Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Corpses, and Context


Ed Hudgins

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Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Corpses, and Context
By Edward Hudgins

July 23, 2014 — Television newscasts over the past week have featured videos of corpses, including the bodies of children, piled in hospitals and morgues in Gaza, surrounded by grieving family and friends. The natural and angry human reaction to such scenes is, “What monsters did this?” But the rational response should also be, “What is the full context of this suffering and death?”

There are World War II photos that show German women and children killed in Allied bombings. Taken out of all context, these gruesome pictures could elicit anger without revealing the monstrous regime that itself inflicted death on so many and made that war necessary.

While Israeli bombs and bullets were the immediate cause of the carnage in Gaza, the need to resort to war was caused by Hamas, a fact not communicated well if at all by the American media.

Gaza was occupied by Israel in the aftermath of one of the many attempts by Israel’s Arab neighbors and terrorist groups to kill the Jews or drive them into the sea. But after Israel unilaterally pulled out its military and settlements—the military had to forcibly remove many Jewish settlers who refused to leave—the people of Gaza in 2005 elected as its government Hamas, a group of thugs who made the destruction of Israel Job One.

Hamas did not build schools to train its children in the enterprises of peace. Rather, it trained military units for attacks on Israel and trained its children as suicide bombers; indeed, it celebrates and honors those who kill themselves in the process of killing Jewish children. It did not build businesses and promote prosperity. Rather, it built tunnels to infiltrate Israel, and smuggled into Gaza rockets and mortars to fire at its neighbor. It intentionally places its weapons in or near civilian housing, schools, and hospitals, using its own children as human shields, so that counterattacks that produce corpses will elicit sympathy among those in the West naïve or blind enough to ignore the full context of the conflict.

And any Palestinian who suggests making trade, not war, with Israel is killed by Hamas.

In light of the anti-Semitism that drove the original Jewish settlers from Europe to Palestine, that produced the Holocaust, and that today is seen again in the streets of Europe and cesspools of American academia and leftist circles, Israel has no choice but to fight when it is attacked. The blood in Gaza is on the hands of Hamas. And it is Hamas that has always maintained that it is at war with Israel and that it will never cease to be so. To merely utter the truism that Israel should avoid inflicting unnecessary civilian casualties ignores that fact that ridding Israel of its Jewish civilian population is the aim of Hamas.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pinpointed the nature of the conflict: “If Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.”

Golda Meir put it well some four decades ago: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Such forgiveness, in fact, should not be granted. But Meir was right about the warped values of the enemies of Israel and, more broadly, of the civilized world. Osama bin Laden echoed his fellow Islamists when he said, “We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two.” Yes, it is. And a favorite saying among Jews is “L’Chaim,” “To life!”

That is the nature of the conflict in Gaza. It is life versus death. To the extent that their hate has not extinguished their humanity, Gaza Palestinians are anguished by the carnage that is the consequence of Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel. Israelis take no joy in killing. If Palestinians take no joy in dying, they must overthrow Hamas and choose the side of life.
---
Hudgins is director of advocacy and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society.

For further information:

Edward Hudgins, “Israeli Independence and Libertarian Blindness.” May 6, 2014.

Edward Hudgins, “Egypt Revolts Against Islamists and Obama.” July 3, 2013.

William R Thomas, “Free World Order.” November 9, 2011.

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Merlin,

I sent this note to Gus concerning that link:

I think that both the calls of the US for immediate ceasefire and the agreement of the Israeli's to a ceasefire proposal by Egypt are predicated on the sure bet that Hamas will not be accepting any ceasefire until they are about out of rockets. In other words, these two calls for ceasefire are window dressing while the Israeli's (with our annual weapons funding) get the job done.
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About "moral equivalence" that Gus van Horn rightly remarks on. It depends on which "morality". In the morality of sacrifice, self-sacrifice and death, Hamas and its mostly obedient citizens are the best, ever. I always had a suspicion that from way back when suicide missions started, there was an ambivalence about it in the West. When a bomber blew up a cafe in Paris, say, he would be immediately condemned for his "cowardice". When another strapped on a bomb to accomplish the same target, people were puzzled and confused. Could it be that the Cause he represented had moral merit - was righteous??

The confusion stems from a sneaking admiration for self-sacrifice in a world where it's paid, at the very least, lip service - and by some considered the height of morality.

You get the impression that "numbers", casualties, determine who's right and who's wrong in this conflict. If only Israel would turn off its Iron Dome and permit some more civilian deaths--parity will be restored, in that twisted thinking. It's egalitarianism in death, the outcome of that 'philosophy'.

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This self-sacrifice being "admirable," be it cultural, religious, or, some other reasons, deserves some introspection.

A Marine, or, other service person proverbially "throws themselves on the grenade" to save others is heroic to me.

A Japanese pilot who flies his fighter into a US Navy ship is considered psychotic to me, however, since it was a declared war, there is a grudging admiration for the sheer courage that takes.

A Jihadest who straps explosives on and detonates themselves in a civilian environment, is a psychotic savage to me.

Context certainly matters.

A...

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I was having dinner the other night with a good friend and he brought up the subject of the innocent "Palestinians" who have been killed in the last couple of weeks. The number at that time was between 300 and 500 deaths.

I asked him whether he had similar concerns about the 160,000 Syrians who have been killed in that civil war. He wasn't aware of that figure--not specifically, and not generally.

