Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (16 page)

This evidence supplemented other videos and photographs showing rockets being fired from near United Nations facilities, schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas, as well as tunnel entrances in prayer rooms of mosques.

Expert testimony presented before a Knesset Committee confirms the accuracy of the Israeli assessment.
⁴⁶
On September 4, 2014, the
Jerusalem Post
reported that:

Israel’s ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the world, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. (res.) Richard Kemp told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Wednesday.

Kemp pointed out that, during the operation, there was approximately one civilian casualty for every terrorist killed by the IDF, whereas the average in the world is four civilians for every combatant, and that, when taking into consideration Hamas’s use of human shields, this shows how careful the IDF is.

“No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel,” he told the committee.
⁴⁷

35

Supporting Hamas Is Anti-Semitic

August 14, 2014

Criticizing specific Israeli policies is certainly not anti-Semitic. Indeed many Israelis are critical of some of their nation’s policies. But support for Hamas
is
anti-Semitic, because Hamas’s policies and actions are based, at their core, on Jew hatred.

Yet many prominent individuals, some out of ignorance, many more with full knowledge of what they are doing, are overtly supporting Hamas. Some have even praised it. Others, like Italy’s most famous philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, are trying to raise money and provide material support to this anti-Semitic terrorist organization. Still others refuse to condemn it, while condemning Israel in the strongest terms.

Here is some of what the Hamas Charter, which remains its governing principles, says about Jews:

The enemies have been scheming for a long time. [Their] wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting, and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe… They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions… They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests.

Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith, and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations… [T]hey stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate… They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II… They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it…

Most of these references to “the enemies” precede the establishment of Israel. The charter plainly means “the Jews,” and it invokes the usual tropes of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. Indeed, it expressly calls for the murder of Jews, citing Islamic sources for its genocidal goal:

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

This should not be surprising news. Hamas is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an outgrowth of the German Nazi Party. The brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a close ally of Adolph Hitler. It worked hand in hand with Hitler during World War II, establishing the Muslim Waffen-SS Handschar division, which committed war crimes against Jewish communities. It then helped to rescue Nazi war criminals following the defeat of Nazism and the disclosure of the Holocaust.

Nor is the charter and the origin of Hamas merely past history. Current Hamas leaders frequently invoke the “blood libel,” accusing “the Jews” of killing Christian children and using their blood for the baking of matzo. They regard Jewish places of worship and Jewish schools, anywhere in the world, as appropriate targets for their terrorist attacks.

Some of those who support Hamas, such as Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, claim that they support its political goals, but not its anti-Semitic policies. (They must recognize “its legitimacy as a political actor.”) Others, such as the Turkish Foreign Minister and the leaders of Qatar, support its military goals. (They support the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas “because it embraces the Palestinian cause and struggles for its people.”)

An American literature professor, Judith Butler, has gone so far as to call Hamas a social movement that is “progressive,” “on the left,” and “part of a global left.” But what other progressive and left groups murder gays, oppress women and prevent non-Muslims from practicing their religions? As a Jewish woman, Butler would not fare well in a Hamas environment. Nevertheless, she supports this murderous anti-Semitic group because of its “progressive” social policies.

These specious rationales hold no water, since Hamas’s anti-Jewish policies are central to its political and military actions. Some supporters of Hitler made the same argument, claiming that the Nazi Party and its leaders espoused good economic, educational, and political policies. No reasonable person today accepts that excuse, and no reasonable person should accept the excuses offered by supporters of Hamas who claim to be able to slice the bologna so thin.

The same is true for those who argue that Hamas is preferable to ISIS or other jihadist groups that might replace it. A similar argument was made by fascists who claimed that their parties were preferable to the Communists. The reality is that Hamas is an anti-Semitic organization, based on a Jew-hating philosophy, with the goal of destroying the nation-state of the Jewish people and killing its Jewish inhabitants. It is evil personified. There is no excuse or justification for supporting Hamas, and anyone who does is supporting anti-Semitism.

Some Hamas supporters—such as those who chant “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas”—proudly acknowledge this reality. Others, such as Cornell West, who according to the
American Spectator
“headlined a high-profile pro-Hamas demonstration,”
⁴⁸
deny it. But all are complicit, even if they are themselves Jewish or have Jewish friends.

Supporting an organization that at its core is anti-Jewish and whose charter calls for the killing of all Jews
is
anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent. And those politicians, academics, entertainers, and others who support Hamas—and there are many—must be called out and condemned, as Roger Waters of rock band Pink Floyd has been.

So must those, like Navi Pillay, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Council, who see a moral equivalence between this anti-Semitic terrorist group and the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people. She demanded that Israel share its Iron Dome system with Hamas, without condemning Hamas for using Palestinian civilians as its own Iron Dome.

