A Proportionate Response
22 November, 2012 Leave a Comment
Douglas Murray in the Spectator has the following video from Hamas’s TV station (A translation of the presenter’s remarks is below). The video is in response to the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv:
‘These are the scenes of the casualties. God willing, we will soon see black body bags. I pray to Allah the exalted that we see body bags in a short while. These are scenes of the Zionist casualties so far.’
Right now in these moments, the mosques in the Gaza Strip – their minarets are loudly sounding cries of “Allahu Akbar” and cries of joy, and the residents of the Gaza Strip are bowing down to Allah for this offering. The morale of the Gaza residents is in the sky right now, and is rising just as the rockets of the Resistance.’
The Israel/Palestine issue provokes a wide range of often very strong reactions, and that is quite understandable. It is, after all, a ‘biblical struggle’ that has lasted for more than 2000 years.
It is regularly said by people who are “pro-Palestine” that Israel has acted in a disproportionate way by bombing Hamas targets in the Gaza strip (The Goldstone Report, which alleged that Israel had previously targeted civilians was discredited by none other than Richard Goldstone in The Washington Post). Israel has in the past overreacted to Hamas’s provocations, and it is good news that there was no ground offensive during Operation Pillar of Defence. It is, of course very saddening news that more than 100 Palestinians were killed during past couple of weeks.
However, as Rob Marchant rightly points out on The Centre Left, Hamas is not Palestine. Palestine is a country which, sadly, is being held hostage by Hamas and other associated terrorist groups. The distinction must be made that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. The following is an extract from Hamas’s organisational charter:
The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people’s livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor. In their horrible actions they mistreat people like the most horrendous war criminals. Exiling people from their country is another way of killing them. As we face this misconduct, we have no escape from establishing social solidarity among the people, from confronting the enemy as one solid body, so that if one organ is hurt the rest of the body will respond with alertness and fervor.
Presumably the last highlighted quote is why Hamas purposefully place their missile launchers in civilian neighbourhoods.
Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defence achieved the following:
- All in all, the Israel Air Force hit approximately 1500 targets across Gaza,
- Destroyed 60 bomb tunnels
- Destroyed 140 smuggling tunnels
- Destroyed Hamas’s headquarters and major command centers, including a Gaza media building where Hamas housed its intelligence operations.
All of this is in response to the 1,947 missiles fired at Israeli civilians since January 2012, and the approximately 300 Hamas missiles that fell on Palestinian civilians.
Surely this is a proportionate response?
