Author: Ian O'Doherty
Publication: Irish Independent
Date: January 5, 2009
URL: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/ian-odoherty/why-the-israeli-people-have-finally-had-enough-1592022.html
So, it's genocide now, is it? Or is it actually
another holocaust, something which one typically restrained Palestinian analyst
described as "worse than Hitler's war against the Jews"?
Are we watching the ethnic cleansing of an
entire people? Are we witnessing the deliberate eradication of a race?
Well, no actually, we're not.
Yet the conventional dinner party wisdom which
we've had to put up with in the media, both here in Ireland and generally
across Britain, is that somehow Israel is the aggressor in the rapidly worsening
situation in Gaza.
Footage of air strikes with the ensuing photogenic
explosions and dramatic plumes of smoke, quickly followed by clips of collapsed
buildings and enraged mourners, makes far better copy than actually looking
at the reasons why Israel has done what it's done.
Anyone who devotes only a cursory glance at
the news, both print and television, would be forgiven for thinking that,
out of spite, might and malice, Israel has decided to destroy the Palestinian
people.
The problem with that conclusion -- and it's
not something you're going to learn from the BBC and most other outlets --
is that, contrary to the currently popular belief, Israel is actually acting
with a ridiculous degree of restraint.
Over the last couple of years, thousands of
rockets have been landing on Israeli soil and, finally, they have had enough.
But behind that statistic there is a human
dimension which tends to be rather ignored.
I know many people in the southern Israeli
town of Sderot and what is remarkable about their stories is not the number
or make of rockets which have fallen on them on a daily basis for years, but
the psychological carnage this wreaked upon them.
One woman freely admitted to me that she hasn't
had a proper night's sleep in more than two years as she and her family now
basically live in their bomb shelter and it's hard to tell who she hates more
-- the Muslim terrorists of Hamas or the Israeli government which she thinks
has abandoned them.
It's a common feeling amongst residents of
southern Israeli towns who have been the silent victims of a long campaign
of violence, intimidation and murder carried out by Hamas. And now, finally,
that the Israelis have said that enough is enough, they are somehow meant
to be the aggressors?
There are people of good conscience on both
sides of this argument, but one of the main problems in this debate lies in
the cowardly tendency of the Western media to apply equivalence to both sides.
Thus, Hamas is seen to be as legitimate a
government as the Israelis, and its rocket attacks across the border from
Gaza are seen as being part of a yet another, intractable, interminable Middle
Eastern dispute.
There's just one problem with that approach
-- it's completely wrong.
Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organisation
intent on the eradication of the state of Israel and all its citizens; a violent
fascist regime that allows honour killings and the execution of homosexuals
to continue in its sphere of influence. Bankrolled by Iran, it manages to
make even Hezbollah look like a moderate organisation.
But Hamas is clever.
As a friend of mine from Sderot pointed out,
one of its favourite tactics is to launch Qassams from Palestinian schoolyards
-- while the schools are still in session.
Hamas does this, you see, knowing that the
IDF can't immediately strike back (they can vector a rocket launch site within
90 seconds) because the last thing the Israelis need is footage of a devastated
Palestinian school with dead kids.
And, over the last week, we have seen carefully
manipulated footage of dead civilians, with the fact that they were effectively
used as human shields conveniently ignored. When Israel pulled out of Gaza
-- ironically, the last battalion of IDF troops to leave Gaza contained some
people from Sderot -- they were acceding to international and internal pressure.
The doves on the Left said it was to prove to Palestinians that they wanted
to give Palestinians independence, the hawks on the Right -- and there are
some truly scary right-wingers in Israel, even as ardent a supporter of the
country as I am will freely admit that -- prophesied that it would lead to
carnage.
And, lo and behold, virtually as soon as the
last jeep left Gaza the rockets started. And then the blockade began, and
the whole damn mess started all over again.
But there's a bigger picture here, something
which Israelis have been trying to broadcast to the world, but which, thanks
to their spectacular inability to accurately and sympathetically portray their
point of view, has not been properly transmitted. It's this -- Israel is the
front line of the war between democracy and Islamic fascism.
Would you rather live in a society with a
free press, equal rights for women -- and anyone who knows an Israeli woman
will know that they're not easily suppressed, anyway -- equal rights for gay
people and a proud and stubborn belief in the right of the individual to lead
their life in the way that they see fit or would you rather exist in a society
where women who dare to speak their mind are executed, where gay people are
not just shunned but murdered and where having a dissenting thought marks
you out for death?
The civilian deaths in Gaza are to be mourned,
and anyone who says otherwise is reprehensible. But in a sick and twisted
irony, they are mourned more by Israelis than by Hamas, who know that every
dead Palestinian kid is worth another piece of propaganda.
Here in the West, where we share the same
values as Israel, we need to start standing shoulder with this tiny oasis
of democracy in a vast desert of savagery.
To do otherwise is moral cowardice of the
most repugnant kind.
