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Hamas, Israel and a Perverse Inversion of Reality
By Edmund Standing / December 28, 2008
Compare two announcements following Israel’s defensive actions against Hamas in Gaza, as reported by the BBC.
Here’s Hamas:
[T]he exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, called for a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel, in response to the attacks. The movement’s Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said there would be no white flags and no surrender. "Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre," he said.
And here’s Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:
Mr Olmert appealed to Palestinians in Gaza, saying "You – the citizens of Gaza – are not our enemies. Hamas, Jihad and the other terrorist organisations are your enemies, as they are our enemies. They have brought disaster on you and they try to bring disaster to the people of Israel. And it is our common goal to make every possible effort to stop them."
The Hamas response calls for further attacks on Israel, making no distinction between military and civilian targets. The Israeli response clearly defines the enemy – Palestinian Islamist terrorists who regularly launch assaults on civilian targets, as opposed to the Palestinian people as a whole.
When 25 mortal shells pounded Israel recently, the immediate Israeli response was to re-affirm a commitment to humanitarianism:
Despite the mortar shell fire, Israel began transferring humanitarian aid to Gaza on Friday morning. The army said the first of an expected 90 trucks started to deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods to the Strip on Friday. Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided Thursday to open the Kerem Shalom and Sufa crossings to allow the transfer of humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
And then there was this news:
[A] seriously wounded 35-year-old Palestinian man, hurt by a misfired rocket on Tuesday, was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment … The man was apparently injured in the head after a rocket directly hit his home. He received initial treatment at a hospital in Gaza, but it was later decided to transfer him for treatment in Israel. A Magen David Adom ambulance evacuated the man from Gaza to the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
Yet, once again, Israel is being harshly attacked for its defensive actions against Palestinian terrorists who, in contrast to the Israel seen above, have no time for humanitarianism – quite the opposite, in fact. Here in the UK, a blogger for The Daily Telegraph, a leading conservative broad sheet, has claimed that ‘Israel is addicted to violence’. For him, Israel has committed acts of ‘slaughter’:
The attack on the Gaza strip is proof that Israel is addicted to violence. Slaughtering 155 civilians, many of whom are women and children, can not be justified.
Here we go again. Big bad Israel has been ‘slaughtering civilians’ and, according to Hamas, ‘Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre’. Slaughter? Massacre? Even the notoriously biased BBC is more honest:
Israeli F-16 bombers have pounded key targets across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 225 people, local medics say. Most of those killed were policemen in the Hamas militant movement, which controls Gaza, but women and children also died, the Gaza officials said.
Most were members of Hamas, affirms the BBC, although women and children also died, according to ‘Gaza officials’. If most of those dead are members of Hamas, this cannot possibly be described as a ‘massacre’, as Hamas members have made themselves legitimate military targets through their continual shelling of Israeli civilians.
The fact that there should be a knee-jerk response with talk of ‘slaughter’ is very telling. When Hamas proclaims that ‘Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre’ you can immediately guarantee that Western commentators will be falling over themselves to offer the most vitriolic condemnation of Israel. Of course, we have seen the claim that ‘Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre’ before. Last time it was the supposed Jenin ‘massacre’, even referred to as the Palestinians’ ’9/11′ by The Guardian, Britain’s leading ‘left-liberal’ newspaper.
At the time, the Palestinian news agency Wafa announced that the State of Israel had committed the ‘massacre of the 21st century’ at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, with reports of ‘hundreds’ dead. The final fatality figures were 75 deaths: 26 Palestinian terrorists, 23 Israeli Defence Force soldiers and 26 civilians. Those figures in no way constituted a ‘massacre’ and the Israel that is supposedly ‘addicted to violence’ was smeared for what was in fact a very difficult operation, carried out with care. Michael Gove summarises the operation well in his book Celsius 7/7:
The Israeli Defence Force had to work its way through booby-trapped homes, negotiate situations where terrorists were using civilians as human shields, and counter an enemy prepared to endanger other Palestinians in order to evade capture. In the process the IDF had to be bound by an ethical code that requires it to minimize the risk to innocent life. In the process of observing that code, IDF soldiers exposed themselves to proportionately greater risk. Which is why 23 of them died. And their posthumous reward? To be smeared across the world media as war criminals.