Among the worst offenders is Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has a long history of anti-Semitism. He, like Carter, has urged recognition of Hamas, whose leaders he compares to Nelson Mandela. Among Tutu’s alleged Mandelas with whom he has collaborated is Ahmad Abu Halabiya, who has said the following:

“Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them… and those Americans who are like them, and those who stand by them.”
⁴⁹

I’m quite certain the real Nelson Mandela never made any comparable statement. Yet Bishop Tutu, who refused to sit on the same stage as Tony Blair, has worked hand in hand with murderous Hamas leaders such as Halabiya.

It may be necessary to negotiate—directly or through intermediaries—with Hamas, just as one negotiates with kidnappers, hostage takers, or extortionists. But to recognize their legitimacy as Jimmy Carter and Bishop Tutu would do is to recognize the legitimacy of anti-Semitism.

Carter, Tutu, and other Hamas cheerleaders may be willing to do that, but no reasonable person who hates bigotry should legitimate Hamas’s anti-Semitism or its express goal of destroying Israel and killing its Jewish inhabitants.

Nor should any reasonable person accept the anti-Semitism inherent in what has come to be called “Holocaust inversion”—namely “calling the Israelis Nazis and likening Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.”
⁵⁰
Turkey’s president has indulged in this form of bigotry, as have several Columbia University faculty members, such as Professor Hamid Dabashi. Here is what Dabashi said:

After Gaza, not a single living Israeli can utter the word “Auschwitz” without it sounding like “Gaza.” Auschwitz as a historical fact is now archival. Auschwitz as a metaphor is now Palestinian. From now on, every time any Israeli,
every time any Jew
, anywhere in the world, utters the word “Auschwitz,” or the word “Holocaust,” the world will hear “Gaza.” (emphasis added.)

This perverse inversion was invented by Soviet propagandists when Stalin turned against Israel and Jewish “cosmopolitans.” It has now become a staple of radical Islam and the hard left. It has also become another variation on Holocaust denial and minimization. As Howard Jacobson, the winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, aptly put it:

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial… The modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians.

Yet another species of anti-Semitism—this one dating from time immemorial—is to punish or threaten one group of Jews for the alleged sins of another group of Jews. This phenomenon occurred recently in South Africa, where a leader of the Congress of South African Trades Unions called for “an eye for an eye against Zionist aggression.” He went on to insist that “if a woman or child is killed in Gaza,” then South African Jews, especially members of the Jewish Board of Deputies, must suffer revenge, based on the principle of eye for eye, life for life.

These then are the newest forms of anti-Semitic bigotry: support for organizations, such as Hamas, that overtly call for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel; comparing Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens against rocket attacks and tunnel-terrorism to the Nazi’s efforts, largely successful, to exterminate every Jew in the world; and demanding revenge against Jews for the military actions of Israel. All are equally shameful and worthy of rebuke.

36

Did Israel Have the Right to Destroy Hamas Terror Tunnels?

August 19, 2014

The key question—both legally and morally—in evaluating Israel’s recent military actions is whether the Israeli government was justified in ordering ground troops into Gaza to destroy the Hamas tunnels. This question is important because most of the deaths—among Palestinian civilians, Hamas terrorists, and Israeli soldiers—came about after Israeli ground troops attacked the tunnels.

These tunnels went deep underground from Gaza to Israel and were designed to allow Hamas death squads to cross into Israel and to kill and kidnap Israeli citizens. No reasonable person can dispute that these terrorist tunnels were legitimate military targets.

Nor could there be any dispute about their importance as military targets, since Hamas was planning to use them to murder and kidnap hundreds if not thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers. And Israel had no way to discover from the air the exit points from these tunnels on the Israel side of the border, since they were hidden from view and known only to Hamas. The only way to disable them was through boots on the ground.

If Israel had the right to try to destroy the tunnels, then the resulting deaths of Palestinians must be deemed proportional to the military value of Israel’s actions, since it is unlikely that the tunnels could have been destroyed without considerable loss of life, because their entrances had been deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated areas.

The law is clear that military targets may be attacked, even if civilian casualties are anticipated, so long as the importance of the military target is proportional to the anticipated civilian casualties and that reasonable efforts are made, consistent with military needs, to minimize civilian casualties.

This sensible rule of proportionality was devised in the context of ordinary military encounters, in which the enemy is not using their own civilians as human shields. If the enemy is deliberately using civilians as human shields, the rules of proportionality should allow for more anticipated civilian casualties, especially if the target is of great military significance, as these terror tunnels were.

The reason that civilian casualties, as well as military casualties among both Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers, could be anticipated, is because the entrance to these terror tunnels were deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated civilian areas, including mosques, schools, and private homes. These tunnels could not be destroyed from the air without causing a far greater number of civilian casualties than those resulting from a ground attack.