There is no moral equivalence in warfare between the Israelis
and the Palestinians.
The Israelis follow general Western ethics, where the lives of enemy civilians have value.
It is true these were not always Western ethics, and in a fight against extinction might not be Western ethics again.
But these are Western ethics in warfare now, and the IDF follows them.
The Palestinians, sadly, have no ethics in warfare.
For them the rules of war are the same as for most armies in human history
going back thousands of years.
No morals. Anything goes.
They deliberately target and kill civilians on the other side,
and openly celebrate doing so, without any apparent shame.
Polls show
the majority of Palestinians support killing Jewish civilians.
The Israelis have a religion
and a western philosophy
that believes in basic human morality,
where in war one should try only to attack military targets.
The Palestinians, sadly, do not have a religion
that defends
basic human morality,
and so their warfare is barbaric and racist, supporting the killing of all Jews, even
children and infants.
The Palestinians should be ashamed of their fighters, and ashamed of their war.
Israel sites its military facilities as far from civilians as it can.
Palestinians and other Arabs could easily attack these and avoid civilian deaths.
They choose not to.
They choose to attack civilian areas instead.
Why?
Because Palestinian and other Arab fighters are happy to kill enemy civilians
of all ages.
They are all infidels - it doesn't matter to them.
Because Palestinian and Islamist fighters have no morality, no honour
and no sense of shame.
They do not have the code of morality that normal people have,
such as avoiding the innocent in war.
Because attacking civilians is safer.
Attacking an IDF base is extremely dangerous, and liable to get you killed
without achieving anything.
Much easier to attack defenceless women and children in homes and shops
- if your morality allows you live with that.
Hezbollah (and Palestinians and other Arabs)
could easily launch their military attacks far from their own civilians.
They choose not to.
They choose to embed their military in their own civilians.
Why?
Because it will restrain the Israelis, because they are civilized.
Israel doesn't want to kill enemy civilians,
so they can be used as effective human shields.
Hiding in civilians
gives the Islamists a military advantage.
This would not of course work in reverse.
Israel embedding any target in civilians
would not restrain Islamists attacking it in any way.
Because if enemy civilians are killed by Israel,
it is good for the enemy.
It may be the only thing that will stop Israel,
if the (normally hopeless) Islamist military attacks can't.
Why? Not so much because of international opinion
as because Israeli domestic opinion will restrain their military.
Again, this would not work in reverse.
Israeli civilian deaths would encourage, not demoralise or slow down, their enemies.
The IDF does not target civilians:
"If the IDF wanted to target civilians, Gaza would be a smoldering crater and there would be hundreds of thousands killed in 50 days.
No military expert on the planet says Israel targeted civilians. They know what Israel could do."
Israelis are appalled by targeting of civilians:
"if an IDF soldier would shoot a Palestinian family at point blank range for no reason except a sense of dignity and revenge, Israeli society would rightly condemn him.
...
the murder of the Henkins
is like the murders of Mohammed Abu Khdeir
or of the Dawabashe family.
In those cases the victims were targeted.
And .. the difference between the morality [of Israelis and Palestinians] becomes crystal clear.
Because Israeli society, from the Prime Minister to the people on the street, rose as one to condemn the murder of Abu Khdeir.
Because Israelis raised cash to pay the victims of the Dawabashe arson/murder.
Because the vast majority of Israelis are naturally disgusted and ashamed at the thought that one of their own could be responsible for such depravity."
In contrast, Palestinians support and celebrate the targeting of civilians:
"And how did Palestinians react to the murder of the Henkins? They celebrated. They shot off fireworks. They expressed uniform happiness on Facebook.
...
What does it say about Palestinian society that seemingly no one, from Abbas down to the streets of Nablus, can condemn the murders of the Henkins?
...
This is the difference between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.
This is the difference between a moral society and one that is perverted."
The Palestinian way of war.
Picture credit unknown.
Tell me here.
Of course, this is only one aspect of the shameful Palestinian/Islamist way of war.
Another aspect would show the Palestinian "soldier" shooting into the baby carriage
when it was alone.
I'm not being over-dramatic.
You're familiar, of course, with the Palestinian attack
where, in cold blood,
they machine-gunned a baby in a baby seat at close range.
Another version of the image.
Picture credit unknown.
Tell me here.
A new tactic emerges in 2006:
Palestinian civilians form a human shield around a target,
forcing Israel not to strike it.
"Israel called off airstrikes on the homes of two militants Sunday after hundreds of Palestinians crowded around the buildings forming human shields, a new tactic that forced the army to re-evaluate its aerial campaign in the Gaza Strip.