The civilians who died at Jenin were being used as human shields by terrorists. That this may have been the case in Gaza goes largely unconsidered. Equally important to consider is the fact that there are female as well as male members of Hamas. Hamas has produced female suicide bombers in the past and will no doubt do so again in the future. Emotive language about the death of ‘women’ needs to be treated critically, given this fact. Are we talking about helpless cowering housewives, or are we talking about people every bit as fanatically devoted to terrorism as their male counterparts?
The common idea that Israel is ‘addicted to violence’ is spurious in the light of the following facts that have already been noted:
1. Israel seeks to target specific terrorist groups, not civilians or ‘the Palestinians’ as some monolithic group.
2. Israel is committed to making every effort to avoid killing civilians, even to the extent that it is sometimes willing to risk the lives of its own soldiers, rather than risk harming Palestinian innocents (as was the case in Jenin).
3. Israel regularly undertakes humanitarian actions in an attempt to help innocent Palestinians.
If anyone involved in the Middle East conflict is ‘addicted to violence’, it is Hamas, not Israel. The foundational Covenant of Hamas, which it has yet to repudiate or revise, states that ‘[t]here is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are a waste of time and a farce’. The Covenant states of Hamas that ‘Jihad [is] its way, and death for the sake of Allah its loftiest desire’.
Hamas is a movement that sees death as its ‘loftiest desire’ and, as we know, it doesn’t hesitate to put this ideology into practice on a regular basis. Hamas really is addicted to violence. Anti-Semitism and calls to violence lie at the heart of its foundational document. Now, here are the foundational aims of the State of Israel, as found in The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel:
it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
We could argue for a long time about the extent to which these aims have been adhered to, but the key point is this: Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organisation whose foundational statement calls for the destruction of Israel – ‘Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it’ – and claims that because ‘Palestine’ is a land ‘that the Muslims have conquered by force’, it must be ruled theocratically for ‘as long as the heaven and earth exist’. Israel, on the other hand, is a country whose foundational statement calls for ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex’, as well as ‘freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture’. These foundational ideals continue to manifest themselves very clearly, and continue to influence the essential approaches of Hamas and Israel. While Hamas seeks to indoctrinate children with conspiracy theories about Jews and teachings expressing Islamic supremacism, Israel seeks to provide children with a real education. While Hamas supporters use genocidal language regarding ‘the Jews’ and glory in religious fanaticism, such religious lunacy is excluded from Israel’s official policies. Of course there are religious extremists in Israel, but the key difference is that their views are not reflected in Israeli actions regarding the Palestinians. When Ehud Olmert speaks of the Gaza operation, he speaks of seeking to target only those who wish to kill Israeli civilians; he does not cite religious texts and call for genocide. According to the results of a Harvard University poll released earlier this year, 68% of Jewish citizens support teaching conversational Arabic in Jewish schools to help bring Arab and Jewish citizens together, and 69% believe contributing to coexistence is a personal responsibility. 73% of Israeli Jews ‘want to live in a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities’ and 77% of the State of Israel’s Arab citizens ‘would rather live in the Jewish state than in any other country in the world’. Naturally, these figures could – and should – be higher, but imagine the results of a similar poll of Hamas’ members and supporters who adhere to the group’s foundational principles: 100% would be in favour of the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a theocracy; 100% would claim that seeking peace is inferior to ‘jihad’; 100% would justify attacks on Israeli civilians. The continuing attacks on Israel from those who claim to favour civilised values are based on a perverse inversion of reality. When theocratic devotees of a Jihadist death cult launch murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, the fashionable approach is to ‘understand’ these criminal actions. And when Israel, in a very limited way, fights back against this violence being directed at its civilian population it encounters a firestorm of criticism and abuse, being accused of ‘racism’ and painted as a bloodthirsty monster that delights in ‘slaughtering’ and ‘massacring’ women and children. All too many in the West have become apologists for terrorism and theocracy, and seem to get some kind of twisted pleasure from spewing bile towards a democratic nation that is based on the principles of secularism and humanism. Ismail Haniyeh is a terrorist propagandist committed to ‘jihad’ against civilians. Ehud Olmert is a democrat committed to halting attacks on civilians. Guess whose side Western ‘progressives’ are going to come down on?
