Babies burnt alive. Some shot point black in their cradles in the dead hours of one of the darkest nights in Israel’s history. Countless other newborns are being held hostage. One dreads to think what deprivations are being heaped on them by the brutes of Hamas in the name of ‘azadi’, liberation, freedom, anti-colonialism, and whatnot.
What possible score could Hamas have to settle with these infants? What was their fault? Except perhaps that they were born as Jews to families in Israel.
In this veritable new age “slaughter of the innocents”, we must not lose sight of the one clear incontestable fact: Hamas kills Jews because they are Jews.
To be even more precise, Hamas kills Jews living in a nation that Islamists believe has no right to exist. This author isn’t saying it. Just pick up a copy of the Hamas charter and acquaint yourself with “Israelophobia”.
This affliction is, as author Jake Wallis Simons writes, “the newest version of the oldest hatred”.
But you wouldn’t for a moment think that Israel was the victim. At least not if you were part of the Left blitzkrieg agitprop that is too busy shaming Israel from Hyderabad to Harvard.
Victim shaming reads a bit like this extract from the Harvard University Palestine Solidarity Group’s statement: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.”
Looking at all the anti-Israel protests, one can’t help but think that Tel Aviv’s 26/11 has turned into a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide.
But this victimisation of the victim is thoroughly undeserved. There is no moral equivalence to be drawn between the long-suffering but Hamas-supporting Palestinians of Gaza and the state of Israel. Not doctrinally and certainly not in the present context.
Among the litany of accusations against Israel is that it is in “occupation” of Gaza. But this isn’t the case. In 1993, Israel recognised the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the fabled Oslo Accords. Yes, Israel could have done a lot more to uphold the spirit of the Accords. But it is also true that the Palestinians didn’t do themselves any favours by accusing their then-plenipotentiary Yasser Arafat of being a sellout.
The smear campaign rooted in a political turf war cut the ground from under Arafat’s feet. To ensure his own survival, Arafat responded by quickly walking away from the Accords. That undercut the best shot Israel and the Palestine leadership have ever had at establishing a lasting peace.
In 2002, Israel offered Arafat recognition of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinians responded by launching the second Intifada.
In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza. Palestinians respond by electing Hamas, which is committed to the total evisceration of Jews and their state. A mission objective that they justified as one ordained by the holy Hadith.
In 2008, Israel offered Mahmoud Abbas the same settlement they pitched to his predecessor Arafat in 2002. But this too was rejected.
Palestinians and their intellectual cohorts may well lay the blame at Israel’s door for the lack of progress. But can they explain why a supposedly undying coloniser would make repeated offers to cede territory? Nothing stops Israel from going into Gaza and taking it over. Nothing really, aside from a moral conscience. A recognition of its own obligation towards a just settlement. While Israel strives to conscientiously hold onto the moral high ground, the Palestinian-elected Hamas refuses to even accept the existence of Israelis. It wants to kill them all.
In its bigoted exclusivism, the crusading Hamas is out of touch with even its more pragmatic Arab bedfellows. Most Arab nations have normalised relations with Israel.
The Arab world has no time for the apartheid card that is thrust in Israel’s face. Those willing to accept the truth will note that even the most visible symbol of supposed racial segregation—the “apartheid wall”—was birthed from necessity. Before the separation barrier came up along the West Bank, Israel was torn asunder by almost weekly suicide attacks. Each of the tightly wound-up incendiaries of the Holy War was undoubtedly promised dollops of ethereal salvation by the “Israelophobic” Hamas and its enablers in Gaza. What was Israel supposed to do? Perhaps, turn the other cheek and walk quietly along the road to perdition?
Palestinian antisemitism is not just political, it is doctrinal. If this hadn’t been the case, the Palestinian youth would have condemned attacks on Israeli citizens by now.
Instead, even this modicum of human empathy was outsourced to Israeli leftists who took to the streets condemning Tel Aviv’s excesses–real and imagined.
The fact that Palestinians, faced with permanent dislocation, haven’t yet given up Hamas terrorists is a severe indictment of their corrupted moral compass.
And the belligerents of the woke Intifada who are today standing up for the moral wasteland that is Gaza are equally complicit in perpetuating Israelophobia.
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