Gaza: Hypocrisy Exposed

by Joseph Puder


Long before the recent Gaza War between the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Israel, groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organized anti-Israel rallies and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against the Jewish State. These so called “justice seekers” have not seen fit to rally for the oppressed Tibetans, who have not resorted to terrorism in spite of the brutal Chinese occupation, nor have they demanded a state for the stateless Kurds. Why focus only on justice for Palestinians on one hand, and single out the Jews of Israel on the other? Answer – SJP is not only hypocritical, but anti-Semitic as well.

Similarly, recent violent demonstrations and rallies in support of Hamas in major European capitals reveal sheer hypocrisy. Again, only Palestinians are “victims” and only the “Jews” are the victimizers. No one cares in these mob gatherings that Hamas started this latest war (called by Israel Protective Edge Campaign), and that Hamas alone is using civilians as “human shields” with the clear intention to bring about maximum civilian casualties among Palestinians in order to elicit sympathy and win the public relations war.

Nor do these mobs care that thousands of Hamas rockets have been fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilian centers in order to deliberately kill women and children. By way of contrast, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) phoned Palestinian civilians and dropped leaflets warning them of impending shelling, and urged them to evacuate the area in order to prevent civilian casualties. The contrast between civility and barbarity is clear, but it does not matter to the Islamists and their European native allies tainted with the recessive anti-Semitic gene.

Rich Lowery of the National Review wrote on August 5, 2014, under the title Hitler Was Right: “Welcome to the New Europe, where the street thugs have learned a lot from the Old Europe. Their protests of the Gaza War during the past few weeks haven’t been anti-Israel so much as anti-Jew. Some of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world — Paris, Berlin, London — have witnessed demonstrations airing hatred associated with Europe’s darkest crimes.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Berlin shouted just a few weeks ago in the old capital of Nazi Germany, “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!” The New York Times reported on July 21, 2014, “several hundred protesters sought to storm two synagogues in the French capital during an anti-Israel demonstration in which protesters chanted, “Death to Jews!” and “Hitler was right.” Deidre Berger, the American Jewish Committee Berlin office director declared: “We are concerned that there are no more taboos against open expressions of anti-Semitism at anti-Israel protests.”

Britain’s Sunday Times quoted Jewish Agency chairman Nathan Sharansky as saying “We are seeing the beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe.” The European media reported that 45,000 people joined anti-Israel protests in Europe over the weekend of July 25, 2014. According to the same report in the Sunday Times over 100 hate crimes were committed in Britain in July, 2014.

The European media, although not a monolith, helped fuel the growing anti-Semitism in Europe under the guise of condemning Israeli actions. Commentators on the BBC and France 24 repeated accusations of “excessive force” used by Israel, and the deliberate showing of human cost among Palestinians in Gaza, without pointing out the antecedence of the conflict, and simultaneously failing to present the human cost Israel is enduring. European Muslims and their allies do not need the media as an excuse to spout their blind Jew hatred.

The U.N., U.S., and EU governments apply standards of behavior to Israel that are rarely applied to other nations or their own. Bret Stephens opined (Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2014) that “The world is outraged by Israeli self-defense but only ‘concerned’ when Muslims kill Muslims.” In Syria, over 200,000 were killed by the Assad Regime, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda affiliates, mostly civilians, and many of them women and children. In addition, millions have been forced to flee their homes. There was no expression of outrage by the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The same Ban Ki-Moon called the accidentally hit UNRWA-run school that killed 10 people, three of them terrorists from the Islamic Jihad, “a moral outrage and a criminal act” that had to be “swiftly investigated.” The U.S. State Department announced that it is “appalled” by the Israeli action.

Interestingly, a short time before Israel launched operation “Protective Edge,” the Pakistani army launched an offensive in North Waziristan against jihadist terrorists. It resulted in 500,000 out of 600,000 civilians fleeing their homes, and 376 terrorists dead. No one knows exactly how many civilians were killed. The July estimate stands at 1,500.

In the midst of the saturation coverage of the Gaza War (because it involved Jews) few paid attention to the fact that in Iraq, 1,600 people were killed in July, 2014. U.N. envoy Nickolay Mladenov reacted to the Iraqi casualties by saying “I am concerned about the rising numbers of casualties in Iraq, particularly among the civilian population.” There wasn’t, however, any expression of “outrage.”

Another form of hypocrisy has been the Obama administrations mantra about Israel “exercising restraint” and avoiding civilian casualties. Although it can hardly be compared to the European hypocrisy, which is tainted with anti-Semitism, the Obama administration is preaching to Israel what it does not practice in Pakistan and Yemen, where U.S. drones have killed many civilians.

The most outrageous form of hypocrisy however, is reserved for the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The majority of the UNHRC member-states do not represent democracies, yet they habitually condemn Israel almost 50% of the time. As of 2014, Israel had been condemned in 50 resolutions by the Council since its creation in 2006. The Council had adopted almost more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined. The 50 resolutions comprised almost half (45.9%) of all country-specific resolutions passed by the Council.

On July 23, 2014, UNHRC voted to open an international inquiry into Israeli violations that may have been committed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. In an emergency session in Geneva, the 47-member UNHRC adopted the resolution presented by the Palestinians with 29 states voting in favor, 17 abstentions, including “so called” friends of Israel: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, and the UK. The U.S. alone voted against this outrage.

Astoundingly, the same ambassadors to Israel of the European countries that abstained, previously joined the international outcry against Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel, and supported Israel’s right of self-defense. Yet, instead of investigating the Hamas terrorists, the UNHRC turned logic upside down. Hamas has committed double war crimes: 1) firing deadly rockets at innocent Israeli civilians, and 2) carrying out attacks on Israel behind innocent Palestinian civilians who formed a “Human Shield.”

UNHRC Chief Navi Pillay cited cases of Israeli air strikes and shells hitting homes and hospitals in Gaza, declaring that “These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that would amount to war crimes.” Pillay chose to ignore the fact that Hamas has stored rockets in homes, hospitals, and even UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools, the very same schools funded by the U.S. and EU, that teach hatred of Israel and Jews.

The latest war in Gaza has exposed the hypocrisy and double standard when it comes to Israel. One can only conclude that behind the self-righteous condemnations of Israel lurks the old virus of anti-Semitism.


Joseph Puder

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/gaza-hypocrisy-exposed/

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