When Israel does this, headlines and editors around the world scream, “HUMILIATION!”
When the Palestinians do it: Not so much.
If Israel did this, the world would scream, “WAR CRIMES! MASSACRE!”
In all, 14 fighters and civilians were killed and 80 wounded in the battle for the complex, bringing the day’s death toll to 25, hospital and security officials said. About 90 people, most of them militants, have been killed since a spike in violence Sunday sent Gaza into civil war.
[…] Fatah said seven of its fighters were shot to death outside the Preventive Security building. A doctor at Shifa Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he examined two bodies that had been shot in the head at close range.
A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said men were killed in front of their wives and children.
“They are executing them one by one,” Abu Ayad said. “They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting.”
[…] Hospitals were operating without water, electricity and blood. Even holed up inside their homes, Gazans weren’t able to escape fighting that turned apartment buildings into battlefields.
Moean Hammad, 34, said life had become a nightmare at his high-rise building near the Preventive Security headquarters, where Fatah forces on the rooftop were battling Hamas fighters.
“We spent our night in the hallway outside the apartment because the building came under crossfire // one word in 2002,” Hammad said. “We haven’t had electricity for two days, and all we can hear is shooting and powerful, earthshaking explosions.
When the Palestinians do this: Not so much.
If Israel did this, the world would scream “WAR CRIMES!”
“The world is watching us dying and doing nothing to help. God help us, we feel like we are in a real-life horror movie,” he said.
Shaher Hatoum, a nurse at nearby Al Quds hospital, said the facility had no electricity, water or blood, and that wounded were propped up on ward floors. Hundreds of bullets flew through windows, and fighters ignored the hospital’s appeals to hold fire just long enough to have the generator and water pipes fixed, he said.
When the Palestinians do it, not so much.
If religious Israelis said this, the world would scream “BIGOTS!”
“We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return,” Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas’ militia, told Hamas radio. “The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.”
When the Palestinians do it: Well, you get the idea.
These are the democratically elected rulers of the Palestinians who have brought war to Gaza. In other words, one party of the government just murdered scores of its own army, as well as civilians, in order to bring its agenda to the fore. This is the fruit of the “free and fair democratic elections” that the Bush Administration, led by Condi Rice and backed by fools like Jimmy Carter, allowed to happen. The Taliban was not allowed to run for election in Afghanistan. Ba’athists were not allowed to run for election in Iraq. Israelis warned what would happen if the U.S. forced Israel to allow Hamas to run in the Palestinian elections last year.
This is your democracy, Condi. This is your democracy, Jimmy. This is your democracy, Palestinians. Welcome to Gazastan.
I wonder what the real death toll is, given how underreported Pal on Pal violence typically has been.
A tenet of Islam is that if Muslims do not control government whenever and wherever they have the opportunity to seize it, then they are in a state of humiliation. However, they are not in such a condition when Muslim dictators or crazies rule over them. From an Islamic POV, therefore, Gaza is experiencing happy times. Let the Gazan Arabs be so joyous for the foreseeable future.
chsw
‘If Israel did this, the world would scream “WAR CRIMES!‒
And they *would* be. I’m not sure what the thrust of the post is. That the world has a double standard because it would criticize the IDF for behaving like a thuggish execution squad?
Last I checked, nobody in the civilized world approved of Hamas’s tactics, its ideology, its methods, anything.
So I fail to see the double standard.
The double standard lies in the way these crimes are treated by the world, and by the world media. When Israel kills Palestinian civilians while going after terrorists, there are thousands of headlines, front-page news articles, video shown over and over again on TV news networks, editorials cluck-clucking, special UN Council sessions held, special UN Human Rights committees proposed, special investigations urged, etc., etc., etc.
When Hamas does this, there is no such thing. I’m astonished that HRW has even managed to put out a press release. Funny, though, that it hasn’t been picked up by thousands of media sites across the globe.
And that is my point: If Israel had killed 20 civilians in the last four days while killing 80 terrorists, the stories would all be about the dead civilians.
Double standards. One for Israel, and one for the rest of the world.
I long ago felt that a “Lord of the Flies” future was in store for the Palestinians, and I am being proven right. They are truly Natural Born Killers.
“Last I checked, nobody in the civilized world approved of Hamas’s tactics, its ideology, its methods, anything.”
Well, that’s because you are a dumbass who wouldn’t be aware of your own thumbs if they were cut off and stuffed in your mouth.
Yes, Meryl, of course the world holds Israel to a higher standard than Hamas. Israel is a state. Hamas is a gang of thugs and killers.
Also, if Israel did what Hamas did, it would be a case of 1st World on 3rd World violence, not 3rd World on 3rd World violence, and that always gets more attention. You can complain about this, but whatever it is, it’s not a double standard against Israel.
If the US went out and started executing a handful of civilians, there would be panic and protest and press and all that. A petty goon in sub-Saharan Africa can get away with killing thousands without a blip of response.
If that’s a double standard, then is the right response to go easy on the US or harsher on the goon?
Eli, I answered your question. Your choosing to ignore what I said is your problem, not mine. It’s not my job to think for you.
The fact that every time the IDF causes a Palestinian to stub a toe it’s news, but when Palestians murder each other en masse the world tends to ignore the gory details is the double standard, right there. Just look up the Beit Hanoun and Qana incidents to see my point–both of which incidents were not what the world claimed.
Or maybe we should bring up Jenin.
