By Isaac Yetiv, PhD
LA JOLLA, California–Samuel Huntington correctly defined the bloody conflicts of our time as a “clash of civilizations.”
But all “clashes” are not equal: there are the intra-Arab and intra-Muslim clashes and there are clashes where one side is a Western Democracy. What distinguishes between them is that the former’s actions and exactions, however cruel and merciless, are not condemned by the “civilized” world and its institutions like the UN, while the latter’s, especially if it is Israel, usually respectful of the “rule of law,” generous, and humanitarian, is pilloried for its reactions, however defensive and comparatively very mild.
Examples abound: the Syrian conflict: at last count, about 175,000 people have been killed by their own government and the fight continues. The West continues to talk to Assad, to negotiate with him. The American president drew a red line and let the ultimatum lapse without any action. The UN Security Council didn’t convene urgently to condemn the atrocities, or to expel the perpetrator from its ranks; there was no condemnation from the “Human Rights Council.”
The Boko Haram in Nigeria (meaning “Western behavior forbidden”) that kidnapped 250 girls …The ISIS in Iraq who conquered Syrian and Iraqi territory and established an “Islamic state” and the “Caliphate,” have mercilessly killed their Muslim opponents. They also gave the Christian Arabs the medieval choice between conversion to Islam or paying heavy tributes (jizya) or exile or death; we haven’t heard the protestations of the Pope, or the protestant churches, or the Christian governments in Europe or in America, or Jimmy Carter. And the Sunni-Shi’i bloody enmity that has been going for centuries and is devastating what is left of Iraq did not even elicit a pro-forma meeting of the UN “Human Rights Council.”
On the other hand, when Israel fights Islamist extremists, other democracies and the “civilized” world as embodied in the UN and its agencies are quick to condemn the defensive actions of their fellow democrats, stupidly denounce the “disproportionate numbers of casualties,” and cynically call “on both sides to show restraint,” thus aiding and abetting the Islamist terrorists, their own enemies, and emboldening them to pursue their destructive behavior until their own turn comes to be their victims.
This is the abdication of the West, one step before capitulation and surrender.
What many detractors of Israel don’t understand, or refuse to understand, is the asymmetry of the war: On the one hand, Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians with the intent to kill as many as they can while Israel attacks only military targets and warns the population, at the risk of losing the advantage of surprise, to flee the combat zone. And what aggravates the situation and increases the number of casualties is that Hamas deliberately places its lethal weapons and rocket launchers in civilian homes, in schools, in hospitals, in mosques… and uses its own population as human shields.
We have seen that movie before, same scenario, same players. Since PM Sharon , in a daring gamble in 2005, put an end to the “occupation” of Gaza, withdrew the military and uprooted 8,300 Jewish settlers, leaving behind as a parting gift 3,000 greenhouses that employed thousands of Gazans and exported to the world flowers and oranges, Hamas has destroyed the greenhouses and launched thousands of rockets –2,600 to date in the last round only–to kill Jewish civilians. This led, of course, to a defensive reaction from Israel and three wars, in 2009, 2012, and the present one of 2014. It is easy to see the period of respite shrinking from 4 years (2005-09) to 3 years (2009-12) to 2 years (2012-14). If Israel does not destroy Hamas, or at least “demilitarize” it as the Israeli P.M. declared as his goal, we can be sure of a repeat of the war next year, after one year only (4,3,2,1).
Aligned against Israel are not only its declared enemies : Hamas — I am tempted to call it the “honest” enemy because it didn’t hide its goals to destroy Israel, still spelled out in its charter–that lobs thousands of murderous rockets against innocent civilians; Iran that provides them with weapons and money for a higher self-interest of distracting Israel and the West from their menacing nuclear weapons; Qatar that finances Hamas’ military effort and welcomes its leaders and their offices in their capital; Turkey, surprisingly– because of Israel’s excellent relations with previous Turkish governments before the advent of the Islamist P.M –; and the “dishonest” and hypocrites, the Fatah leaders’ usual lip service denouncing Israel’s “aggression” while jubilating at the destruction of their arch-enemy, Hamas in Gaza with which they have formed a “Unity government” a few days before the rocket assault. .