...
It was the first time Palestinians have formed human shields to prevent an airstrike.".
This successful tactic was then repeated in later Gaza wars.
Here's a question:
Why don't Israeli civilians form human shields around targets?
If you can answer that question,
you are well on the way to seeing past the propaganda
and finally understanding the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
The study
An Engineered Tragedy,
Don Radlauer, ICT, 2002
(and here)
shows that
70 percent of Israeli deaths are non-combatants.
15 percent of Palestinian deaths are non-combatants.
Why the difference?
What causes this difference?
Also, 95 percent of all Palestinian deaths are male.
Why is this?
The difference comes because of the difference
in Israeli and Palestinian morality in war.
From the ICT study above:
The Palestinians kill a broad section of society,
including old people and
people minding their own business in coffee shops and on buses:
The Israelis kill young men engaged in violent attacks and riots,
and stupid kids standing around watching:
At around age 12, Palestinian boys (but note, not girls)
start watching riots, helping, spotting,
running back and forth,
throwing stones and carrying toy guns, and, inevitably, getting shot:
The fact that Palestinian girls aren't being killed indicates that
the Israelis aren't randomly killing civilians,
but engaging in combat, and only those stupid enough to be in the middle of the combat
are in danger.
In fact, more Israeli girls are killed than Palestinian girls.
On Israel's rules of engagement against children and youths throwing rocks:
First, it should be noted that
if you don't want to get hurt,
stay at home. Don't throw rocks.
Parents, don't let your children throw rocks and
Molotov cocktails
and pipe bombs,
while snipers fire on Israeli troops from the background.
Ultimately, that is the answer.
Whatever rules of engagement Israel uses,
children participating in riots and shooting
will get killed.
The answer is children should stay at home.
Let's Talk About the Children
by Naomi Ragen, November 3rd, 2000.
"I cannot help but gasp every time I see it: children in front of tanks, throwing stones at armed soldiers.
And nowhere, but nowhere, is there a single mother running to grab their hands and lead them home.
Where are the Palestinian mothers? And what in Heaven's name are they thinking when they let their children
endanger their lives, and the lives of others"
Palestinian child abuse: The Silwan incident, Oct 2010.
An ambush is prepared in front of cameras.
Palestinian children are encouraged to attack and stone an Israeli car with a settler and his 13 year old son in it.
A child runs at the car and is hit.
If the car stops, the settler and his boy may be killed horribly.
Luckily the driver gets away.
Comical lies from the Palestinian boy afterwards:
"I had just left the Friday prayers .. when I saw a car speeding towards me. I couldn't run away in time, I didn't even have time to signal him with my hands. It was clear he did it on purpose. I was on the sidewalk."
The parents of these children should be in jail.
Duma arson attack, 2015
(gang of murderers condemned by all Israel; not celebrated or honoured in Israeli schoolbooks, etc.)
None of the above are very convincing in showing
actual intent
by the Israeli state
to kill civilians.
Again, it seems to any objective observer that
the Israelis try to follow the rules of war.
Irgun and Lehi were terrorists, I agree.
Many Zionists declared Irgun and Lehi to be terrorist orgs even before 1948.
The Israeli government in Sept 1948 declared both
Irgun
and Lehi
to be terrorist orgs.
THE CHALLENGE:
If you believe the Israelis are "just as bad" as the Palestinians,
find me a single incident since 1960
in which the Israeli state deliberately targeted and tried to kill civilians
in the same way the Palestinians do every day.
The Palestinians routinely and deliberately target and attack
schools, shops, restaurants, nightclubs, buses, aircraft,
civilians in their cars and houses,
and so on, with no military target in sight.
Show me a single incident since 1960
when the Israelis did this.
Tell me about it
here.
Arguably a modern war crime:
The bombing of Salah Shehade's house, July 2002,
was arguably a modern war crime by Israel.
Not a random bombing of civilians.
It did have a legitimate target, a Hamas terrorist leader.
But it was not a surgical strike, but rather the flattening of a house and its neighbours, killing many innocents.
Two "massacres" in January 2023 show the difference:
On 26 Jan 2023, Israel raided a camp in Jenin to arrest jihadi terrorists from Islamic Jihad
(the clue is in the name).
The terrorists fought back.
Nine terrorists were killed
in the fighting.
On 27 Jan 2023, a racist Palestinian jihadi
killed seven completely random Jews at a synagogue.
