that ‘hundreds of kids, women and children’ had been brought to the hospital for medical treatment. Undoubtedly there are many casualties -- tragically, including children -- and the hospital is obviously under pressure. This though may help explain some of that pressure:
Hamas has set up an independent hospital in the Gaza Strip to treat its operatives wounded in fighting with the IDF - and, according to Israeli estimates, it is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the Strip.
But the BBC did not tell its viewers the important fact that every single journalist and media utterance coming out of Gaza is controlled by Hamas. In other words, you can’t believe a thing that anyone there tells you.
More notable still was the interview this producer conducted with a Norwegian doctor treating the wounded at Shifa, Dr Mads Gilbert. Gilbert painted an appalling picture. There were many amputations and head injuries; more and more patients were arriving; there were so many they were dying waiting for surgery. Asked how he was coping, he replied: ‘I’m not coping; the Palestinians are coping and they do all they can’.
Gilbert was presented as just an ordinary doctor. But Gilbert appears not to be just an ordinary doctor. He is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party. Not only is he viscerally hostile to Israel and a long-standing activist in the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ movement, but he even supported the 9/11 attacks. A reader posting on this website -- which features a video of further inflammatory remarks by Gilbert -- provided his own translation of Gilbert’s remarks to this effect, as well as Gilbert's Wikipedia entry which contained the following (translated from Norwegian):
Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center in the United States in September 2001 stirred the excitement when Gilbert defended oppressed moral right to attack the United States. ‘If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, they have also suppressed a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.’ On the direct question whether he supported the terrorist attacks on the United States, Gilbert said: ‘Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned.’
These remarks, sourced to ‘Dagbladet: Forsvarets attack on the U.S. (30.09.2001)’, no longer appear on Gilbert’s Wikipedia entry.
Gilbert has been giving interview after interview across the western media, which clearly can’t get enough of him. The Times this morning reported him texting friends back home:
‘We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children. A pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Pass it on, send it around, shout it out. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are living in a history book now, all of us.’
He has not only claimed that Israel is deliberately targeting Gaza’s civilians but has also accused it of using unconventional weapons. The evidence of that, he told Press TV, was that
Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever [sic] amputations.
But the pictures of casualties being admitted to Shifa show no such thing; many bodies in the morgue are intact. Indeed, one commentator observed of the dead children that they 'looked like sleeping dolls'.
In a longer version of the interview with abu Alouf on the BBC website, Gilbert says he has only seen two Hamas ‘fighters’ in the hospital; all the rest of the casualties have been civilians. Of the 2400-plus people injured, he says, 45 per cent have been women and children; plus civilian men, that means the majority of the wounded have been civilians. But the UN says it estimates that 25 per cent of the dead are civilians, because that’s the number of women and children who have been killed; the Israelis say the proportion of civilians is smaller still. So if 75%-plus of the dead were Hamas terrorists, is it likely that Shifa would only have only seen two terrorists who were wounded? And if 25% of those killed are women and children, how come that total is almost doubled when it comes to the number of wounded?
And what neither Gilbert nor Bowen chose to say was that, as described here and here, although the Israeli forces are – remarkably – warning targeted terrorist households to evacuate their families because they are about to be hit, their response is often to stay put or even to move families onto the roofs as human shields. It is Hamas therefore which is responsible for the deaths of these civilians – indeed, guilty of war crimes in deliberately using civilians as bomb fodder for propaganda purposes, while Israel clearly tries to avoid their being killed. Yet the BBC does not tell us this. Instead it gives a platform to a man delivering libellous incitement against Israel.
Moreover, it was at Shifa hospital that Hamas gunmen prowling the corridors actually gunned down in cold blood five Gazans suspected of being ‘collaborators’.Yet Gilbert makes no mention of this atrocity perpetrated by Palestinians upon Palestinians which occurred in the very hospital where he is working. Instead he tells the world that Israel has turned the hospital into ‘Dante’s inferno’. Nor -- mysteriously -- has he apparently treated any of the further 75 Fatah activists whom Hamas has shot (in addition to the 35 Palestinians it is known to have murdered in the past ten days); as Khaled abu Toameh reports in the Jerusalem Post:
Fatah officials in Ramallah told the Jerusalem Post that Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday. They said at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken.
Did none of these wounded Gazans turn up at Shifa hospital for treatment for their wounded hands and legs? And if we’re talking numbers here, aren’t these 75 to be counted in the tally of ‘civilian’ Gazan casualties -- who Gilbert claims were targeted by the Israelis for slaughter?
It is beyond appalling that the BBC should have presented this apologist for Hamas as a dispassionate first-hand observer of the situation in Shifa hospital. Whether it is cynical, malicious or just plain incompetent, the BBC’s coverage of Gaza is a national disgrace. Given that such propaganda will invariably incite people to hatred, hysteria and even violence, the case for Parliament debating the BBC’s performance is overwhelming.