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The Romans didn’t just wantonly murder Jews. They actually had a good deal of respect for them, despite finding their practices somewhat eccentric and their beliefs odd but interesting. They had a pretty historic alliance with them that dated back from before Rome had risen to its glory – say ~300 B.C. or so. Further, Judea, at the behest of zealous factions, needlessly provoked Rome with murderous attacks that didn’t make any sense. And finally, Judea wasn’t surrounded by twenty-three other provinces poised to claim solidarity with it by refusing to recognize Rome and by flirting with ideologies – sometimes seriously, sometimes politically – opposed to the concept of Roman civilization and committed to destroying it.
Thank the deity for that.
P.S. I’d support the Romans – as the more intelligent Jewish factions did.
For a good review, try starting here and here.  Â
There’s two groups of people. Lets say A and B. A come to B’s land, drive B out of their homes and establish themselves there. As the group with the power, military and ability to fight mercilessly, they get the upper hand. B get pissed and fight back. A murder members of group B. This goes on for several years till A gets fed up and slaughters as many B as they can. They consider this right and proper as they are REALLY fed up of B. B then commits acts of terrorism against A.
Now lets call A the Romans and B the Jews. Who do you support?
The trouble with cats is that they’ve got no tact. - P. G. Wodehouse
It really doesn’t matter how patently outlandish another Palestinian/Arab/Muslim slander about Israel/Jews is, there will always be a credulous Left eager to embrace it. I recently posted this on another Jewcy blog:
Here we go again, with the mainstream media blathering on about "cycle of violence," equating Israeli defense with Palestinian aggression/terror. Here’s the (endless) cycle I see: Palis and other Arab/Islamic terrorists commit yet another outrage against Jews/Israelis. The Greek chorus of Europeans and Americans urge "restraint". Israel agrees grudgingly (like Rabin’s handshake with Arafat) once again to turn the other cheek and "end the cycle of violence." Once again the Arab/Muslim/Palestinian terrorists use Israeli restraint to arm for, plan and carry out further terror. Israel, refusing to play the role of plucky victim assigned them by Western effetes, responds in force. Once again, "progressives" tag Israel as the aggressor.
And on another blog here:
Also, consider the Left’s mindless, reflexive support for the underdog, regardless of merit. Class struggle is still the Left’s prime agenda, and the underdog is always the protagonist in the Leftist dialectic. Thus their embrace of the Palestinians, oppressed as they are by – what else? – Israeli apartheid.
After studying, working and living in Europe – not regarding me as Jewish, Euros were unguarded in their talk – I’ve concluded that anti-Semitism remains endemic there, at best barely under the surface. And I’m talking about "quality" people, not Mittel-europa white trash. It’s an affliction.
Of course, that also goes for European media, particularly British. BBC, The Guardian, The Independent…all mouthpieces/apologists for terrorists.Â
Seems to me that rational argument like Standing’s above, no matter how painstaking, is an exercise in futility. You’re either preaching to the choir or speaking to the deaf.
Jeez! If you’re going to pop off like that why not just accuse him of being the next Screech Powers – especially given the "cabana boy" comment. Oh wait… wrong video.
"If Ismail is making those kinds of posts, too, where he does nothing except insult someone he should receive similar punishment…"
Don’t threaten me, you four-eyed little dipstick. Geek alert! Techno-nerd! Eli Valley’s cabana boy! Â
"But you’re wrong to think that this war is election-pandering. If anything it’s going to keep Olmert in power, which isn’t good for anyone EXCEPT Netanyahu."
Not necessarily. Both Barak and Livni made very sure to keep themselves front and center during this entire fetid affair lest the Israeli electorate think them reluctant to incinerate Palestinian babies.
This war has nothing-nothing at all-to do with Israeli security. The Mossad’s Ephraim Halevi says that Hamas is ready to accept a two-state solution on the 1967 lines despite this representing a change from its earlier position (and before you say that this is just a pose until they’re strong enough to push Israel into the sea, let me remind you that you expect Palestine to work with a government full of Liebermans and similar wretches who make no secret of their unholy lust for all of Palestine. Sometimes you have to make do with negotiating with jerks. And you know what else? There’s no Santa Claus).
As Yuval Diskin, the Shin Bet chief, reported just before the murderous Israeli rampage began, Hamas was ready to extend the truce if Israel would agree to stop its incursions into the West Bank as well as Gaza and retreat to the 1967 borders, i.e., conform to international law and the the consensus of the majority of the civilized world. Now Hamas has been far, far more scrupulous about keeping its word than has Israel, whose barbarity towards the innocents of Gaza continued during the ceasefire. So if Hamas says it wants to extend the truce, why would Israel not agree? Even if it mistrusts Hamas, it still has the overwhelmingly upper hand. If it really cares about the welfare of Sderot, if it truly regrets mangling schoolchildren on the way home from class, why not say, "OK, but we’ve got our eye on you"?