Deranged leftists compared the two "massacres",
and if they were asked to condemn the synagogue massacre,
they demanded the pro-Israel side condemn the Jenin "massacre".
A chart sums it up.
See full size.
From here.
The war since 1948 summed up in two pictures:
A study of deaths in the conflict in first half of 2023.
From here.
Palestinian deaths in the first half of 2023.
From CAMERA.
There is no ambiguity on the Palestinian side.
It is policy (and always has been)
to deliberately target and kill all civilians, from the old to the young.
Endless attacks are made on civilian targets, with no military target in sight.
Islam seems to possess no fundamental rules of warfare.
Judaism seems clearly morally superior to Islam,
since it opposes targeting civilians in warfare.
TV interview in 2011 of
92 year old
Palestinian woman.
Her father took part in the
Hebron massacre of the Jews in 1929.
She
celebrates the massacre,
and hopes for a greater massacre of the Jews in the future.
From MEMRI.
I point out
that if Hamas had better technology, they would use it to more carefully target civilians
at
pre-schools, primary schools, synagogues, hospitals, cafes and so on.
School bus attack, Apr 2011.
Hamas uses laser-guided missile to carefully target
an Israeli school bus, killing a 16 year old schoolboy.
The killing of 7 children (and 1 unborn)
in the Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001
was the turning point
in me abandoning the criticism of Israel I grew up with.
One month later,
9/11 then finished that world off for me.
The Sbarro massacre
sums up the mental sickness (and I am being quite literal)
of Palestinian society.
It's not just that they targeted women and children.
It's that they openly celebrated it afterwards.
The leader behind this attack on defenceless children was
the mass murderer
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Justice
came calling for him a few years later in March 2004,
when an IDF helicopter gunship fired air-to-surface missiles at his wheelchair.
Sbarro butcher, the evil witch
Ahlam Tamimi,
describes in
July 2012
how the Palestinians celebrated the killing of children:
"Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. ... inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn't even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings.
...
Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn't even know that I was among them."
The worst thing about the Palestinians
is that
- unlike the Israelis -
the Palestinians deliberately target
women and children.
The Palestinians have no basic human morality
in their conduct of war,
and believe in killing all Jews, including children,
toddlers and babies.
Opinion polls show
the majority of Palestinians support killing Israeli civilians.
The Israelis are not like this.
No opinion poll in Israel
has ever shown majority support for
killing Palestinian civilians.
The Israelis fight a war against military targets.
The Palestinians' war consists of almost
nothing but war crimes against civilians.
The Islamists are quite open about
targeting women and children
in their homes, schools,
and in their daily life:
"All the Jews are targets, whether military or civilian.
It's our land and they are in the wrong place.
It's their duty to pay attention to safety of their own families
and move them away from the battlefield."
They are openly depraved. The Islamist above says:
"With the exception of Israel, we do not target civilians",
making clear that in Israel they do target civilians.
The idealistic twentysomething Islamic fascists
moved in on the stopped car
and shot the four children
- including a 2 year old in a baby seat -
repeatedly
at close range.
The Palestinians were not ashamed of this sick war crime
committed in their name,
but rather
celebrated it.
Also here.
The thug Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority
described the killers as "heroic".
They described the children as "terrorists".
Al Jazeera
jihad TV described the killing as
a "resistance strike".
None of this is unusual.
The leader behind this attack on defenceless children was
Mohammed Khalil,
leader of Islamic Jihad in southern Gaza.
Justice came calling for him in Sept 2005.
A commenter
expresses how I feel:
"That murder has haunted me since it happened. What kind of human could machine-gun a baby
in her carseat? Hatred, pure evil."
Some other children, toddlers and babies
deliberately attacked
by Palestinian Islamofascists:
Shaked Avraham,
a 7 month old baby shot in her swing
by a Palestinian gunman.
See photo.
The Cohen family
of Kfar Darom -
a bomb attack on a school bus full of children.
3 children have legs blown off.
Sinai Keinan,
a 14 month old
killed
in a suicide bombing of civilians.
See photo
(and here).
Avia Malka,
9 months old,
killed by Palestinians at a wedding.
See photo.
Shoshana Nathanson,
5 months old,
horribly injured
in a Palestinian suicide attack on children on a bus.
Her 3 year old sister
Tehilla Nathanson
was murdered.
See photo
(and here).
Noam and Matan Ohayon,
two baby boys shot
by a brave young Palestinian Islamofascist
as they cowered in their bedroom with their mummy.
See photo.
The killing of 5 year old Danielle Shefi in 2002
was particularly notable
because a Western intellectual tosser had just been in the media a few days before,
apparently calling for such killings.