Add to these what I call “the useful idiots,” –to use a phrase from Lenin designating his dumb supporters, the Communists of the West– acting against their own interests and aiding and abetting a stateless implacable terrorist organization bent on destroying a Western democracy.They comprise:
.- The media that present horrible pictures of destruction without insisting on the lethal provocation, without distinguishing between cause and effect, where the responsibility lies, who started this hell, and highlighting the “disproportionate” casualties without explaining why, and giving equal time to the arsonists and to the firefighters on their panels like inviting George Bush and Osama Bin laden to discuss nine-eleven.
.-The UN “useless idiots,” but very useful to the terrorists, not only because their organization has been feeding, lodging, and educating the “innocent” Hamastan, for almost fitfy years, with American and others’ taxpayer money, but also because it was found collaborating with the terrorists. In at least three UN schools, they were “surprised” to find caches of Hamas rockets , 22 in one, ready to be launched and, what’s even worse, the UN agents returned them, as they said, to the “authorities” that is to Hamas, while their “Human Rights” Council in New York was condemning Israel.
.-Our overzealous Secretary of State and his Don Quixotic globe-trotting agitation fighting windmills–I wonder how many of his 920 nights in office he has slept in Washington– who, after consulting ,in Europe, with Qatar and Turkey, produced an inane and nonsensical proposal of a ceasefire, indeed a Hamas plan that will make them emerge as victors with rewards for their terror. And cynically, he presented it to Israel that rejected it nineteen to zero, no easy feat, if you know the Israeli savage democracy . And a poll showed that 86.5 % of the Israeli Jews rejected Kerry’s “ceasefire” with anger, a unanimity never seen before. Some in the press, here and in Israel, even accused Kerry of “betrayal.”
Let me hasten to add that I do not share that accusation and I said so to the accusers. Kerry has no malevolent intentions; it is precisely because of his benevolent feelings, his keen wishes to stop the bloodshed, that he lost touch with reality in this cruel context , which led him to propose that “ceasefire” which is obviously detrimental to Israel and to peace itself.
Mr Secretary, where are your advisers? Not one of them could seize the enormity of the blunder and warn you in time? Don’t you understand that a premature ceasefire leaving Hamas intact as the power in Gaza is a death knoll for any glimmer of peace, that Hamas will be emboldened to “conquer”the West Bank by force or by election and do the same mischief from there, even more dangerous to Israel and to any chance for peace because “moderate” Abbas, and his Fatah movement, will be fleeing, in defeat, from Ramallah, as they did in 2007 from Gaza?
Good intentions are not enough; the road to Hell is paved with them. As Karl Kraus wrote, “the opposite of good policy is good intentions (in the alliterative original: Das Gegenteil von Gutgemacht ist Gutgemeint.) How can you put on the same level the only democracy in the Middle-East, America’s best ally fighting for its survival, and a terrorist organization, so designated by your State Department, not even a state, that, in words and deeds, seeks the destruction of the other? And you yourself, not even a subaltern, shuttling between them, “negotiating” with them against American law and damaging your personal honor and the prestige of your office? This is beyond incomprehensible, matching only the fateful decision of your government to reward the terrorists with 47 million dollars to “build schools.”
Why didn’t you heed the example of Egypt and the Arab League which, this time, did not condemn Israel , and had harsh words against Hamas which they see as dangerous to themselves? Why didn’t you support the Egyptian ceasefire which Israel accepted and Hamas rejected?
The best friend of Israel, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, was very blunt in its demands from the Western democracies, a pronouncement we expected from the president of the United States:
“Israel, said Harper, “not only has the right to defend itself but the obligation to do it, and it must be defended by all the Western nations.” We hope the US government will align itself unequivocally with our good neighbor from the North and let Israel finish the job of cleaning Gaza from terror.That’s the only way to put an end to the periodic violent conflagrations and open the way for peace.
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Yetiv is a lecturer and freelance writer based in the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla, California. He may be contacted via isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com