So now Hamas says openly it will murder as many Jewish children as possible around the world:
As fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City today, a top Hamas leader broke cover to warn Israel that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for their own young who have died in the devastating assault. ‘They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,’ said Mahmoud Zahar, in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. ‘They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.’
These are people who deliberately kill their own children by turning them into human bombs -- and now they pretend to outrage because, having placed their children in harm's way in a theatre of war they have created, some of these children have unfortunately been killed. The fact is that Hamas have always specifically targeted Israeli and Jewish children and young people for murder – in accordance with their charter which declares their intention to kill every Jew in the world. They hit a kindergarten in Ashdod today; the only reason there wasn’t a massacre of tiny Jewish children was that, unlike Hamas who put their children on the rooftops as human shields and bomb fodder, Israel protects its children by keeping them as far as possible out of harm’s way.
So where are the protests at this intended crime against humanity which Hamas has declared it will perpetrate?
I have been absolutely overwhelmed by messages pouring in following my column in the Daily Mail today on the Gaza crisis. From these messages I have learned the following:
There is a large groundswell of support for Israel and detestation of Hamas; this is evident among people who are neither Jews nor evangelical Christians (who are usually pro-Israel) and have had no particular view about the Middle East one way or another. This in my view is a significant shift of opinion towards Israel amongst ordinary people.
There is a large groundswell of fury at the BBC in particular but also the print media for what people perceive to be morally bankrupt reporting, with gross prejudice against Israel and the ruthless delivery of Hamas propaganda which is presenting the mass killers of both Israelis and Palestinians as the victims of Israeli aggression and airbrushing the crimes of Hamas out of the picture altogether.
There is huge ignorance and bewilderment about the most basic and fundamental facts about Israel and the Middle East impasse, and considerable anger that the media has either misled people about it all or left them in ignorance.
There is an unshakeable and utterly lethal belief amongst British Muslims in an entirely false view of Middle East history, fed not just by Arab and Muslim propaganda but also by Israel-hating Israeli academics on the Pilgerite Israeli left, resulting in spitting hatred of Israel which is represented – along with its supporters -- in demonic terms. The historic resonance is unmistakeable -- and chilling.
To give you a flavour, here are some extracts from just a few of these messages (all as far as I can see from non-Jews):
*It was a breath of fresh air to read your pro-Israel article today after so many days of BBC led propaganda I am sick of seeing pictures of shell shocked wide eyed Palestinians, and not a word hardly about the poor sod's in Israel who have had to undergo a relentless bombardment for years...I have no doubt that the Islamic hatred of Israel is so great that should a terror group ever get hold of a WMD, they will, without a second thought, use it against Israel.
*You have highlighted the problem of a) Over-reaction to the Israeli bombing from a British Public who believe in the louder, more emotional journalism of people who do not understand the ACTUAL situation and b) - People who believe that the Israelis are the aggressors and do not accept or understand the restraint and, in fact, the humanitarian behaviour of the Jewish people towards the Islamists in Gaza. All they can see is that more Arabs are being killed than Israelis. They do not see the pin-point bombing of the Jews and the very selective targeting - all they can see is the greater number of civilians being killed in Gaza: people who are situated over the weapons sites deliberately chosen to create the larger number of civilian casualties by the Arabs. I despair. How can people be so ill- or under-informed? Why do people react instead of find out what the situation really is?
*AT LAST !!! Some rational and realistic comment on what's happening in Gaza. Thank you. I've been screaming at the screen for days. Historical and political ignorance is scary enough but the blind ideology and pure naivety of the liberal left is truly frightening. No doubt your comments will earn you a tirade of vitriol from the Gardianistas (do they think they're going to be excused Jihad, or somehow become immune when Iran starts popping nukes), so please accept this small token of support and don't let them get you down.
*I/we just wanted to say thank you for enlightening 6 electricians in leeds who are a long way from being thick or uneducated but, to a man, have not been able to grasp the situation in the middle east or palestine and, i presume, that's the same as 75% of this country. Thanks love for a great column much loved in the north.
*...there is something more to what’s going on in the media than you admit: the world has never forgiven the Jews for Auschwitz. For about 20 years after WWII even the most ardent anti-Jewish ‘liberal’ commentator couldn’t avoid admitting that the Jews didn’t deserve that. And this continued until the events of 1967... In other words, the actions of the Israel are deliberately misunderstood and misrepresented because they retrospectively exculpate the west, in particular the continental Europeans, from what it and they so singularly failed to do when called upon to act against fascism and later communism.