The Irish poet
Tom Paulin
has a fanatic's hatred of Israel.
He
was interviewed
by Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No.580,
4-10 April 2002:
"The Palestinians, he says, need good anti-tank weapons. "They have got to meet force with force. They have to be cunning and forceful."
So how does the suicide bomber fit within this balance of power?
"I can understand how suicide bombers feel," he answers. "It is an expression of deep injustice and tragedy. I think -- though -- that it is better to resort to conventional guerrilla warfare. I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale. Hitler bombed London into submission but in fact it created a sense of national solidarity."
If there is one thing Paulin clearly abhors about Israel, it is the Brooklyn--born Jewish settlers.
"They should be shot dead," he says forcefully. "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.""
5 year old
Danielle Shefi was
shot dead cowering in her bedroom with her baby brothers
by brave Islamic fascist heroes, on
27 April 2002,
a few days after Paulin's call for such killings.
They also shot her 4 year old baby brother.
Danielle Shefi is now
the name Paulin will forever be linked with:
"I feel like a leper", says Paulin, 5 Aug 2002.
Sadly, such views are not leprous enough.
Paulin's views are quite normal in
trendy social circles in the west,
as is
his absolute blindness in thinking of himself as some kind of "enemy"
of Nazism.
In fact, the "Nazi test" is staring him straight in the face
and he is failing it.
The world is full of latter-day Nazis,
and Paulin is an ally of theirs, not an enemy.
The butcher behind this attack was
Salah Shahade.
He was killed by a 2,205-pound bomb dropped by an IAF F-16
in July 2002.
Terry Eagleton,
another Irish-origin,
British academic
apologist for Islamic fascism.
Terry Eagleton's defence, 26 January 2005,
of the suicide bomber killers of women and children
in Israel and Iraq:
"They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice;
and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice."
So when the starry-eyed young Islamist walks into the
Sbarro Pizzeria
and incinerates toddlers, babies and their mummies,
the crime is being committed against him?
So the Iraqi bombers
"have to" fight to stop democracy?
His ignorant article is full of unthinking assumptions,
such as the assumption that the suicide bomber must be living a
"wretched" life of "dispossession"
and "lack of self-determination"
(as opposed, for example, to simply being a
religious fanatic).
Image
from
the killing of Danielle Shefi, age 5,
by Hamas, Apr 2002.
She was sitting awake in her bedroom in the morning,
with her mummy and two baby brothers,
when the Hamas
gunman came in and sprayed them with automatic fire.
Image from here.
An assault on Jewish innocents by the anti-semitic
"Palestine Liberation Front",
including the Lebanese monster
Samir Kuntar
(also spelt Kantar, Quntar, Qantar).
The terrorists carried out a home invasion of
the apartment of the Haran family.
They took the father, Danny Haran, hostage with his 4-year-old daughter,
Einat Haran.
The mother, Smadar Haran, hid with her 2-year-old daughter.
As the terrorists searched for them, she struggled to keep the toddler quiet
and accidentally suffocated her.
(Similar stories have come out of the Holocaust, where Jews tried to hide with crying babies from searching Nazis.)
Meanwhile, the monster Samir Kuntar
shot Einat's father dead in front of her,
and he then smashed the 4 year old's head on a rock until she was dead.
Palestinians dance in celebration at the killing of Israeli civilian women and children
in Aug 2004.
Images from Reuters.
Found through
here.
Original source lost.
They are celebrating the Islamist suicide bombing of two buses of women and children
doing back-to-school shopping in
Beersheba,
which killed 16 innocent civilians -
including a 3 year old little boy,
Aviel Atash -
with no military target anywhere in sight.
The women and children on the bus were the targets.
And the Palestinians are not embarrassed by this.
Instead they dance in the streets.
Palestinians openly celebrate bus bombings:
"Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, the apple of my eye
...
A bombing every minute;
Soldiers are afraid;
In black bags;
Chunks of flesh of Jews;
In black bags;
Chunks of flesh of Jews"
Comment on the above:
"I apologize for re-stating the obvious, but if Americans or Israelis openly celebrated
the murder of innocent civilians, pictures of the celebration would be plastered
on the front page of every newspaper on the planet."
It is very rare for modern westerners (American, Israeli or other westerners)
to celebrate the death of civilians on the other side in war.
Whereas such celebration is commonplace in Islamic societies.
This is because western morality is superior to Islamic morality.
The Palestinians, with their primitive racist tribalism,
want to kill women and children.
