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| Misguided Jews protesting violence at the Gaza border last Shabbos (JPost) |
‘Now is the time to stand together and create hope.’ These were the words of Jewish protesters in Tel Aviv on the first day of Pesach (which was on Shabbos this year).
Expressions of hope would normally
get a lot of support from me. As I have said many times, I support any reasonable path toward peace. Even one that
involves painful concessions by Israel if it would end the bloodshed and result
in a lasting and permanent peace, friendship and prosperity for both peoples.
I
nevertheless am appalled at the cynical misuse of those words by a group of extreme secular Left wingers from my own people in Israel. People that would feel quite at home in the confines of the right wing religious extremists, Neturei Karta. At least with respect to the destruction of Israel.
The protest by these misguided Jews is based on my
observation of how the Left generally views things. They were protesting Israel’s deadly response to Palestinians protesting the boycott that has created horrible living conditions for them in Gaza.
Without context - it seems like an easy call to
blame an army shooting live ammunition at
Gaza’s civilians protesting that. That makes it easy for antisemites like Turkey’s
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call Netanyahu a terrorist.
But there s a context that changes everything.
Gaza’s Hamas leadership has a sworn intent to
destroy Israel. That is a religious imperative for fundamentalist Islamists.
Israel has no choice but to defend itself against large groups of Israel hating
protesters from a people that has demonstrated it willingness to kill and maim
innocent Israelis; their own innocents; and even martyr themselves for the cause. A
breach of Israel’s border by a group like this surely qualifies as a threat to innocent Israelis who rely on
protection from its security forces.
That Gaza’s resident Palestinians suffer so
terribly and blame Israel for it puts Israeli citizens at risk for violence and
bloodshed by these protesters. Could Israel have handled it differently? I don’t
know. But I am not in a position to second guess the security decisions of Israel’s military
and civilian leadership. Unlike Erdogan, I do not believe any of Israel’s leaders
are terrorists.
I will however admit that the optics are bad. Viewing
this event out of context does make Israel seem
trigger happy. But it is imperative to look at the historical context of
this situation and see who is really to blame for the very real suffering of Palestinians
living in Gaza.
There has never been a moment where the Hamas leadership
in Gaza has sought peace with Israel. Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist group
that believes that the existence of Israel is a blot on Islam that must be eradicated
by any means necessary.
Their perspective is that the land that the Jews
now occupy was taken illegally by force from the indigenous Muslim Arabs that lived
there for generations in peace as its sole legitimate possessors. It is therefore
their sacred duty to repossess it from the illegitimate European Jewish colonialists
that took away that land.
They are committed to that goal at all cost - willing to sacrifice not only themselves but their own children – which they have used as human shields for the sole purpose of blaming the Israeli aggressors for killing their children indiscriminately. A narrative they have been successful at promoting. A narrative which is of course a huge lie. Israelis have no intention of killing young innocent children. Fundamentalists using them for shields are the ones to blame.
They are committed to that goal at all cost - willing to sacrifice not only themselves but their own children – which they have used as human shields for the sole purpose of blaming the Israeli aggressors for killing their children indiscriminately. A narrative they have been successful at promoting. A narrative which is of course a huge lie. Israelis have no intention of killing young innocent children. Fundamentalists using them for shields are the ones to blame.
Gaza leaders have spared no blood or treasure
towards their religious goal of taking back the entire land of Israel. Every dollar needed to achieve that goal is spent
on it, regardless of where it came from or what it was intended for. Money is spent on things like ‘terror tunnels’
so that devout Palestinian Jihadists
could cross into Israel undetected so that they could terrorize, kill and
maim as many innocent Jews as they could to the point of martyring themselves
if necessary.
It is also no secret that fundamentalist terror supporting regimes
like Iran who see Israel the same way as Hamas does - has been supplying them
with all manner of weaponry to do the same. Which thus far seems to have given
them an endless supply of rockets to fire indiscriminately into civilian Israeli
populations. The Jihad from Gaza has been going on from the moment Israel withdrew from it –
allowing Palestinians to have complete self rule there.
Israel was hoping that the Palestinian leadership
would focus on building up Gaza as a shining example of what a future Palestinian
state would look like. But instead of doing that they turned their entire focus on destroying Israel - leaving
Gaza to deteriorate into the huge mess it is in now. Living conditions for their people are horrible.
And that’s putting it mildly. By taking a Jihadist approach against Israel they
have shortchanged their own people. They
see Palestinians suffering as a necessary price to pay for their religious goal
of getting the land of Israel back. And it is a plus for them to get the world
to blame Israel for their suffering.
Once Israel saw what they Gaza’s leadership did
with all the money and raw materials they received from other countries that
wanted to help them, they were forced to blockade all deliveries so that weapons
smuggled into Gaza from terrorist Islamist fundamentalist states like Iran for
the sole purpose of attacking Israel would be thwarted. This is why Gazans are
suffering. Needed supplies of food and medicine that should have been delivered
to them have been prevented from getting there by a boycott Israel and Egypt
needed to apply for purposes of defending their own people from deadly attacks.
That is the context. But it isn’t too hard for Palestinian
leadership to blame Israel for their suffering. After all Israel is the one
preventing needed supplies from reaching their people. What about Egypt?
They are not Jews occupying their land. Israelis are. So they get the full
blame.
Those participating in the protest see Israel
boycotting their needed supplies. Some of them are Palestinian
fundamentalist predisposed to the cause of ousting the Jews from their land.
Those that are not fundamentalists have also been convinced to blame Israel
rather than their own leaders for their strife. Even Leftists Jews refuse to
recognize the real culprits here.
The reality is that when Israel gave the Palestinians
Gaza, they had every reason to see it thrive. Had they decided to build up their country instead of
focusing all of the resources on destroying Israel, Israel would no doubt have helped them achieve that goal.
Had Gaza’s leadership turned to their Jewish neighbors for help, Israel
would surely have done that. Israel wants peace with her neighbors. They have
no interest in fighting continual wars.
The protesters in Gaza either don’t realize that or
worse - consider the greater goal of getting back the entire land of Israel worth
dying for. In the process they get sympathy from a world that refuses to
recognize the realities of context. The
message is that Israel just wants to make Palestinians suffer.
It is imperative to understand these underlying facts
before judging Israel’s defense tactics. They should realize where the real blame
should be placed for deaths of 16 Palestinian protesters. It is their own
leadership. They are directly responsible for the horrible conditions in which
they live right now. And they are the ones that should be protested. If the
rest of the world watching this would be honest they too would doing that too.
Footnote
Shawn Zelig Astor's take in the Jerusalem Post is right on! But as always. The devil is in the details. How to accomplish this is the $64,000 question:
Footnote
Shawn Zelig Astor's take in the Jerusalem Post is right on! But as always. The devil is in the details. How to accomplish this is the $64,000 question:
