You Hamas members kill
your women and children. This is the truth and we need to hurry up and
tell it to the world before the pictures of civilian bodies in Gaza,
which are already being broadcast in the West, take over the
international dialogue and curtail our actions in the south.
Regrettable as it might
be, not the state of Israel, not its army and not its pilots are
responsible for the children and their mothers who are being killed. The
ones responsible are the ones who place rocket launchers, guns, and
soldiers in kindergartens, schools, mosques, and private homes, and from
there fire over and over at our civilian population; who purposely
place themselves among the civilian population and use hospitals and
residences as hiding places, effectively forfeiting citizens' lives by
turning them into shields, flak jackets, and fortifications.
War criminals like
these cannot expect Israel to opt for the peace and safety of its
enemies' children, who have been turned into human shields, over its own
children's peace and safety.
Hamas has just finished
training 120,000 Gaza children (fifth graders through high school) in
its summer camps. The camp "menu" includes paramilitary training:
shooting, kidnapping, and inculcation of Hamas' ideology and its extreme
Islamist indoctrination that calls for the destruction of Israel.
During the program, the kids trampled Israeli flags, jumped through
burning tires dressed in Hamas uniforms and holding toy guns, and
practiced firing rockets and abducting Israeli soldiers from jeeps and
outposts. Undoubtedly appropriate pedagogical content for kids that age.
Now Hamas is placing
these children and possibly others as well -- sometimes by force -- as
hostages behind the launchers that fire Grad missiles, Qassam rockets
and mortar shells, with the same level of "morality" as its former use
of ambulances for terrorist purposes.
For years, Hamas has
been firing intentionally and methodically at our civilian population --
women, children, and the elderly. We, on the other hand, target
terrorism and those who execute it and their operators. When civilians
are hurt, it happens unintentionally. This is the vast difference
between Hamas, for whom the end justifies the means at any cost, and
Israel, which differentiates between means and tries to maintain its
humanity even as its citizens are turned into terrorism targets time and
again.
Many years ago, this
was known here as "purity of arms." Nathan Alterman wrote a lot about
it. He once wondered what kind of memorial would befit the three Israeli
soldiers -- Hanan Samson, Yossi Kaplan and Boaz Sasson -- who fell
during a pursuit of terrorists because they were careful not to hurt a
mother and her baby. Behind her, in the entrance to a cave in the Jordan
Valley, the terrorists were waiting. Were they deserving of a regular
memorial, like the many erected throughout Israel to commemorate the
fallen, or one in the image of a mother holding a baby, who were kept
alive by the three soldiers' deaths? Today, 45 years after they died,
the enemy is still holding children with one hand and shooting at
Israeli civilians with the other, and the world is using a false scale
to measure Israel's morality.
Alterman wrote of that
event in the Jordan Valley: "Even if we push our imagination to the
limit, we wouldn't be able to imagine the possibility of another outcome
to that pursuit. That is, a situation in which Israeli soldiers would
hide behind Jewish women and children, and make a Jewish mother into
camouflage to hide them from the Fatah. ... Israeli soldiers couldn't do
something like that," Alterman explained. "Even leaving aside all other
considerations, for the simple reason that a Jewish mother and her baby
aren't a 'deterring factor' to Arab fighters."
Now it seems that even
an Arab mother holding a baby isn't a deterring factor for Hamas, who
use them as barricades and don't hesitate to turn them into a human
shield. Israel, for its part, makes an utmost effort to keep from
harming civilians, but sometimes makes mistakes. And they dance in
celebration of that blood, which was spilled at their hands.
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