The moral battleground

From: Thomas Braun <[email protected]>

Sunday, 4th January 2009
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3204131/the-moral-battleground.thtml


   And so now begins the second and most difficult stage. Inside Israel,
there is both determination and dread as tens of thousands of Israel's
conscript army are called to the front. Untold numbers of these soldiers
will lose their lives as the result not merely of the genocidal aims of
Hamas (and its Iranian puppet-master) but also the indifference and
pusillanimity towards Palestinian terror displayed by world governments over
the past six decades of Israel's fight for survival, along with the active
encouragement of genocidal Islamists by leftists, Jew-haters, Muslims and
useful idiots who were on such thuggish display yesterday in the
co-ordinated demonstrations in British and other western cities.

Such people have made no protest at the bombardment of Israeli towns by more
than 6000 rockets in the past six years, deliberately targeting innocent
civilians. They have made no protest at the way Hamas has used Gazan
civilians as human shields, situating its murderous arsenals beneath
apartment blocks, in schools and hospitals and mosques in order to *maximise
* the numbers of civilians killed (in order to manipulate all-too pliable
western opinion). No, their protest only starts when Israel finally takes
the military action aimed at stopping this genocidal barrage.

The worst thing is the moral inversion, in which the murderous victimisation
of innocent Israelis is ignored while their murderers are described as
'civilians' when they are finally killed by the Israelis -- who are
demonstrably taking care to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible.
Tragically, civilians always die in wars; and unfortunately there will
undoubtedly be more civilian casualties in Gaza – along with deaths among
Israeli troops -- as the war goes on. But the frenzied misrepresentations,
double standards and moral inversion fuelling a hysteria in the west which
in turn can only incite more genocidal violence are simply depraved.
Particularly striking in its malice is the way in which the treatment of
wounded Palestinians in Israeli hospitals is ignored – while news of the
barbaric behaviour of Hamas in Gaza's hospitals is airbrushed out of the
picture. At WSJ's Opinion Journal, James
Taranto<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123066366430243153.html#>noted
that a report of this scene in a Gaza hospital briefly appeared in the
New York Times a couple of days ago:

Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their
function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal
bloodletting under way. In the fourth-floor orthopaedic section, a woman in
her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old
husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later,
Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another
ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head.
Mr. Hajoj, *like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24
hours,*[my emphasis] was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had
been in the
central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the
prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But
their trials were short-circuited...

You won't find that passage now on the New York Times website because, soon
after it appeared, it unaccountably vanished into the ether*. Nor will many
in Britain or the west be aware of
this<http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129085>:


Dozens of Gaza Arabs are being treated in Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital at
the same time terrorists are bombarding the city. The medical facility, the
largest on the southern coast, is in the line of rocket fire, and medical
staff often have to stop caring for patients and run for cover during air
raid warnings. The 500-bed Barzilai Hospital has close ties with Gaza City's
Shifa Hospital, Barzilai deputy director Dr. Ron Lobel told the Associated
Press. 'It might seem completely absurd, but we have the privilege to be
doctors. Our medical ethics do not distinguish between patients. We treat
whoever needs to be treated,' he said One Gaza Arab woman refused to
identify herself to AP [Associated Press] because of fear of retribution by
terrorists if it were known that her two-month-old granddaughter is being
treated in an Israeli hospital. 'I am very sad and hurt. We want peace, not
war,' she said as Israel began retaliating after hundreds of Arab rocket and
mortar attacks, some of them lethal.

The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the
better Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down
upon it. What other country in the world would show such restraint in the
face of more than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens – 6000! – that it
took seven years before going to war to put a stop to it? What other country
would treat individuals – including proven terrorists – from that enemy
territory in its own hospitals? What other country would continue to provide
essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies who continued to
fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to go to war to
stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of civilian life
that it contacts the population in enemy territory -- even households
containing identified terrorists – to warn them to flee from the imminent
bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled
moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is? *Israel's
behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate.* *This conflict is revealing
just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not.* The
President of the Czech Republic, who is also the incoming president of the
EU, has emerged in the former camp, declaring stoutly that Israel's
behaviour is both just and necessary. France's president Sarkozy, however,
has called upon both sides to stop hostilities – a moral equivalence which
effectively gives Hamas victory by requiring Israel to abandon the defence
of its citizens. Similarly in Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has
repeated his call for an immediate cease-fire – while Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, according to this Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4093389/
Israeli-tanks-roll-into-Gaza-to-halt-Hamas-rocket-attacks.html
piece,has apparently complained to Israel's Prime Minister Olmert that

too many people have died

Would that be, perhaps, too many Hamas terrorists who have died? Would Brown
have preferred that more of them continued to live so that they could carry
on murdering more Israelis? In startling contrast Farid Ghadry, President of
the Reform Party of Syria, has
written<http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=5238&ICJS=3195&article=1730>:


We Arabs must be the ones to stop Hamas and Hizbullah, rather than support
their demonic and twisted logic of resisting development, enlightenment, and
progress of the region. Even when development and enlightenment stare them
in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their
honor, the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of
fulfillment and accomplishments. So while we abhor violence of all kind,
Israel's campaign against Hamas must continue to the bitter end not only for
the sake of peace but also to help Arabs realize they have a choice: Destroy
like Gaza or develop like Dubai. Will this happen soon? Maybe not, but if a
wake-up call and a nudge, once in a while, to pierce through the fog of
deceit perpetrated by Syria and Iran is what it takes to see the light, then
we stand by the West and Israel in the only hope that an Arab Renaissance in
the Levant may actually have a chance of resurrection.

Alas, many in the west don't stand with Farid Ghadry. They stand instead
with Hamas. Whatever platitudes they mouthe, it is clear that they really
don't want Israel to survive at all. The moral dividing line in this battle
is very clear. Those who stand with Israel are on the side of morality,
justice, and civilisation. Those in the media and public life who denounce
Israel for having the temerity to defend its people are the
fellow-travellers of barbarism. Having done so much to embolden and
strengthen Hamas and Iran, who are playing them for suckers, they are
continuing to stoke the fires of irrational hatred and genocidal hysteria.
As Israeli soldiers die, along with the Palestinian victims of Hamas whether
as 'collaborators' or human shields, their blood will be on these
hypocritical western hands.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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