Double standard. It’s there, whether or not you acknowledge it.
Actually it’s a triple or quadruple standard.
1. The way the media ignore the murders by Hamas (whose name in Hebrew means thuggish violence [Genesis 2:11])
2. The way the media react to “civilized” countries.
3. The way the media react to the United States.
4. The way the media react to Israel
Meryl, I’m not calling into question that the world is quick to call something the Israelis do a massacre or an atrocity before ascertaining the facts of the matter.
Meryl, ask yourself: Why doesn’t the world run with the WAR CRIMES headline? Why? Because it isn’t a war crime. It’s an act of mob violence approaching civil war. The Sunni and Shia are killing one another like flies, and the world is intervening not by getting huffy but by *trying to do something about it*. When you deal with an organized state, you react by applying moral pressure. When you are dealing with goons, you try to change the circumstances to make operating conditions less hospitable for goons. There is nothing hypocritical about this.
Right. I’m done here.
Meryl, I’m not arguing that people aren’t unfair to Israelis, just that THIS isn’t one of those times.
People aren’t supporting Hamas? Norway gives Hamas money. The EU is preparing to do the same.
http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWRmMTI0MzdkNzMzMzQwNDIxZTdlYmM1N2RmYjJlOWY=
(Sorry I don’t know how to insert a link. If you copy and paste the URL into your browser it should take you to the site.)
This chaotic violence certainly lays bare what rule by Islamists really means, and what palestinian independence really means. If people drew logical conclusions from observation it would put paid to both the tolerance of Islamism and support for the Palestinian Arabs, not only in Europe and America but in the Middle East as well. I doubt there are many people who can reason that well, however.
This is a case of working out the theory of democracy. H. L. Mencken commented that the theory of democracy is that the voters know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. This is what the Palestinian Arabs voted for, rule by a bunch of nihilistic death cultists that would lead them in killing Jews.
Before they can do that the death cultists have to kill off the Palis who are keeping control of the swag, otherwise the rank and file of Hamas, who form a Goody Redistribution Action Bunch (GRAB) won’t be satisfied with the goodies they are getting. If the gunmen aren’t getting enough swag to satisfy them it can get unhealthy for the higher level swine in the organization. Left to themselves Arab political groups act like Tony Soprano’s mob, only with more violence and less honorable behavior.
I suggest to Israel that once Hamas has killed off all the Fatah types in Gaza the IDF go in and kill off all the Hamas types in Gaza. Then they should offer this choice to the remaining Arabs there: live at peace with Jewish neighbors or, if you cannot bring yourselves to do that, go find some neighbors with whom you can live at peace.
(whose name in Hebrew means thuggish violence [Genesis 2:11])
Correction on that reference?
Gen. 2:11 The name of the first is Pishon; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
I’ll add to Eli’s comments that criticism of Israel takes place in the context of the Occupation. This gives it an international dimension completely absent from the current mess in Gaza. The media, the UN, and the other usual suspects tend to take the simplistic view that the occupation is completely unjustified, so what seems like unwarranted Israel-bashing is actually occupation-bashing.
And I will call bullshit on that. The UN has been putting out resolution after resolution criticizing Israel, starting in 1949 and going on, of course, even until today.
250: “‘calls’ on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem”.”
251: ” ‘deeply deplores’ Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250″.
252: ” ‘declares invalid’ Israel’s acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital”.
Etc., etc. Go find the resolutions condemning the Arab states for their aggression against Israel.
Do you know, in 1960, the UNSC issued a resolution condemning Israel for kidnapping Adolf Eichmann from Argentina? Not a word about Argentina hiding the most despicable Nazi alive, but they condemned Israel for violating Argentina’s sovereignty.
The criticism of Israel over the decades has little to do with the occupation, and much to do with Israel being the only Jewish state in the world. One which the surrounding Muslim and Arab states have refused to accept, even now, nearly 60 years after her re-establishment.
It’s not the occupation. That’s just the excuse. There was no occupation between 1949 and 1967.
When I last tallied the resolutions, in 2002, 15% of all UN resolutions concerned Israel, most of them negative. Feel free to take a look yourself to see the year-by-year breakdown.
I have been writing this blog since 2001. I started writing about Israel in the spring of 2002. We’re talking about five years of researching posts, as well as five years of reading the news.
When people blame the occupation, they are lying. Especially in relation to the PLO, which was formed three years before the capture of the West Bank and Gaza. In their minds, Israel’s fault lies in her very existence.
They’re not even bothering to hide that anymore.
“They’re not even bothering to hide that anymore.”
Seriously.
The left continues to make the same terrible mistake that led it to support first National Socialism, then Communism, and now Islamism. They truly believe that words are more important than actions.
It can be seen in the way they struggle to reframe narratives rather than provide solutions; in the way they insist that their diplomatic partners never be offended, accused, or even suspected of any hostilities, even while they are killing people as quickly as they can; and in the way they insist that the condemnations of Israel, issued by the UN and “pacifist” NGOs around the world merely for the Zionist war crime of self defense, say all there that needs to be said about Israel, and say nothing about the NGOs themselves, except that they have the “moral high ground.”
They will never learn, because there is always another word they can use to invalidate any actions, and the lessons they teach. And if there isn’t, then they can simply invent a new word, and hide behind it.
It was never about the “Israeli Occupation.” It’s about the world’s pre-occupation with Israel.
40 dead “Palis” within a week would have been front page news worldwide…if Israel had done it.