July 13, 2014
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=5159
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We are now reconciled to the
fact that in any conflict -- even when we are exercising our right of
self-defense -- we will either be condemned or, at best, accused of
acting disproportionately.
However, the latest round of hypocrisy by Western leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, beats all records.
Despite anger and condemnation
from many of his constituents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has,
until last week, effectively been acting as a supplicant by virtually
pleading for a cease-fire, assuring Hamas that Israel would abide by a
new truce. Responding to their missiles with “restraint” and reacting on
a tit-for-tat basis, bombing empty sites, Israel dispensed with any
pretense of implementing genuine deterrence.
As critics predicted, Hamas
interpreted this as a signal of Israeli weakness, which emboldened the
organization to intensify and extend missile attacks to all major
cities, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, sending the majority of the
population to the shelters. Hundreds of missiles rained down throughout
the country, but Iron Dome has successfully intercepted rockets,
avoiding massive civilian casualties and major dislocation on the home
front. Iron Dome has proven to be another example of Israeli ingenuity
in the face of crisis, but no system is foolproof, and we must gird
ourselves for possible casualties in the future.
The efforts undertaken by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize civilian casualties are unparalleled in the annals of warfare.
Telephone calls are made in
advance of targeting buildings to minimize civilian casualties, despite
the fact that this allows Hamas to also vacate the premises. It should
be noted that the U.S. has never felt obliged to provide advance notice
to the families of terrorists to vacate buildings when its drones were
employed to carry out targeted assassinations.
Nevertheless, in a conflict of
this nature, irrespective of all precautions, loss of innocent civilian
lives is inevitable -- especially in a terrain in which rocket launchers
and command centers are deliberately located in heavily populated
civilian enclaves, including hospitals and kindergartens. Furthermore,
Hamas cynically employs civilians, including women and children, as
human shields and it is Hamas who must be held accountable for the
inevitably increasing number of civilian casualties.
We are grateful to the American
people and the successive administrations, including the current
administration, for the generous aid toward our defense requirements.
Although we appreciate that the
U.S. administration expressed support for our right to exercise
self-defense, we consider it intolerable and hypocritical for Obama and
his spokesmen to blur the distinction between the terrorist aggressors
and us, their purported allies who are acting in self-defense.
Obama patronizingly urged both
sides to display “restraint” and not be motivated by “revenge.” His
special assistant and White House coordinator for Middle East affairs,
Philip Gordon, was the keynote speaker at a “Peace Conference” in Tel
Aviv under the auspices of the newspaper Haaretz (see accompanying
photo). With rockets disrupting the conference, Gordon slammed Israel
for failing to come to terms with the Palestinian Authority and
dismissed Netanyahu’s security concerns -- pointedly ignoring that PA
President Mahmoud Abbas had just consummated a merger with Hamas, which
his government had effectively sanctioned.
This demonstrates that despite
Netanyahu’s extraordinary, even painful efforts to appease Hamas and
avoid war, we are still being bracketed together with the terrorists in a
distasteful conundrum of moral equivalence and condemnation for
ultimately fulfilling a government’s principal obligation -- to provide
security and protection for its citizens. This is reflected in the
statement issued on Saturday by the UN Security Council and approved by
all its members, calling for a cease fire without any reference to the
cause of the crisis.
If I were the prime minister of Israel, I would write a letter to Obama and other Western leaders along the following lines:
Your equivocal response to our
legitimate obligation to protect our citizens has profoundly
disappointed the vast majority of Israelis. I therefore dispense with
conventional diplomatic formalities and frankly convey our frustrations.
Israel is the only democracy in
which the rule of law applies in this turbulent region. We have avoided
the carnage and mass murder that has enveloped millions of people in
this region, which has been overwhelmed by the barbaric forces of
Islamic fundamentalism.
We have no desire to rule
others and have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to make sacrifices
to achieve peace with security. We failed because our purported
Palestinian peace partner is unable, and many believe unwilling, to make
the reciprocal compromises required. We were even unable to conduct
negotiations with him without releasing mass murderers whom he
subsequently feted as national heroes.
The PA then united with Hamas,
an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization whose charter
explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and enjoins its followers
to seek to kill Jews wherever they may be.
It is Hamas controlling Gaza
that launched missile attacks against us, obliging us to respond
forcefully only after having provided them ample warnings to cease their
barbaric onslaught on our civilian population.
I ask you, President Obama, how
would you respond if a region adjacent to the United States controlled
by terrorists bombarded American civilians with hundreds of rockets
daily?
What would you consider to be a proportionate U.S. response to such an attack?
Could you visualize instructing
American military forces to make telephone calls in order to warn
civilians to evacuate areas that were going to be targeted because they
served as missile launching areas or terrorist command posts?
Would you consider it
appropriate to conduct targeted assassinations -- as you have done in
Afghanistan and elsewhere -- against leaders directing missiles on
American civilians and calling for the destruction of the United States?
Finally, how would American
civilians react if the U.S. government were to continue providing goods
and services, including electricity, fuel and water to a neighboring
regime that was simultaneously targeting its civilian population with
missiles?
We know that your honest answer
to such questions would be that you would take whatever steps were
necessary to defend your citizens and bring an end to the terrorist
threat on your border -- even if it were to result in major collateral
damage to civilians.
How would you respond to your
allies if they urged restraint, calling you not to respond
disproportionately and avoid being motivated by “vengeance”? I have no
doubt that you and the vast majority of American citizens would be
outraged and tell them where to go.
I pose the same questions to
European leaders and seek to ascertain how they would respond if
terrorists on their borders were launching missiles into London, Paris,
Berlin, or Brussels.
By any ethical standard, Hamas
represents the epitome of an evil jihadist Islamic fundamentalist
regime. Its charter calling for the murder of Jews is backed up by a
consistent record of deliberately targeting innocent civilians, whether
by blowing up buses, cafés or shopping malls; abducting and murdering
children; or firing missiles indiscriminately at civilian centers.
Surely under the present
circumstances and taking into account the terrible carnage as hundreds
of thousands of innocent people are massacred in Syria, Iraq and
elsewhere in the region by the jihadist counterparts of Hamas, we are
entitled to expect that our allies would unequivocally distinguish
between the aggressors and those defending themselves.
There is no moral equivalency
and to even imply that Israel bears some responsibility for the
escalation of the current crisis by calling on both sides to exercise
“restraint” is not just disappointing but a breach of trust between
allies. It is surely now time for the United States and the EU to
unequivocally support the forces of democracy against the forces of
evil.
The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com.He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom
Recent articles:
There is no moral equivalence but Netanyahu must act now (July 9, 2014)
The Klinghoffer Opera and the American Jewish Establishment (July 1, 2014)
As Europe slides into a Dark Age, Jews must review their future (June 25, 2014)
Our Islamic Fundamentalist Adversaries are Inhuman Barbarians (June 19, 2014)
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