FDD Clifford D. May - - Tuesday, October 24, 2023
OPINION:On Sept. 11, 2001, some of al Qaeda’s victims jumped from the World Trade Center. Better to fall to their deaths than be consumed by hellish flames.
That stomach-churning image, more vivid in my memory than I’d like, led to a hopeful thought: Surely, decent people will never again condone terrorism.
A second hopeful thought from that awful day: In the future, the use of terrorism will set back rather than advance any cause to which it is attached.
Before long, however, prominent journalists were insisting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Over the years since, this moral sophistry has expanded in the media, academia, and international institutions.
This past Oct. 7, many of Hamas’ victims may have preferred to leap to their deaths. Instead, they were tortured. Children were tied to their parents and set on fire. Women were raped and murdered; their corpses were desecrated. Babies were decapitated. Toddlers were dragged from Israel across the border into Gaza and called “prisoners of war.”
Far-right antisemites celebrated. So did illiberal leftists — those who proclaim themselves “social justice warriors” fighting for “vulnerable and marginalized groups,” self-proclaimed champions of “safe spaces.”
It’s their contention that Hamas has a right to “resist” Israeli “occupation” and that “resistance” includes any and all acts of violence, however barbaric.
As for “occupation,” do they not know that the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the hope that Hamas might become less obsessed with killing Jews?
Instead, Hamas, founded in 1988, killed and maimed members of Fatah, its Palestinian rival, and began launching rockets into Israeli villages soon after.
Despite that, Israelis have supplied Gazans with electricity, water, fuel and construction materials (often repurposed by Hamas to make weapons). Gazans were welcomed into Israel to earn a living — 20,000 a day prior to Oct. 7. Countless Gazans have been treated in Israeli hospitals.
Israelis did all this and more — not just out of the goodness of their hearts but also in the hope that they could nudge Hamas toward pragmatism, a less lethal conflict.
Israelis did attempt to prevent Hamas from importing weapons. Does that constitute a cruel and unfair “blockade”? The question is moot, because we now know the attempt failed.
Is there any way in which the terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 are different from the Einsatzgruppen — the “mobile killing units” deployed by the Nazis to slaughter Jews in Europe during World War II?
Like the Nazis’, Hamas’ intentions are genocidal. The Hamas charter is quite candid on that score. Hamas’ patrons in Tehran have been threatening genocide and inciting mass murder since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
That’s caused no concern at the United Nations, even in its Office of Genocide Prevention. On the contrary, U.N. agencies and officials have demonized and delegitimized Israel for decades.
Israel is slandered as “racist” even though it’s the most diverse nation in the Middle East.
More:
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/25/hopeless-on-gaza/
