As Israel battles to remove the threat of barbarism and depravity to her citizens, it beggars’ belief to see what is going on in the world.
Western democracies, themselves ultimately under similar threat, stand strongly with Israel when she is being attacked.
However, once Israel actually defends herself, support waivers.
There is a total disconnect in logic between people who understand the situation and articulate what, in their opinion, should not be done but are vague, to the point of extreme frustration, on what to actually do.
On what they would do.
A good example is provided by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who correctly and clearly wrote on the 4th of November in The Guardian about Hamas, saying, “a craven terrorist group that has burrowed itself in civilian infrastructure, using civilians as a shield”.
Yet, despite Israel safeguarding evacuation routes and providing humanitarian aid directly to the hospitals, evacuation and aid to Palestinians, which Hamas tries to block by shooting and killing their own Gazans, and with strict adherence to International Law, Israel is pilloried and expected to defeat Hamas in some other, always undefined, manner.
Repetition is required.
Israel does her utmost to minimise civilian casualties.
Hamas purposefully targets all civilians, Palestinian and Israeli.
As one observer noted, “If Israel didn’t care about civilians, this war would have been over on October the 8th.”
We do not know the number of people killed in Gaza as yet, but as President Biden said with absolute clarity: “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war. But I have no confidence in the number the Palestinians are using.”
In that same 4th of November article, Foreign Minister Wong also wrote – “It will require the dismantling of Hamas – which doesn’t represent the Palestinian people.”
There is a heroic, unproven assumption here, for which we have no evidence about who does or does not represent the Palestinians.
What we do know is that Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza in 2006 and that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has cancelled elections when scheduled for fear his party would be roundly defeated by Hamas. For fear that Hamas is indeed the popular choice of the Palestinians.
The horrors perpetrated by Hamas on Oct 7th are almost impossible to believe.
We are witnessing two processes at play around the world, particularly in large sections of the media and from so-called influencers, even more so at the political level.
Firstly, we are seeing ‘atrocity denial.’
Journalists and influencers simply believe that the atrocities are overblown or never took place.
Some cannot conceive that anyone could do the things Hamas did, and many others for whom denial is the only way they can perpetuate their agenda of anti-Jewish sentiment and hate.
Some cannot conceive that anyone could do the things Hamas did, and many others for whom denial is the only way they can perpetuate their agenda of anti-Jewish sentiment and hate.
There are those who wish to paint Israel as the aggressor.
And what is the highest expression of her aggression?
Israel’s very existence.
As many have pointed out, this is not about anything Israel did.
But simply that Israel is.
This brings us to the second part of the delegitimisation of Israel and the Jewish people.
When people grow up with the belief that Jews intend to harm Palestinian children, or in previous times the images perpetuated by a different manifestation of the blood libels of Europe, they require no checking of facts or verification when they hear about Israel bombing a hospital.
Confirmation bias allows them to think – ‘Of course, the Jews killed babies. That is what Jews do.’
In the so-called ‘Arab street,’ indoctrinated over generations to believe Jews are evil, one can more easily understand confirmation bias at work.
But in the West?
Amongst so-called knowledgeable opinion makers and academics?
The streets of our cities around the Western world are witness to coded messages at pro-Palestinian rallies.
Messages that are apparently unreadable by governments and authorities.
In 1964, when Israel had nothing to do with Gaza, Judea/Samaria/West Bank and even the Old City of Jerusalem, and these areas were ruled by the Arab world, the PLO was formed – the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
What was it formed to ‘liberate’?
In case that coded message was not understood, the answer was Israel.
The chant “From the river to the sea,” which is directly from the Hamas Charter of 2017, Articles 2 and 20, means nothing more or less than the disappearance of the State of Israel.
As Yossi Klein Halevy writes: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free – free, that is, of Jews.”
In the event that anyone might still be under any illusion, those same rallies shout about “75 years of occupation.”
They are not talking about what to do with the territories that fell into Israel’s hands in the 6-Day War of 1967; they are screaming about 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel.
What it comes down to is our duty to explain what these messages really mean.
And it is our obligation to polish the moral lens of Israel’s allies and friends.
Just today, United States National Security spokesperson John Kirby said: “We have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”
It took the moral clarity of German Chancellor Sholtz yesterday when rebutting comments by Turkish President Erdogan, he expressed the reality of the situation to say: “Israel is a democracy and a country that is bound to human rights and international law and acts accordingly.”
A recognition and statement that Israel “acts accordingly.”
We can be proud of Israel’s simultaneous commitment to the defence of her people and adherence to the highest moral code.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Dr Ron Weiser, AM
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