*The rest of the world had plenty of time to decide how they were going to control the conflict during the cease fire, but obviously had not given it any thought whatsoever. The time was used by Hamas to refill their armaments, to be used the moment the cease fire ended and that is what they did. Had they succeeded, would the world have defended Israel? not a hope, they would still have blamed Israel. Your comment, That Israel is damned if it does and dead if it doesn't is oh so true, Nobody will lift a finger to help her - just words, words words.
*When I listen, as I always do, to BBC radio 4, my stomach ties itself up in knots when they interview yet another 'Palestinian' distorting the reasons for the current war. It seems that they are now going to target churches and schools, as the Israelis are targeting mosques and homes! What distorted logic! Do churches and schools hide bombs?
*It is good to read unbiased reporting of the situation – I believe the media (especially the BBC) has been responsible for forming much of the present anti-Israel feeling by its totally one sided and extreme bias against Israel.
*You mention that Hamas wants the destruction of Israel. I think you have select hearing disorder. Hamas democratically elected, yet denied legitimacy by the world (another example of how the world continues to deny the Arabs of Palestine their rights), supported the peace initiative by Mr Abbas and was willing to accept the pre-June 1967 borders for a Palestinian State and also in consequence would be forced to accept the existence of Israel. The possibility of peace has continually been pushed to one side by Israel... You reference to the point that Israel is “tiny” and “besieged”, again this is laughable.
*You justify the killing of countless innocent civilians by the Israeli on the basis of the numbers of Germans killed in the second world war. Another crass atempt to dehumanise the oppressed. Can you not see the similarities between Gaza and the Warsaw ghetto? Or like Churchill you regard the Palestinians as Untermenchen. Shame on you and the likes of you. Today there are many Ann Franks in Gaza and Palestine.
*Have you seen the pictures of all the women and children slaughtered by your heroes I suppose it is your right to insult the memory of all WW2 fighters and reduce them to women and baby killers but I reserve my right to tell you that the Israelis will never again have the right to to play the only victims of a genocide they have chosen the Palestinians to keep them company.
*Once again the paper that employs you permits you to have carte blanche to peddle the lies, deceits, half truths and propaganda for the criminal Israeli position. Knowing your faith, one must ask if it is indeed proper for a national newspaper to permit such a totally biased and one sided issue to be peddled and propagated on such a scale and it brings home to one more than ever, that the Israelis and Zionists have the most potent, far reaching and all pervasive PR machine in the world with every member of the faith almost duty bound to peddle the Israeli propaganda.
*Hope you have enjoyed your shabbas rest. Did you pray for more Arab and muslim deaths as you lit your candles? Did you beg God to burn, maim and slice up more Palestinian children as they sleep in their beds or as they attend their prayers? I hope your family sleep peacefully tonight, unlike the people you so avidly despise.
The bad news, as this shows, is that Britain’s bigots are burgeoning – and have the media and intelligentsia in their pocket. The good news is that decency here has not yet died; indeed, among the ordinary people of this country, I get the feeling that that the penny is finally starting to drop.
Three cheers for Tory MP Michael Fabricant, who says he has been ‘horrified and angered’ by the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza conflict, and will be making a formal complaint to the Chairman of the BBC Trust about it:
While paying scant regard to the provocation of 10,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza over the last seven years, the BBC has chosen to broadcast 'human interest' stories reminiscent of salacious photos in the cheaper red top newspapers. Thus I heard a heart rending report from a Palestinian in Cyprus how he imagined - yes: IMAGINED! - Gaza's streets would be running with the blood of dead Arab children. After that, the BBC located individuals in Gaza who have taken the opportunity of repeating over the BBC what they have already said on Al Jazeera. No balance there then. And today I heard an ‘unbiased report from a British aid worker in Gaza, from Islamic Relief’. Oh come on!
But perhaps the worst interview of all was with the Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic who dared to suggest that every country has a right to defend its citizens, that Hamas had walked away from negotiations, that they had resumed firing rockets into Israel unprovoked, and that Israel's actions are therefore defensive and not offensive. The ire and vitriol of the BBC interviewer was extraordinary. Paxman and Humphreys are pussy cats in comparison. The Czech minister sounded shell shocked. And so was I.
Commendable as is Fabricant’s reaction, it is not enough for him to write to the Chairman of the BBC Trust. The BBC’s collusion with Hamas, along with coverage whose incendiary distortions cannot but have incited hatred of Israel among its viewers and listeners, should be the subject of an emergency debate in Parliament. It would be interesting to know whether the Tory front bench agree with Michael Fabricant -- or think there is nothing wrong with the BBC’s coverage. Those MPs from whatever party who understand just what is at stake in Gaza for western civilisation – alas, there aren’t many of them but there are some -- and the deeply alarming role being played in this by the BBC should now raise the alarm.
