Brendan O’Neill in Spiked writes that the cardinal rule of evaluating Israel’s actions is: Whatever Israel does is a war crime
Photo: AP Images
Whatever horror the world expressed at the atrocities committed by Hamas on Simchas Torah has already begun to dissipate, and Israel again finds itself in the crosshairs of international public opinion. One hundred thousand people marched in London on Saturday in support of Hamas, including Jeremy Corbyn, former head of the British Labour Party.
And this is before the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza has even begun. When it does, Israel will be subjected to a constant stream of claims that it is engaged in war crimes, even genocide, against the people of Gaza, and that its response is disproportionate.
It is crucial that American Jews — indeed, all sane people everywhere — not listen to those claims passively or defensively, but rather respond to them forcefully. It must be understood that the accusations against Israel have little to do with the laws of warfare, and everything to do with the desire to see the State of Israel rendered incapable of defending itself — i.e., effectively destroyed. That desire to see every Jew in Israel dead is explicit in the Hamas charter, and it is implicit in the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” chanted in every pro-Hamas demonstration, including on university campuses, across the United States.
The first question to ask anyone prattling on about Israel’s war crimes is: Imagine that 5,000 rockets were fired from Tijuana into southern California, and that a force of terrorists under the auspices of the sovereign government of the Baja peninsula crossed the border into the United States and murdered in the most brutal fashion possible 1,400 Americans, wounded 3,000 more, and kidnapped 230 Americans and dragged them back to the Baja peninsula as captives to be paraded as war trophies. And imagine further that the terrorist forces are deeply embedded among the civilian population of Tijuana, among whom they have placed their weapons and command centers. How would the United States respond to such an attack? How would you advocate that it respond?
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