By David A. Harris
NEW YORK — The American Jewish Committee (AJC) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel at this difficult time on the Gaza border.
There should be total clarity. The latest round of violence was triggered by Hamas, a terrorist organization as designated by both the United States and European Union, whose charter and rhetoric are nothing less than genocidal in their stated aims regarding Israel and the Jewish people.
Critics of Israel have sought to portray this situation as “peaceful protests by Gazans” met with force by Israel’s military. This is a total misreading of the situation, whether driven by malice, lack of awareness, or a misguided effort at “evenhandedness.”
The protests are not peaceful. The goal is to breach an internationally-recognized border between Israel and Gaza, to penetrate Israel, and, as Hamas spokesmen have repeatedly declared, to slaughter, yes to slaughter, Jews, often invoking religious imperatives.
What choice does Israel have if a variety of non-lethal means fails to stop the demonstrators from trying to enter Israel and wreak havoc? What exactly would other countries do in a similar situation, even as some capitals preach sanctimoniously from afar about how Israel should handle matters?
In any such crisis, very tragically, some innocent people may fall victim, but it has been the Israeli military’s ethos to minimize such losses to the extent humanly possible, while dealing with masses of people who include many known terrorists and inciters.
To its credit, the United States has stood firmly by Israel’s side throughout these weeks of escalating violence from Gaza, defending Israel’s absolute right to protect its citizens. We thank Washington for this moral clarity, when too many others suffer from moral fog.
For Hamas, as we have seen time and again, there is a profoundly cynical strategy at work here: Instrumentalize women and children, seek casualties, and thereby portray Israel in the worst possible light.
Shockingly, some in the international community have fallen hook, line, and sinker for this ploy, for whatever reason opting to ignore the true nature and goals of Hamas.
Let’s remember that Gaza was given the first chance in its history to exercise self-rule after Israel withdrew from every last inch of the coastal strip in 2005. Previous occupying powers, including Egypt, had controlled with an iron fist. But rather than charting a course of political, social, and economic development, Gazans expelled the governing Palestinian Authority and replaced it with Hamas. In turn, for Hamas, Israel’s destruction was far more important than Gaza’s construction, unless that construction meant terror tunnels and arms factories designed to target Israel.
So, since 2007, countless opportunities were squandered, massive international assistance was diverted, a generation of children was brainwashed from an early age, and, overall, Gaza’s situation went from bad to worse.
Yet there are those who still refuse to hold Hamas responsible simply because, in their minds, the storyline must always be all and only about Israel.
For them, these enablers of Hamas, Israel has no legitimate right to engage in self-defense, much less get any credit for the daily humanitarian flow that it permits to cross into Gaza even in times of war. Again, recall that Gaza is a declared enemy of the Jewish state. For these enablers, the Palestinians in Gaza are always blameless, always the victims, never the perpetrators. And, by the way, for the enablers, Gaza has only one border, with Israel, though in reality it has two, the other being with Egypt, a fellow Arab nation.
As an organization long committed to the search for an enduring peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, we can only hope that one day soon wiser heads will prevail in Gaza. If Gaza is ever to have a brighter future, it will require a profound rethinking of strategies, beginning with the search for coexistence with Israel, not the stoking of permanent conflict and confrontation.
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Harris is chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
From Daniel Sokatch, CEO, New Israel Fund: I just got back today from a trip to Israel. The news as I was leaving for the airport was troubling. Unarmed Palestinian protesters were being killed and wounded by Israeli fire at the Gaza border. Meanwhile, Trump Administration officials were celebrating the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem.
None of us can know what will come next. None of us can know whether the violence will escalate further.
What I do know, and what I want you to know, is that there are countless Israelis who are not sitting on the sidelines, passively watching the news. They are taking action to address what’s going on.