I’ll tell you why. Because more than anything, Israel wants the criminally feckless quisling Abbas to remain in power. If Hamas’ leverage is what stops the expansion of the metastasizing settlements, Fatah will have a harder time maintaining the pose of representing its peoples’ interests. To keep Hamas marginalized, Israel finds it worthwhile to maintain the hostilities.
You may recall the words of the malignant Dov Weissglass during the 2005 Gaza "withdrawal": he called the Israeli pullback "formaldehyde". The pullback, he said, "…supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians … this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."
Bottom line? Too much lovely West Bank water, too many of the suburbs we quaintly call "settlements" for Israel to be serious about a Palestinian state. "Grab every hilltop"-that bloated and inert semi-corpse is still calling the shots, isn’t he?Â
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As an addendum to my previous comment, I didn’t mean to imply that ad-hominems are not allowed here. It’d be a double-standard to say we don’t welcome a witty insult or two (you smelly commenters, you).
Two things are unacceptable, however: the first is making personal attacks on a user (which includes things like namecalling someone a ‘faggot’ or a ‘fat piece of shit’ but, typically, not ‘pathetic’ or ‘stupid’. Unless the person is legally ‘stupid,’ in which case you’re being an insensitive prick and are probably a fat piece of shit.)
The other is making unsubstantive postings that contain only ad-hominems, which is what Tom Barrios’s comment qualifies as. His post said nothing of value except that "Ismail thinks he’s smart, but he’s really not" and, yes, seemed to include a veiled threat at the end.
If Ismail is making those kinds of posts, too, where he does nothing except insult someone he should receive similar punishment, but I haven’t been made aware of any contributions like that. (Edit: JewcyTodd addresses this very issue in Jewcy’s recent "My First Hummus" post.)
and one certainly none-too-kind to Israel. The Guardian also has pointed out Jabar’s role in training the Hamas police force, as well as his previous Fatah alignment:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israelÂ
I realize this is kind of an unimportant point in the grand scheme of things…but I still wanted to provide another notation.Â
Ismail’s right, please watch your ad hominems Tommy Barrios.
"It feels it can sit on it’s comfortable perch and feed on the bounties of free speech and democracy while taking a crap on the carpet and the furniture with impunity. It thinks it’s wise, crafty, and wordy but is in reality nothing but a regurgitator of hateful bile and rhetorical vomit from the pits of evil. It believes it is safe in it’s little cage of rusting Sharia steel, but in reality the cat knows where "it" lives and one day "it" will become just another lump of shit in the cat box!"
third person possessive pronoun: its
contraction of "it is": it’s
If the poor impression of Jame Gumb ("it rubs the lotion on its body") or the grammatical solecisms are not enough to ban this guy, how about his torrent of abusive ad hominems, devoid of substantive content? Or the threat of personal harm implicit in his ravings?
I’m actually not in favor of banning even the obviously deranged, but by your own standards, this specimen is clearly more toxic than the pathetic Rob, who was unceremoniously gangplanked a while back. Â
As for the Middle East Times report, please read more the photo caption. What did Jaber have hanging on his living room wall? Why, a photo of that great Hamas icon Yasser Arafat, of course. Confusing, isn’t it?
Look, the question of Jaber’s actual loyalties is unclear, but irrelevant. The Gaza police do things like direct traffic, arrest drug traffickers, etc. They do not lob flying pipes at Israel. The germane discussion is the one which asks how reasonable people can accept "Israel cannot be expected to accept the unbearable assaults of Hamas " (7 Israelis dead in 7 years, by the way) and fault Gaza-starved, immiserated, assaulted at will- for fighting back. Really quite insane.
Further evidence of Israel’s bad faith and its transparently ridiculous "we’re reluctantly responding to the unendurable provocations of Hamas" whine:
1. Israel has expanded settlements, demolished homes, walled people from their flocks and groves, cut deeply into Palestinian territory to construct its apartheid barrier, etc., etc., all in the West Bank, whence no pipe flew towards Sderot nor anywhere else in the Blight Unto Nations.
