Much of the criticism of Israel and Israel supporters is insulting
A pro-Palestinian rally in Berlin, Nov. 4, 2023. Credit: Streets of Berlin via Wikimedia Commons.
by Larry Brook
There have been so many emotions expressed by members of the Jewish community, and others who support Israel, since Oct. 7 — and the range of emotions often varies widely in the same day.
One that isn’t often mentioned is feeling insulted.
The insult comes in how the current Gaza operation is being framed, what the outcome should be, and how Israel should conduct this war.
Even before Israel went into Gaza — a place it really didn’t want to enter — following Oct. 7, Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion that left 1,200 dead and over 200 captive was framed as “revenge.”
Revenge? With Hamas saying that it wants to repeat what it did on Oct. 7 until Israel gets the message and the Jews leave the region? Revenge? Instead, Israel is working to end a threat that would bring more bloodshed down the road. None of the limited operations after previous Hamas attacks ended the threat, it just ensured a Hamas regroup for another round of bloodshed later.
So many are calling for a ceasefire. The calls came as early as Oct. 8, before Israel had even responded. Hamas had their fun, now it’s time for a ceasefire. What an insult — Israel has no right to defend itself from an enemy whose charter calls for its elimination?
Actually, that’s often heard from the anti-Israel crowd, including the leadership of the “civil rights group” Council on American-Islamic Relations — since Israel has no right to be there, they have no right to self-defense. Correspondingly, the Palestinians are justified in anything they do to overthrow the foreign “settler colonialists” (the fallacy of which would be a whole separate article).
Hamas started a war. One does not start a war and then immediately call for the other side to cease fire. What would end the war within hours? A Hamas surrender and the release of the remaining hostages. Why do the “peaceniks” not call for that?
Because they want Hamas to remain intact. Anything short of the complete destruction of Hamas would be seen by Hamas and Iran as a victory (laughable as it may be) — and would put peace in the region in jeopardy, because if Israel can’t take care of business against Hamas, how much help will they be to the countries that have allied with them recently through the Abraham Accords against the Iranian threat?
It’s a dirty little secret, but behind the scenes, most of the Arab world is rooting for Israel against Hamas. They know that if Hamas continues to exist, there will be more attacks on Israel, and instability throughout the region.
The next insult is how the world is lecturing Israel on how to conduct the war. Watch out for civilians! Be more selective in your targets! Remember the humanity of Gazans!
The world is full of chutzpah.
Remember how this started. Hamas came in, specifically to attack civilians. They used rape, torture and other inhumane methods in their rampage, from infants to the elderly. If you haven’t seen the footage the Hamas terrorists themselves took, listen to those who have seen that footage. Barbaric doesn’t begin to cover it.
It has been said that at least the Nazis had some qualms about what they were doing, they viewed getting rid of the Jews as an unpleasant necessity. The Hamas terrorists loved what they were doing and reveled in it.
So it is Israel that needs to be lectured on humanity, by the likes of Russia and China?
Remember, we’re the people who introduced the world to the concept of b’tzelem elokim, that all people, of all nations, are created in the divine image and thus have infinite worth.
We’re the people who celebrate our freedom from slavery with an expression of concern for the Egyptians who had to die in the process.
Israel is about the sanctity of each life, while in Gaza, mothers tell their children that their highest aspiration is to be a martyr while taking Jews out with them.
For heaven’s sake, the head of Hamas in Gaza, while imprisoned in Israel, had a brain tumor and his life was saved by Israeli surgeons. One of those surgeons has a nephew who is now a hostage in Gaza. Who needs to be lectured?
Israel warns civilians in enemy areas to leave, giving up any element of surprise, and no doubt Hamas fighters take advantage of the heads-up.
This war could have been over within days, with Gaza a parking lot and an eye-popping death toll. But no, to minimize civilian casualties, Israel risks its own soldiers by going in on the ground, a far more tedious and dangerous form of warfare.
And a lot of people refuse to see the evidence before them, of Hamas rocket launchers in school playgrounds, weapons caches in mosques, operational headquarters in hospitals, ambulances used as fighter transports, tunnel entrances in nurseries.
Of course, these same folks used to talk of the “open air prison” and “concentration camp” of Gaza, but now we’re being regaled with all manner of videos showing how much of a paradise Gaza was before Oct. 7.
Even if Western media and activists refuse to acknowledge it, Hamas knows full well that Israel tries to minimize civilian casualties and uses that operationally, because they have shown time and again that they see their people as little more than cannon fodder for propaganda purposes. So the calls for Israel to be “more careful” are an insult to Israel and a neverending source of amusement and encouragement for Hamas.
Iran, Hamas’ main backer, is perfectly willing to fight Israel to the last… Palestinian.
Record low
Remember too, the number of dead in Gaza reported by Hamas’ Ministry of Health (which surely is objective!) doesn’t separate out fighters from civilians. The best estimates are that there’s a 2:1 civilian to fighter death ratio — which is incredibly low in warfare.
Also, Hamas fighters aren’t in uniform — they dress like civilians, which is also against the rules of war. And they have recruited teens, 15- and 16-years old, and trained them as soldiers. Then, they can turn around and cry about Israel “killing children.”
Israel is accused of “carpet bombing” or “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, another libel. Currently making the rounds is a comparison of civilian deaths per airstrike in recent wars. Over the last couple decades worldwide, the figure is around 4.5 deaths per airstrike. In Aleppo, Syria, in 2016, it was 21. In Mosul, Iraq, in 2017, it was 17.
