Israel is in the right

THE PEOPLE OF Gaza have only Hamas to blame for the circumstances in which they find themselves. There leader is holed up somewhere well away from Gaza, while on the Gaza Strip his senior lieutenants crawl under hospitals to keep themselves safe, while above their heads and on the hospital wards such as they are; they use their people, the sick, injured, and dying, as human shields.

            

             Hamas even hijacks ambulances that are meant to carry the victims of Hamas's actions to and from hospital; once again to keep themselves safe from Israeli bombs. Not only do they use their own people to keep themselves secure, but also the thousands of rockets they hide in people's houses, until they are ready to be unleashed on Israel. Then we have the tunnels whose openings start in the same people's houses before they wend their way into Israel.

            

            If the Gaza Strip is a prison, it is not one of Israel's making. Hamas and only Hamas have brought the Strip and the Palestinian people to this tragic, awful, and destructive position - as they have often done in the past.

            Israel cannot be expected to allow 3,000 missiles to be launched against their people without seeking to neutralise them; and the most effective way has been to embark on a ground action which will cause many civilian casualties – such street fighting often does. Just talk to those remaining survivors of the D-day landings.

            

            Israel has conducted herself in a way that is exemplary considering her nation was being attacked. From the beginning of the bombing and in response to Hamas's missiles, the Israel's were careful about their targets, for fear of hitting civilians. Indeed several sorties were turned back when the pilots or drone operators were convinced by what they were seeing that their target was occupied by ordinary Palestinian civilians.

            

            But as the sympathetic Palestinian media points out, Gaza is a small compact civilian rich territory, and any military action taken against it would result in civilian deaths. So as far as the Western media are concerned Israel should just sucked it up and allow the Hamas blitz to go un challenged; after all Israel has Iron Dome, and also highly developed underground facilities into which Jews can scurry into at will, without fear of being hit by the rockets.

THIS IS PROBABLY the harshest blow of all for Israel to have to take from its so-called allies. Hamas throws its own citizens onto the front-line in the hope that enough of them will be killed by the Israelis in order to encourage a sympathetic Western media to report on the behaviour of the Israeli 'war criminals'. The Western Media are Hamas's useful idiots, and because they sympathise with the Palestinian cause; they allow themselves to be escorted around Gaza to report upon the 'holocaust' conducted by the Hebrews upon Palestinians.

            

            Hamas do not supply their people with any underground sanctuary; although they have begun each and every military action against Israel and know what to expect from it – their underground behaviour is concerned only with tunnels built not for civilians to take refuge in, but in order to send terrorists through so they can crossover into Israel to deliberately, not by accident, kill Israeli civilians.

            

             Let history judge. Israel is in the right. It is protecting its right to exist as a Jewish state, and will not once again go quietly into that goodnight. Israel's response to those attacking her was observed by a friend of mine through watching the media; not being interested in the Middle East or in geo-politics generally, he told me; "They don't mess about, do they?" No they do not; and between 1939-45 neither did we.

           

             While in Israel they still cling to the same principles of the nation state that Churchill believed in; and, as we know, with the bombing raids over Germany, he was determined to protect us from an evil enemy; there was no talk at the time of proportionality of course[1]. All that the nation under attack had in its power to destroy its enemy, it used (even if it had only comprised of bows and arrows). When your nation's survival is at stake proportionality goes out of the window (if it ever had a place in war anyway)  –  if you have an advantage, then by God you had better use it for the sake of your nation.

            

             This we did when we bombed Germany; and this is what Israel are doing in Gaza today. The argument about the rights and wrongs of land and property ownership are neither here or nor there in this latest flare-up in the conflict - only the rights and wrongs of what led up to Israel's latest invitation by Hamas to enter Gaza is what matter. Every time Hamas attacks, Israel has had its hand forced by Hamas. While Hamas pours rockets into Israel, and remember, this flare-up came after months of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel - so Israel is expected to be forced to remain unresponsive by her allies?

            

             Then when a breaking point is reached, and Israel has to mount a military response – what happens. It suddenly makes the nightly news; after weeks of little interest in Hamas rockets being launched against Israel. It is only when Israel has to respond that the Western media takes an interest. Then there outlook changes. Israel, forced to respond to Hamas's terror tactics, decide upon action to take the power out of the missiles and those wretched tunnels.

            

             At this very moment the Western liberal media decide who is going to be their Gaza correspondents. There are now Pulitzer 's at stake, and photo journalist bravery prizes to be handed out… "Today the BBC/SKY journalist, (fill in the blank), was awarded a BAFTA for his/her news coverage from within Gaza."

             

             The Media begin to tool up, and when the first bomb drops on Gaza, Hamas opens the Strip to the liberal Western media; and takes them to where the grizzly of spectacles await their biased prognostic. It is a disgrace. In war civilians die, so it is better to not have struck the first blow against a nation stronger than your own, if you cared anything about the lives of your own civilians.

           

             Unlike Hamas, Israel does not deliberately target civilians. If they did, they would have used their military capability to lay flat Gaza City. If Hamas had Israel's military power, they would have done so to Tel Aviv, with little thought for Jewish women and children.          

            

ISRAEL CANNOT AFFORD the presence of a complicated tunnel system engineered from within Gaza to threaten Israel's citizens. So far 13 members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) have been killed through terrorist incursions into Israel through these tunnels. If these incursions had proven successful and Hamas had been victorious in entering civilian areas -  would they have cared if the hated Jews were civilian or military?

            

              Israel has to do what she has to do to keep her democratic nation in existence; just as the West had to do during the Cold War when they embarked upon a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Nationhood may mean little or nothing to those modern empire builders within the EU today, whose many citizens still harbour ancient prejudices against the Jews. But Israel does care about national identity and is fulfilling its centuries old dream of returning to their ancient homeland once known as Judea. If only the UK remained supportive of their nation state as the Jews are of their own.

           

             

           

             

           

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[1] Except, as I have just learnt within a budding liberal part of the Anglican Church.