AP Photo/Ariel Schalit
RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY | PJ Media
(This column is Part 2 of a series of articles explaining the fallacies that have led to the world’s leftists supporting Palestine, Gaza, and Hamas’ horrors.)
The concepts of “Palestine” and “Palestinians” did not exist before the mid-20th century, but truth has little meaning to the left when it is in conflict with their anti-Semitic/anti-Israel/Marxist/socialist/destruction-of-Western-culture agenda. Even when confronted with the facts, they attempt to justify the truly evil actions of Hamas.
The latest argument against Israel is that Israel’s retaliation against Hamas is not “proportional.” We are already being inundated with images of the wounded in Gaza. Israel is being called an aggressor and worse. The images of war will be shown more and more in the coming days until the leftist agenda of removing the last week’s images from our minds is achieved.
But we cannot let that happen. We must always remember what Hamas has done, and how they degraded all of humanity with their conscious targeting of civilians. We must never forget the images of people being dragged out of their cars to be stomped on until they die by Hamas, the videos that Hamas proudly took of homes being invaded and children killed, or the horrors of videos of victims being filmed on the victims’ own cell phones and then sent to their families from their phones.
Hamas has demonstrated a barbarism unseen in humanity for hundreds if not thousands of years, and we must not let anti-Semitic Marxists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) change the narrative in an attempt to transform Hamas and the people of Gaza into victims.
Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk are calling for Israel to be stopped as they feel that Israel’s response is too aggressive and uncalled for. The Swiss foreign minister is one of many using the new leftist term “proportional reaction,” a term that is being picked up everywhere by pro-Hamas supporters like Ocasio Cortez and the BBC.
Since they can’t really hang their hat on the fallacy of a historical Palestine, they are trying to stop Israel from destroying the evil of Hamas based on the idea that Israel is doing worse to Hamas than Hamas did to Israel. Even while history, common sense, and the most basic ethical standards of humanity demonstrate that Hamas and its supporters have descended to a level below even animals; let us evaluate this concept of proportionality.
General Wiliam Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army is credited first with the saying, “War is hell.” There is no proportionality in war: you fight for your survival, and it is uglier than any human being should have to experience. In some ways, that’s the point of war: to make it so horrible that people will do almost anything for peace. If Hamas didn’t want hell rained down on Gaza, it should not have consciously and specifically targeted the elderly, women, and children.
Hamas CHOSE to drop into a music festival and rape, kidnap, and murder young people celebrating life through music. There was no pressure on Hamas to video its acts of horror and send those images to families with the express intention of traumatizing them. Terrorists did choose to perform these heinous acts, and there is every justification to make sure this never happens again.
But the left is now claiming that this isn’t right — that Israel’s actions are greater than what they suffered. They are demanding that Israel abides by the “principle of proportionality,” a term that they think means that while Hamas can kill Israeli babies, Israel cannot kill any civilian even by accident.
Related: There Is No Such Thing As ‘Palestinians’
Ironically, the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare at Westpoint has established that “there is [sic] no reliable reports that the IDF have [sic] ever intentionally targeted civilians.” Juxtapose this against Hamas’ specific intent to cause terror among civilians. The Israeli Air Force is the only one in the world that gives notice to civilians to exit a building before destroying it, and Israel handcuffs itself in battle by doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. While Israel defends all civilians, Hamas uses children and its own civilians as human shields to protect themselves.
Simply put, Israel uses the IDF to protect its citizens. Hamas uses its citizens to protect Hamas. The civilian pain that is happening in Gaza as Israel now attacks is a direct result of Hamas’ practice of shielding itself with babies. The principle of proportionality is very specific: attacks that might affect civilians are prohibited unless they are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Since the military advantage is to get Hamas out of Gaza and its supporters defeated forever, then Israel is following that principle perfectly. The Israeli military’s need to remove any vestige of Hamas from the world is so necessary that, sadly, civilians may get hurt. But remember, given that the IDF gives advance notice, the only reason for a civilian to be in Gaza is if they support Hamas or if Hamas is using them as human shields.
There is no real “Palestine”; Hamas targets civilians in the cruelest of ways; and Israel still does everything possible to avoid collateral damage. But these anti-Israel fanatics still say that too many Gaza citizens are getting hurt or dying. They think they are the official arbiter of how many Gaza casualties are too many and castigate Israel for defending herself.
If these supporters of the fanatical and evil Hamas really want to crunch numbers to determine how many is too many, consider the following: If these Marxists want “proportionate precision” based on percentages; a literal “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (which only ultimately leads to blind men with no teeth), then let us review the statistics. There are over 1,500 times more Arab Muslims than Israeli citizens (9.5 million vs 1.5 billion), and over 1,300 Israeli civilians have been kidnapped, raped, and/or killed in this war so far.
Since there are over 1,500 times more Arab Muslims who are supporting Hamas in the region, we multiply 1,500 times over 1,300 victims. By their logic of precise proportionality, we would need to kill 2 million Arab Muslim civilians to be pari-passu with Hamas, and God forbid we ever have to do that.
While Israel works hard to keep Gaza’s civilian casualties down, Hamas consciously aims for civilians. While Israel strives to remove civilians from fighting areas, Hamas uses children, babies, and the elderly as human shields. When the left is complaining that too many Gaza citizens are getting injured, they are rejecting the mathematics that demonstrates how Israel really is restraining herself.
This entire rhetoric of principled proportionality is just another public relations scheme that, when accompanied by painful images of war, is an attempt to destroy Israel in the minds and hearts of people around the world. We must not let this publicity stunt, which capitalizes on the devastation that Israel is required to perform on Hamas, subvert our support for Israel and her actions.
Israel and the Israel Defense Force is the most ethical army in the history of the world. Rather than condemning its precise efforts to keep civilians safe, we must laud it. And we must always remember: while Israel uses the IDF to protect civilians, Hamas is killing its own civilians to protect Hamas.
As Golda Meir is credited with saying, “If the Arabs lay down their weapons, there will be peace. If the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a massacre.” We just experienced the truth of her words and the massacres and horrors of Israel not holding their weapons strongly enough. Do not ask us to invite other massacres in the future, God forbid, by using the leftist argument that Israel needs to restrain herself against villains who use babies as shields and then turn to their advantage the deaths of those babies that Hamas is directly responsible for murdering.
Israel will always strive to save civilians while destroying the evil of Hamas and its supporters. But there is no moral equivalency, and we cannot let fools like Ocasio-Cortez and her squad be left unanswered.
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