These are the Israelis that I’m proud that NIF is supporting. Here’s a glimpse of what they’re up to right now:
Physicians for Human Rights – Israel continues to send teams of doctors from Israel to treat the wounded and ill in Gaza. They intercede with Israeli military officials on individual cases to help make sure that critically injured patients get the medical attention they deserve.
Omdim Beyachad (Standing Together) — a grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel — is organizing a demonstration today that is calling for an end to the shooting in Gaza.
Yesh Din, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Gisha, and HaMoked have filed an urgent legal petition asking the High Court of Justice to review the open-fire regulations that permit live fire at protesters who are not endangering anybody’s life.
And we continue to support Gisha’s research and advocacy efforts to end the Israeli policies that amount to a siege on Gaza.
The geopolitics of the situation are complicated. It’s not at all clear that the politicians in Washington, or in Jerusalem, or in Ramallah, or in Gaza City will do the right thing. But that won’t stop the Israeli civil society groups that you and I support from acting with moral clarity to build a better future.
StandWithUs holds responsible the Iranian-backed Hamas terror organization for the tragic loss of life in the May 14, 2018 violent attempts to breach the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Hamas, the heavily armed radical Islamist terror group ruling Gaza, has been organizing weekly violent demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel border since April.
Rioters attempted to place explosives on the fence, threw Molotov cocktails, fired on Israeli soldiers, and shot slingshots at the soldiers who are tasked with preventing a breach of the border. The first obligation of any government, including Israel, is to protect its own citizens from violent attack, which Hamas clearly announced were its intentions.
In the run-up to the May 14 riots, Hamas released a Hebrew-language video that unambiguously threatened violence against Israeli civilians. Aimed at Israelis living near the border the video warns:
“Don’t stay, the Palestinians are swarming unrestrained, and we recommend you leave without hesitation… Those who stay will bear the full consequences. You’ve been warned. We’ll break through the border and reach all the way to your communities, and we will not die alone.”
Hamas also published maps on social media from the border to Israeli communities to emphasize this deadly threat.
“Hamas, which stands behind today’s effort to breach Israel’s border fence with Gaza, deliberately placed civilians in the line of fire at the front lines of what amounts to an attempted invasion of Israel,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. “Funding for this and other riots has come from Iran, whose leaders clearly express that their long-term goal is the destruction of Israel.”
According to reports in the Israeli media, Hamas actively encouraged civilians, especially children, to approach and breach the fence while ordering its armed men to stay in the background. In the event of a successful breach of the fence, the armed Hamas fighters are ordered to carry out terror attacks in Israel.
On Friday May 11, 2018 Hamas sent some 200 of its men into the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel and set fire to Gaza’s only fuel terminal plus a conveyor belt for transferring raw construction materials and two more conveyor belts for transporting animal feed. During the May 14 riots, Hamas again sent its men to the Kerem Shalom crossing and continued damaging the fuel pipelines and conveyers. The destruction was so extensive that it will likely take several weeks to months to repair the damage depriving Gazans of cooking gas and electricity since diesel will be unavailable to Gaza’s electrical generators. These acts of war and terrorism continue to severely and tragically punish Palestinian civilians.
“There are those who insist that this, and previous demonstrations, are ‘non-violent.’ The reality is Hamas organized these riots with the intent to cause maximum violence, including placing bombs on the fence to breach it,” said Rothstein. “These are not spontaneous, but rather well-orchestrated offensives by Hamas. The tragedy is that Hamas sought the deaths of their own people for media profit, abusing children and other civilians, in clear violation of international law. Hamas also seeks to redirect their people’s misery caused by its heavy-fisted misrule rather than do something constructive to build a peaceful future for their people. Instead of investing in civilian infrastructure Hamas has spent $100’s of millions on a network of tunnels under Gaza designed to send terror squads to kill and/or kidnap Israelis. Hamas continues to purchase rockets, missiles, anti-tank weapons, assault rifles, mortars and grenades. Clearly Hamas is in a one sided state of war with Israel, and Israel will continue to defend its borders and its citizens.”