BBC World TV has spent much of the day whining that Israel is refusing to allow the international media entry into Gaza despite an Israeli court ruling that it should allow the media in. This is amongst the reasons why it isn’t choosing to do so:
Police were searching Saturday night for a foreign reporter working for an Iranian TV network who reported the IDF incursion into Gaza before the military authorized the release of the information to the public. Also Saturday evening, a reporter for the Lebanese LBC network who was broadcasting near the Gaza Strip said the IDF was moving from Nahal Oz towards the Nezarim junction. The reporter surmised that the military was planning to sever the Gaza Strip in half, effectively isolating Gaza City in an effort to minimize Hamas terrorists’ ability to exploit urban areas. The anchor reportedly stood in a vantage point overlooking the IDF staging grounds and reported military maneuvers.
To fill the gap, BBC World interviewed a Gazan, Hatem Shurrab of Islamic Relief, who during the night apparently moved his family into the basement to escape the bombardment. Sympathetic interviewers asked him to describe how terrifying he had found the sound of the explosions. He obligingly described how terrifying this was and how his child had been crying all night. I’m sure it was an awful experience, and one can of course feel sympathy for anyone trapped in such a situation. But there was of course absolutely no mention of, let alone an interview with any of, the thousands of Israeli families in southern Israel who for the past seven years have been forced to live in bomb shelters for month after month with no respite, with their children now suffering psychological damage from the unending terror from Palestinian missile attacks directed specifically at them.
Nor has there been any reporting either of what Hamas is doing to Fatah in Gaza. Fearing that its power is being smashed and that Fatah will re-take control over Gaza. Hamas has killed at least 35 Palestinians suspected of ‘collaborating’ with Israel and shot a further 75 Fatah activists in the legs while others had their hands broken. And most certainly there is no mention of this:
Wisam Abu Jalhoum, a Fatah activist from the Jabalya refugee camp, was shot in the legs by Hamas militiamen for allegedly expressing joy over the IDF air strikes on Hamas targets. [my emphasis]
Meanwhile, Barry Rubin has published two more excellent articles, pointing out here the need for realistic expectations about what Israel can achieve through this operation in Gaza; and here the key fact that the west refuses to grasp and which makes it simply impossible ever to expect any compromise with Hamas:
Palestinian Media Watch has reprinted a speech made by Fathi Hamad, one of the top Hamas leaders, on the movement's own Al-Aqsa television station from February 29, 2008. He stated:
‘For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death as you desire life.”’
That’s why they use their own people as human shields;
for the goal of radical Islamism is not to exalt its people--Palestinians or Muslims, as such--but to implement God’s will. God is above the people. And the deity must be served no matter how many of the people, even Muslims, die or suffer. Thus we see the massive bloodshed in the Algerian civil war and the terrorist attacks against other Muslims in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Even an anti-Israel demonstration in Iraq was hit by a suicide bomber recently.
Thus, there is this tireless emphasis on martyrdom, and people can be martyred even if they don’t choose that for themselves. What is startling -- and like so many significant facts gone unnoticed in much of the world -- is that Hamas never had any program for social development, quality education, improved health, or anything else but warfare for the Gaza Strip. Its only concern was to wage a war of extermination on Israel, no matter how much time and how many lives it cost.
And, in the west their message is being enthusiastically endorsed by Islamists, the far left and the usual useful idiots – and with not a peep of protest from anyone else at such genocidal displays. Jihad Watch reports that in the Netherlands, anti-Israel demonstrators have once again been chanting
Hamas Hamas, Jews to the gas
just as they did in the 2006 Lebanon war. Sorry to disappoint you, all you demonstrators in Amsterdam and Paris and London and Barcelona and Athens, all you Annie Lennoxes and Bianca Jaggers and Ken Livingstones and George Galloways and Channel Four executives, but this time the Jews won’t oblige. Never again, don’t you know. Nooit opnieuw. Jamais encore. Nunca mas. ποτέ πάλι.
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 briefly 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, [my emphasis] 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...
You won’t find that passage now on the New York Times website because, soon after it appeared, it unaccountably vanished into the ether*. 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 [Associated Press] 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.
Update: It appears that James Taranto's link was wrong and the real article can still be seen here.
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 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over
God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
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As soon as it was reported earlier today that around 40 Gazans (later reduced to 30) had been killed when the Israelis fired on an UNRWA school in Gaza, the usual suspects could scarcely conceal their joy. At last! An Israeli massacre. The BBC straightaway parroted the Hamas/UN line – that hapless Gazan ‘refugees’ had taken shelter from the bombs in the school, only to be struck by Israeli missiles which had scored a direct hit on the school.
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.
