Over time, I
avoid speaking from the pulpit about Israel.
And the reason is that I cannot match the professionalism of the
commentators who follow world events and understand them in all their
nuance. But sometimes I feel compelled
to speak, because you can find yourselves in the position of defending Israel
to friends, associates, and family. Or,
letting an outrageous statement go unchallenged. Whilst I do not see myself as being a
commentator on current events, sometimes I do have clarity on an issue
that might help you.
As you probably know, in recent weeks
there has been a troubling series of deadly attacks on Jews in Israel. First it was ‘enraged’ Palestinians driving
vehicles into crowds of Israelis waiting for a bus or tram. Then it escalated to different types of
attacks. Just this week on Tuesday, two
Palestinian men wielding knives, meat cleavers and handguns entered a synagogue
during weekday morning prayers. They
killed five and injured a number more.
This week, in the wake of a day of
intense reporting of events in Israel, one of our members told me that a friend
had declared the anger over the attacks misplaced. Actually, the member’s friend had declared
her ‘brainwashed’ to care about a ‘couple of rabbis’ killed in a
synagogue. And why is that? Because Israel killed some 2,000 Palestinians
in the recent Gaza conflict. So, to
complain about a handful of Jews killed by Palestinians, if we’re silent on the
latter, is disingenuous at best.
This person had just used a tactic
that is popular among those who delegitimize Israel. Specifically, he used the argument of False Equivalence. Israel kills Palestinians. Palestinians kill Israelis. Tit-for-tat.
Why criticize the Palestinians? But
let’s examine the nature of these killings.
Yes, a couple thousand Gazans died in
the recent 50-day war. And it was far in
excess of the numbers of Israelis killed – 71 in the latter case. And some of the 2,000 were civilians, but not
as overwhelmingly so as Israel’s detractors want you to believe.
On the surface, it matters how many of
the dead were civilians. A lot. Because, if a large proportion were civilians,
at the very least it shows that the Israelis were applying force either
indiscriminately, or even cynically, specifically to terrorise civilian
populations. It’s for this reason that a
couple of Gazan NGO’s, and the UN Relief and Works Agency, were busy all during
the recent hostilities, number-crunching the death toll. The two NGO’s estimated civilians made up over
80% of the casualties, whilst UNRWA estimated 72%.
But you should know that those figures
are doctored. If you break them down by
gender and age group, you’ll find that over half are of military-age males. To suggest that males of fighting age are
overwhelmingly not fighting is absurd.
Especially when you consider the following. The same agencies discount almost any Israeli
casualties as being civilian. The
reason? Because Israeli men – and in
some cases women – serve in the reserve forces until their 40’s and even 50’s. So even if they are killed when a missile
rains down on them in their home, they are combatants. At the same time, a Gazan cut down in his
home, even though he is an active fighter, is a civilian casualty. All I’m saying is that you can’t have it both
ways. But the Palestinians try, and
largely succeed. And why they
succeed, I’ll get into in a moment.
But let me back up for a second. I’m not saying that a high death toll –
either your own or your enemy’s – is something to dismiss. Even in war, where death is inevitable, it’s
a tragedy. But to take a number such as
those killed on either side of a war, and attach either an equivalence, or even
a strong condemnation or one side specifically because of the imbalance, is
intellectually dishonest. And here’s
why.
The actions of Hamas are calculated specifically
to draw an Israeli response that will result in high casualties. Because Hamas knows it cannot win a military
conflict with Israel. Instead, it tries
to orchestrate conflict in order to defeat Israel in a propaganda war. It knows that much of the world is
predisposed to consider Israel a brutal occupying power, and it is willing to
sacrifice thousands of its citizens in order to continue to feed that
predisposition. That’s why they position
rocket launchers and mortars amidst civilian areas where, if they are hit with
return fire, great carnage will follow. Hospitals.
Schools. Mosques. Apartment blocks. They use these places to shoot off their
projectiles, knowing that the Israelis have the ‘eyes’ to see where the
incoming rounds came from. They use the
same places for storage of munitions, so that when the Israelis hit them,
the damage can be spectacular.
And of course, that puts the Israelis between
the proverbial rock and a hard place. Can
they not respond against the launchers that fire missiles and shells
into their cities? Or course not; they must
respond. How can a sovereign country
tolerate its citizens living under missile fire? So they respond, hoping to kill the
launcher and its crew. And, in the
process, civilians are killed.
But even then, the Israelis try to minimize
the ‘collateral damage.’ They’ve been
known to drop leaflets from aircraft and drones before a bombing raid. And now they’ve embraced newer technologies;
they send out mass text messages to Gazan mobiles, warning of which
neighbourhoods they’re going to hit. But
Hamas’ police force prevents civilians from evacuating the targeted areas, even
shooting their own citizens if they try to force their way out. Such atrocities have been reported by news
organisations, such as the BBC and the NY Times, that could not possibly be
seen as friends of Israel given their overall reporting. But such reporting is often ignored. It’s too rational and measured. It exposes a flaw in an entity that one could
not expect to act ethically, given the asymmetry of its conflict and the power
of its opponent. So even when such
things are reported, the World has a way off dismissing them.
So, given the specific circumstances
of the generation of casualties, the condemnation of Israel, and the drawing of
equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian casualties is a false equivalence. It happens, because the different successor
Palestinian power centres – of which Hamas in Gaza is just the latest iteration
– cynically create their own civilian casualties for no reason other than to
exploit them in winning the propaganda war with Israel, since they can’t win on
the battlefield. If the World were
paying attention to the totality of reporting of the Arab-Israeli conflict,
slanted against Israel though it often is, they would see a much
different picture. So that begs the
question: why isn’t the world
paying attention to the totality, by and large?
I wish there was a simple answer; if
there were, and if I knew it, I would gladly share it with you. But I do have a sense as to what it is.
And it is that Judaism’s successor
faiths – including Christianity and Islam – need to see Israel, and that’s
a code word for ‘the Jews,’ as being an oppressor. That way they can excuse themselves for
centuries of persecution of Jews by their peoples. If the Jews, once they have power, use it to
oppress others, then by golly we don’t have to feel so guilty about
oppressing the Jews! I acknowledge that
this may sound like an oversimplification, but I have dealt with others’ perceptions
of the Jews for so many years that I can’t help but believe it. This, despite how terrible it is if true!
So how do you respond when someone
responds to your concern about Israeli casualties by questioning whether you
care about Palestinian casualties which are, after all, so much greater? You point out the falseness of the
equivalence. They may be simply
ignorant. You know the old saw; repeat a
lie enough times and it begins to sound true. But if the person is not speaking out
of ignorance, there’s a much more sinister possibility. And that possibility cannot be
overlooked. And that is, that a few
Jewish deaths simply don’t trouble him. Given the history of the last 20 centuries, it
is hard to deny that the world is full of people, who are not especially
troubled by Jewish deaths. That’s not a
pleasant thought, but to deny it is to deny reality, So we repeat it. Even on Shabbat.
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