There are many people on the Left and some on the Right who are up in arms about the State of Israel defending itself against the bombing of its cities and population centers.
They accuse Israel of war crimes and excuse the actions of any and almost all Arab parties to the conflict. They do this based on selectively chosen numbers – in the present conflict they point to the five Israelis (including an Israeli-Arab) murdered by terrorists launching rockets out of hospitals, schools, and homes and the roughly 100 Palestinians who have been killed both by rockets that have landed short and when Israel has sought to bomb the rocket launchers and terrorist leadership.
That the Geneva Convention prohibits combatants from using human shields does not bother Israel’s detractors. That Israel defends itself by bombing those sites instead of lettings more of its people become casualties to rockets launched from them does.
Were the presumptive “policy” of these detractors carried out and Israel to accept several hundred rockets per day (recently up from the average of 3 a day over the last decade), surely the number would continue to increase, more Israelis would be murdered, and Israel would not be able to function as a country. But by the twisted logic of the morally underdeveloped, Israel would be in the right because more of its citizens would be dead.
Moreover, the anti-Israel crowd loves to assert that Israel is engaging in genocide. If so, Israel is perhaps the least effective perpetrator of genocide ever!
Since 1967, the Palestinian infant mortality rate has gone down and the life expectancy has gone up. Israel even admits patients (especially children with serious medical issues) from Hamas-run Gaza and has continued to do so in the current conflict.
Despite the fact that medical transfers have been attacked by terrorists in Gaza, Israeli hospitals continue to serve Palestinians who need help be they Israeli citizens or not. Israel provides over 70% of Gaza’s electricity and donates food and medicine and yet it’s accused of genocide.
As long as accusations are flying around I’ve got one for you. If your solution to the conflict is for Israel to be denied the same right as every other country to defend itself and for more Jews to be murdered, then you are an anti-Semite.
If you accuse Israel of genocide, despite the fact that the Palestinian population’s life expectancy and standard of living have gone up since ’67, and you blame Israel for Palestinian deaths caused by other Palestinians, you are an anti-Semite.
If you raise no objection to the massacre of hundreds and thousands of civilians committed in Syria by the Assad regime but get your underwear in a bunch when the Jewish state responds to hundreds of rockets being launched at its cities, you are an anti-Semite.
For you pseudo-intellectuals reading this who are thinking to themselves the historically inaccurate refrain that “the Arabs are Semitic and thus you cannot be anti-Semitic because you only hate Jews and not Arabs,” you are woefully wrong. There are no “Semitic” peoples; Semitic refers to a language group, you ignoramus. Moreover, the term anti-Semitism was invented in 1879 specifically to legitimize the hatred of Jews.
This is not to say you can not criticize Israel; indeed many Israelis and Jews do. I for one think the settlement movement was and remains a bad idea. However, whereas critiquing policy is healthy and clearly within the realm of debate, indicting an entire nation on trumped up charges and denying them the same rights as every other people is not.
Wow, great article.