The Israelis, with their sophisticated modern universal morality, don't.
They only want to kill combatants.
That
is the difference between them.
There have, unfortunately, been a few times when extremists in Israel
celebrated the death of civilians on the other side.
But these are rare, and they are loudly condemned across Israeli society.
Afterwards:
"But in the fanatic Jewish precincts in Hebron, settlers danced in the streets and praised Goldstein's martyrdom. The Purim parades continued as if nothing had happened, and some residents of Kiryat Arba called his act "a great gift." One settler, stopped by a soldier as she tried to assault a Palestinian journalist, shrieked, "We should kill 500, not 50!""
Shame on those settlers.
There are big differences with Palestinian terror attacks though:
Every Israeli party condemned the Cave of the Patriarchs attack in absolute terms.
The killer, Baruch Goldstein, belonged to the
"Kach" movement.
The entire "Kach"
movement was outlawed by the Israeli government.
Providing funds or material support to Kach was made a crime.
The Israeli government arrested Goldstein's associates.
The Israeli government declined to prosecute the Arabs who beat Goldstein to death
after he was disarmed.
The Israeli government outlawed and destroyed a shrine erected at Goldstein's grave.
The Israeli Army bulldozed the shrine and prayer area set up at his grave.
Synagogues raised funds for Goldstein's victims.
A poll found only
4 percent of Israelis supported Goldstein.
No political party in Israel since 1994
has ever approved of the killing or praised Goldstein.
There were no further attacks by Goldstein's people.
His organisation simply disappeared.
His attack was a one-off.
Another example:
Some Jewish extremists celebrated the
Duma arson terrorist attack of 2015.
When video of a celebration of the attack emerged in Dec 2015,
there were calls across Israeli society for the arrest and jailing of those celebrating.
If only Palestinian society was like that,
the conflict would end overnight.
Not really an example:
Max Blumenthal
posts a
video
of American Jews celebrating the attack on Hamas in Gaza in Jan 2009.
This is too ambiguous.
After all, in these attacks the Israelis killed terror leaders
Nizar Rayan
and
Said Seyam,
and hundreds of Hamas terrorists.
There would not be anything wrong with Jews celebrating that.
The difference between Israeli rules
and Palestinian war crimes:
Hamas leader
Fathi Hamad
is famous for this
video in
Feb 2008
where he boasts that the Palestinians of Gaza
"have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly"
to help the Hamas fighters kill Jews.
And Israel has to fight Hamas while avoiding these civilians.
Later, in Apr 2010, the 3 year old daughter of this Hamas leader
became seriously ill.
Israel airlifted her to hospital.
Her father, surprisingly, refrained from killing her rescuers.
He will kill them later.
No, seriously, he will.
The girl was treated at the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon.
Hamas has
fired rockets at this hospital,
and no doubt will fire more.
So yes. He will kill them later.
Palestinian jihadis enter a house, and stab an 11 year old, a 4 year old, and a baby to death.
Palestinians
then celebrate the killings.
Two animals from the PFLP were arrested for the killings, Apr 2011.
"They saw children sleeping in the home, and entered the Fogel family residence.
...
Immediately after entering the home, the youths set their knives on two young brothers sleeping in their beds, 4-year-old Elad and 11-year-old Yoav.
...
The two then left the house. One of the suspects, however, returned and stabbed to death
three-month-old baby Hadas after she began crying in her crib.
...
Amjad said that he was unaware that there were two other children in the house, and that if he knew, he would have stabbed them as well."
Poll, Apr 2011.
32 percent of Palestinians support the Fogel family massacre.
The body of Elad Fogel, the 4 year old boy
stabbed to death in his home by the Palestinian jihadis
at Itamar in Mar 2011.
From massacre scene photos.
N.B.
These photos were released by Israel with the permission of the family
in order to illustrate the horror of what Israel is up against.
WARNING - GRAPHIC IMAGE.
Palestinians
celebrate the killing of the
Fogel children at Itamar, Mar 2011.
A Palestinian man hands out treats to Hamas "policemen" (i.e. terrorists) in Gaza.
From Getty Images.
The same Palestinian "man" celebrates with a taxi driver.
From Getty Images.
Palestinians burn the synagogue of
Netzarim
in Gaza
after the Jews have been expelled, 2005.
Ironically, the Fogel family was only in the West Bank because of the "peace" process.
They previously lived in
Netzarim in Gaza,
until they were ethnically cleansed in 2005
(an ethnic cleansing applauded by the entire left).
Image from here.