2. Oh, yeah-there’s an election coming and Netanyahu’s ahead. Hey! Let’s murder some wog kids. That’ll show our countrymen what enormous balls we have!Â
Fatah, smegma…if the guy’s police chief in Gaza, then he’s Hamas.
Hamas TV: "180 killed are from Hamas armed forces Among those killed Hamas Police Commander, Tawfik Jaber"
The only thing I find questionable about Olmert’s appeal to the Gazans is that it assumes they are being held hostage by Hamas instead of wholeheartedly supporting them. If the latter is the case, then is not Gaza indeed a de facto terrorist state? Oh no, they’re victims.
???? ???
From the Middle East Times (not at all sympathetic to Israel’s assault):Â
In the southern town of Rafah relatives gathered around the body of
Tawfik Jaber, the Hamas police chief killed when warplanes unleashed
their assault which Israel says targeted command and control structures
of the Islamist movement.
Adam-
You must be more careful in citing your sources. The Ynet piece you cite is a reprint of laughable report from the notorious World Net Daily, which is as you must know a virulent right-wing rag in bad odor among those who value integrity in their reporting.
How does WND know that Jaber switched sides? Why, "top sources in Hamas’ military wing told WND…" that they did. Is this even remotely credible? That Hamas members are in touch with a bunch of creepy right-Zionist troglodytes, feeding them the straight dope about the internecene stuggle between themselves and Fatah?
You can do better. Â
could you please source jaber’s political affiliation?
Here we find another astonishingly stupid and mendacious emanation from a recent inductee into Weiss’ Jewcy Hasbara Brigade, the feckless Edmund Standing. Since this tapeworm has read critical and cultural studies, he should be equipped to follow the following deconstruction.
First, Standing cites Haniyeh’s altogether laudable assurance that he will not abandon his people’s quest for freedom despite Israel’s despicable efforts. These are precisely the sentiments we rightly expect from the leader of a besieged people, yet Standing wants us to discern the sinister in a comment of ordinary patriotism. He then compares Haniyeh’s remarks to Olmert’s risible, Eddie-Haskellesque lies about having the Palestinian people’s welfare in mind.
What’s that? He sent in humanitarian supplies on Friday? How elevated are the Zionists! How wondeful, to look out for the health of folks they’re about to incinerate! This is like the doctor who makes sure to swab the condemned prisoner’s forearm with alcohol before administering the lethal injection, lest the poor fellow succumb to infection. Nice to know he cares about his patient’s health.
Let’s remember that when Olmert assured the world that he intended to dispatch 90 trucks of love to Gaza, he was about 20 hours away from starting the bombing he knew would make such a caravan impossible. Let’s also recall that Ha’aretz and others reported on the tsunami of PR Israel planned to unleash to accompany its latest murderous rampage. Yet our smirking friend Standing expects us to dense enough to buy his preposterous nugget of hagiography re the lizardlike Olmert’s intentions.
Interesting that Standing approvingly cites the BBC, whose mention by Zionists is typically accompanied by an upraised middle finger. This time, though, the Beeb did get it wrong: Â
"Most of those killed were policemen in the Hamas militant movement…"
Nope. The recruits killed were Gaza police officers, but they were not all Hamas. Among them were many Fatah men; in fact, among the men killed in the barbarous Israeli scumbaggery was the police chief himself, a guy called Tawfiq Jaber. His political affiliation? Fatah.
Next, the shameless Standing gives us several grafs on Jenin, never mind that, unlike Jenin, no one-including Israel- is questioning the number of deaths resulting from the current infamy. These paragraphs are here for defamatory purposes only, not information. Â
We then get assorted barabrisms designed to dehumanize Israel’s victims. Women killed? Hey, they could be suicide bombers. Does this include women of, say, 7 years old? Oh, well, maybe they’re potential suicide bombers.
And Israel’s crocodile tears for the "unintended victims" of its debased actions? Please. Launching an attack on a densely populated region at midday, with schoolchildren in the streets on their way home? Surgical strikes at quasimilitary targets? Tell me, where are the police stations in your town located? I’m sure they’re very, very far from schools, hospitals, homes, etc. Of course they are.
On the whole, an even more sickening than usual performance from one of Jewcy’s metastasizing cadre of ethical dwarves. The only thing Standing gets right is the phrase "perverse inversion of reality", but of course the perfidious flack for slaughter gets the direction of his accusation backwards. Â
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