My friend is Yale-educated, well read, a voter, and doesn't have an anti-Semetic bone in his body.

What to make of such things? I really don't know, but my friend is clearly not an outlier.

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I was having dinner the other night with a good friend and he brought up the subject of the innocent "Palestinians" who have been killed in the last couple of weeks. The number at that time was between 300 and 500 deaths.

I asked him whether he had similar concerns about the 160,000 Syrians who have been killed in that civil war. He wasn't aware of that figure--not specifically, and not generally.

My friend is Yale-educated, well read, a voter, and doesn't have an anti-Semetic bone in his body.

What to make of such things? I really don't know, but my friend is clearly not an outlier.

It is something to ponder.

My thought is that there is a shielding that creates itself with the caring and intelligent citizen that just does not pay heed to the 24 hr media overkill.

Similar to working in an ER, or, surgery. Hell, after a few weeks in surgery at the Animal Medical Center, I could eat lunch while watching a surgery.

Police officers and combat vets become insulated from the horror they experience.

Just a thought.

Plus the disgraceful abuse of this catastrophe by dragging the bleeding children across your screen/device makes me tune out from those images completely.

A...

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This self-sacrifice being "admirable," be it cultural, religious, or, some other reasons, deserves some introspection.

A Marine, or, other service person proverbially "throws themselves on the grenade" to save others is heroic to me.

A Japanese pilot who flies his fighter into a US Navy ship is considered psychotic to me, however, since it was a declared war, there is a grudging admiration for the sheer courage that takes.

A Jihadest who straps explosives on and detonates themselves in a civilian environment, is a psychotic savage to me.

Context certainly matters.

A...

Yeah...Though 99% of the time, in the grand scheme of things, these occasions are rare, and one might say, involve selfish values. Consider a person who would deliberately go out of his way to sacrifice his life, anytime, for all comers. That's what I think this is about.

Self sacrifice is first, the morality and mindset of selflessness, from which the tribulations of Gazans arise. Contrast with the Israeli ethic of continued life and good life - even for Gazans if they would only embrace reality. Imagine how far gone parents in Gaza must be, to risk their children's lives, feed them on hatred for Jews--and condemn their future,unborn generations of children to this never-ending cycle of striking at Israel, and flaunting casualties when Israel responds.

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I was having dinner the other night with a good friend and he brought up the subject of the innocent "Palestinians" who have been killed in the last couple of weeks. The number at that time was between 300 and 500 deaths.

I asked him whether he had similar concerns about the 160,000 Syrians who have been killed in that civil war. He wasn't aware of that figure--not specifically, and not generally.

My friend is Yale-educated, well read, a voter, and doesn't have an anti-Semetic bone in his body.

What to make of such things? I really don't know, but my friend is clearly not an outlier.

It is something to ponder.

My thought is that there is a shielding that creates itself with the caring and intelligent citizen that just does not pay heed to the 24 hr media overkill.

Similar to working in an ER, or, surgery. Hell, after a few weeks in surgery at the Animal Medical Center, I could eat lunch while watching a surgery.

Police officers and combat vets become insulated from the horror they experience.

Just a thought.

Plus the disgraceful abuse of this catastrophe by dragging the bleeding children across your screen/device makes me tune out from those images completely.

A...

A less benign interpretation is that we Westerners really don't expect the Syrians to behave. So when they kill each other at a pace that would make John Kerry shit his pants if Israel were doing so, we chalk it up to, "oh well, what do you expect."

But we do expect the Jews to behave.

I mentioned this to my buddy, and got the ole' "blank out" response.

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A less benign interpretation is that we Westerners really don't expect the Syrians to behave. So when they kill each other at a pace that would make John Kerry shit his pants if Israel were doing so, we chalk it up to, "oh well, what do you expect."

But we do expect the Jews to behave.

I mentioned this to my buddy, and got the ole' "blank out" response.

Well, I was trying to be analytically kind, lol.

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While Israeli bombs and bullets were the immediate cause of the carnage in Gaza, the need to resort to war was caused by Hamas, a fact not communicated well if at all by the American media.

Culpable as Hamas is, they are only the latest -- and their "opponents" in Hezbollah are no better.

As I have pointed out before, the Knesset includes anti-Zionist parties. Those pro-Arab and two-state-solution parties often have women as Knesset members. Show me an Islamic state where a Jewish woman sits in parliament to represent a Zionist party. So, if you, as an individual wish to buy Israeli government bonds, or go there and help out in some way, that is your choice and it is laudable. For the United States government to get involved would be to make our national motto: "We who are ignorant of history choose to repeat it."

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220px-HZ.19.02.2012.JPG


Haneen Zoabi, also Hanin Zoubi, (Arabic: حنين زعبي‎, Hebrew: חנין זועבי; born 23 May 1969) is a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli citizen,[1] the first Arab Israeli woman to be elected to the Israeli legislative body on an Arab party's list.[2] Zoabi ran in the 2009 legislative elections for the Balad party.[1][2]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneen_Zoabi

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I think I posted the following on OL, but I can't find it.

So I will post it now.

It first appeared in WaPo, of all places. It is an excellent complement to Ed's article.

The Truth about Gaza

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity.

July 17, 2014

By Charles Krauthammer

National Review Online

btw - Here is the link to the WaPo version, which is identical except for the headline.

I'm not going to quote from this right now, but I do want to say it is extremely clear, impressively so.

Michael

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