In Gaza? 0.8. And that’s using the Hamas figure that includes enemy combatants, not just civilians.
The world sets an impossibly high bar for Israel to meet, then when Israel far out-performs the rest of the world, it is castigated for not doing even better.
Meanwhile, Israel is accused of committing a “genocide” in Gaza, a charge that is ridiculous by any definition of genocide. It’s even more insulting when reflecting on how Hamas, in its charter, calls for a genocide of Jews, and proclaimed Oct. 7 as the first step toward that goal.
And it isn’t a morality contest based on how many are killed. If that were the case, Britain would have been the bad guy in World War II and Germany would be the righteous aggrieved party.
“Pro”-Palestinian
Another insult is how the sides of this conflict are being framed.
Generally, these virulently anti-Israel groups are presented in the media as being simply “pro-Palestinian.” When Florida looked to shut down some of the extreme groups on campus because of harassment and intimidation, it was framed as silencing groups that merely speak up for Palestinians.
There are two major problems with that. First, it makes it sound like anyone who supports Israel is against the Palestinians, and who can look at the images from Gaza without feeling some shred of humanity? It portrays supporters of Israel as inhumane, worthy of invective by right-minded people.
Second, nobody thinks there is a problem in expressing concern for the Palestinians in Gaza. You’ll hear such concern at pretty much any Israel solidarity rally. You won’t hear any concern about Israeli victims of Oct. 7 at the pro-Gaza rallies, let alone calls to free the hostages.
The problem comes when the anti-Israel rallies devolve into calls for the elimination of Israel, excuse the atrocities of Oct. 7, and call for support of Hamas with the desire that they can accomplish their goal of further Oct. 7s.
That’s a bit more than being just “pro-Palestinian.” But it also plays into a martyr complex, the charge that “pro-Palestinian voices are being silenced,” which we keep hearing, loudly and repeatedly.
The true pro-Palestinian voices are the ones calling for the elimination of Hamas, for finding some future for the Palestinians that doesn’t involve being robbed blind by their billionaire leaders holed up in Qatar, or their brother kleptocrats in the Palestinian Authority.
Leaders who can turn Gaza into what it could be — a tourism haven with a well-educated work force, a prosperous partner for the Start-Up Nation next door.
But nah, they and their “pro-Palestinian” activists would rather tilt at the windmill of making Israel disappear, and stay in misery until that (never) happens. (Why else are there still Palestinian refugee camps in areas that the Palestinians have governed for 30 years?)
Among the “pro-Palestinian” voices are activist groups claiming to speak in the name of the Jewish community (or who state that the Jewish community “doesn’t speak in my name”). The far-left fringe Jewish Voice for Peace and its Mini-Me, IfNotNow, have been quite vocal, and most media are all too happy to give air time to the small group that bucks the mainstream community and parrots their anti-Israel narrative.
Detractors say those groups are self-hating Jews (though there are many non-Jews in their ranks, including a leading Palestinian activist), but really, they are more self-smug Jews who fancy themselves on a higher moral plane than the warmongers in the mainstream Jewish community. They also cling to the belief that Israel is in the wrong, and if Israel will just stop defending itself, all will be well.
The idea that there are those out there who want to destroy the Jewish people, such as a certain group in Gaza, is dismissed as an over-reaction to “trauma” from a faulty reading of our history.
So they call for ceasefires that will only lead to Hamas being strengthened, and will result in yet another war once they regroup. In the name of standing up for peace, they provide comfort to those who seek war against us.
If not now? What about the previous verse, if I am not for myself who will be for me? (And yes, it speaks of not being only for myself, reference the above comments about the sanctity of all people).
Who will be for me? Not the women’s groups who tell us to believe women and who condemn rape — unless you’re an Israeli, thus the deafening silence from those hypocrites. Not the Red Cross, which refuses to do what it does everywhere else and demand to see the Israelis taken hostage.
Not the humanitarian groups who say Israel is entirely to blame for the situation in Gaza, ignoring that Hamas started the war and hijacks humanitarian aid coming into the strip, or that it spent two decades building up for war with Israel without making any plans for how to help their civilians survive the inevitable conflict, and that Egypt has no intention of allowing Gaza refugees into its territory, a stance echoed by every one of the Gazans’ brethren throughout the Arab world.
Not universities, where speech has previously been considered violence and “microaggressions” are policed rigorously — unless it’s against Jews.
For the world, dead Jews don’t count. For Hamas, dead Gazans are useful propaganda points.
And the media lap it up. The number of howlers recently is mind-boggling. One of the most perverse came from Sky News, where the anchor pressed an Israeli diplomat on the hostage releases. She actually asserted that Israel giving up three Palestinian prisoners for each Israeli hostage is a demonstration of how Israel devalues Palestinian life. Talk about an insult.
Moving forward
The best thing that could happen is Israel ignores the world and pushes through to victory. A Hamas surrender. A new form of leadership in Gaza — whether international oversight, pragmatic locals or some other group that is willing to see the area demilitarized and developed into a proper territory, and then perhaps a country. The schools would have to be purged of the outright Jew-hate that pervades the curriculum of the United Nations schools, funded by Western taxpayers.
Israel has no interest in being in Gaza for any longer than necessary. But Gaza can not be allowed to be a terror base any longer, and a message must be sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houtis in Yemen and their Iranian overlords.
And a message must be sent to the world — we will survive and thrive, no matter what you think.
Larry Brook is editor of Israel InSight and Southern Jewish Life. A version of this piece appeared in SJL in December 2023.
