So rescuing hostages is a war crime now. A ‘grave, grave war crime’, in fact. That’s according to the Guardian’s Owen Jones who is outraged that IDF troops used a humanitarian truck to sneak into the town of Nuseirat where they rescued four of their hostages from the clutches of Hamas and its local heavies. Kenneth Roth, formerly of Human Rights Watch, is also fuming over the IDF’s Trojan Horse antics, reminding Israel that it has a legal duty ‘not to disguise soldiers as civilians’. These people are nuts. What do they expect the IDF to do? Knock on the doors of the fascists holding their compatriots and say: ‘Can we have our Jews back, please?’
There is frothing anger online over Israel’s rescue operation in Nuseirat. It is bloody proof of Israeli deceit, people are saying. From the ‘war crime’ of troops wearing civilian disguise to the subsequent streetfighting and airstrikes that caused many civilian deaths, this was a wicked massacre, says the anti-Israel set. They’re in agreement with Hamas, which has accused Israel of carrying out a ‘complex war crime’ in Nuseirat. Just one thing is missing from all this boiling commentary: any acknowledgement whatsoever of Hamas’s responsibility for bringing this hellish situation about. When is Hamas going to get some credit for its evil?
From what we know, the raid of Nuseirat seems to have been a difficult, daring strike. It was given the name ‘Seeds of Summer’. It had been planned in great detail, with the IDF even building mock-ups of the two apartment buildings they believed the four hostages were being held in, in order that they might train for all eventualities. It is reported that the special forces were disguised as displaced Gazans. They told locals they were moving into the apartment buildings. But once inside they started their op, taking out the men who were guarding the hostages and taking the hostages to freedom.
When Hamas clocked what was happening it fired on the IDF troops, reportedly with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and mortar rounds. A battle ensued. Israeli airstrikes were called in. And many died. Fewer than a hundred, according to Israel; more than 250 according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
All the fingers are being pointed at Israel. Not only by the usual suspects of the Israelophobic ‘left’ but by the mainstream media, too. ‘An Israeli operation rescues four hostages and kills scores of Palestinians’, said CNN’s headline. The BBC all but made itself an outpost of Hamas propaganda with its early headline on the raid. ‘Gaza health ministry says Israeli hostage rescue killed 274 Palestinians’, it announced to the millions who peruse the BBC for their news. Here was the public broadcaster splashing not with the liberation of four Jews from the captivity of a racist terror group, but with Hamas’s self-serving claim that Israel, and Israel alone, caused the civilian deaths in Nuseirat.
The political class stooped even lower. There is ‘outrage’ in European political circles over this latest ‘massacre’ in Gaza, reports the Guardian. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called it ‘another massacre of civilians’. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, said the Nuseirat raid is proof of Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’. She accused Israel of killing ‘at least 200 Palestinians, including children’, all while ‘perfidiously hiding in an aid truck’. This was ‘humanitarian camouflage’ for genocide, she thundered.
We really are living in an era of moral inversion. Every day there is a sinister twisting of the truth to suit the ideological prejudices of those who loathe Israel. Hamas hides the hostages it seized from the Nova music festival in a densely populated civilian area, and yet it’s Israel that is accused of being ‘perfidious’. Hamas purposely puts its Jewish victims among the women and children of a crowded refugee camp, and yet it’s Israel that is accused of wearing a ‘humanitarian camouflage’. Hamas was founded with the express intention of murdering Jews, an intention it gave brute force to on 7 October with its slaughter of a thousand Israelis, and yet it’s Israel that is damned as ‘genocidal’. The racist hostage-takers are reimagined as victims, the liberators of the hostages as criminals. It is one Kafkaesque lie after another.
Where is Hamas in all the political rage over what happened in Nuseirat? It has been invisibilised, scrubbed from the narrative so that the blame might be heaped on Israel alone. Hamas merits not one mention in Francesca Albanese’s angry doggerel. Does she not know that Hamas started the Battle of Nuseirat, by firing its lethal weaponry at the IDF from amid the civilian hordes? Or perhaps she doesn’t care? You have to go beyond the headlines about Israel ‘killing 274 Palestinians’ to discover that the IDF came ‘under heavy fire’ and ‘fought intense gun battles’ with Hamas militants. To describe an army’s response to the bullets and missiles of terrorists as ‘genocidal’ is an unconscionable manipulation of language for cynical political ends.
From what we know, the raid of Nuseirat seems to have been a difficult, daring strike. It was given the name ‘Seeds of Summer’. It had been planned in great detail, with the IDF even building mock-ups of the two apartment buildings they believed the four hostages were being held in, in order that they might train for all eventualities. It is reported that the special forces were disguised as displaced Gazans. They told locals they were moving into the apartment buildings. But once inside they started their op, taking out the men who were guarding the hostages and taking the hostages to freedom.
When Hamas clocked what was happening it fired on the IDF troops, reportedly with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and mortar rounds. A battle ensued. Israeli airstrikes were called in. And many died. Fewer than a hundred, according to Israel; more than 250 according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
All the fingers are being pointed at Israel. Not only by the usual suspects of the Israelophobic ‘left’ but by the mainstream media, too. ‘An Israeli operation rescues four hostages and kills scores of Palestinians’, said CNN’s headline. The BBC all but made itself an outpost of Hamas propaganda with its early headline on the raid. ‘Gaza health ministry says Israeli hostage rescue killed 274 Palestinians’, it announced to the millions who peruse the BBC for their news. Here was the public broadcaster splashing not with the liberation of four Jews from the captivity of a racist terror group, but with Hamas’s self-serving claim that Israel, and Israel alone, caused the civilian deaths in Nuseirat.
The political class stooped even lower. There is ‘outrage’ in European political circles over this latest ‘massacre’ in Gaza, reports the Guardian. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called it ‘another massacre of civilians’. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, said the Nuseirat raid is proof of Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’. She accused Israel of killing ‘at least 200 Palestinians, including children’, all while ‘perfidiously hiding in an aid truck’. This was ‘humanitarian camouflage’ for genocide, she thundered.
We really are living in an era of moral inversion. Every day there is a sinister twisting of the truth to suit the ideological prejudices of those who loathe Israel. Hamas hides the hostages it seized from the Nova music festival in a densely populated civilian area, and yet it’s Israel that is accused of being ‘perfidious’. Hamas purposely puts its Jewish victims among the women and children of a crowded refugee camp, and yet it’s Israel that is accused of wearing a ‘humanitarian camouflage’. Hamas was founded with the express intention of murdering Jews, an intention it gave brute force to on 7 October with its slaughter of a thousand Israelis, and yet it’s Israel that is damned as ‘genocidal’. The racist hostage-takers are reimagined as victims, the liberators of the hostages as criminals. It is one Kafkaesque lie after another.
Where is Hamas in all the political rage over what happened in Nuseirat? It has been invisibilised, scrubbed from the narrative so that the blame might be heaped on Israel alone. Hamas merits not one mention in Francesca Albanese’s angry doggerel. Does she not know that Hamas started the Battle of Nuseirat, by firing its lethal weaponry at the IDF from amid the civilian hordes? Or perhaps she doesn’t care? You have to go beyond the headlines about Israel ‘killing 274 Palestinians’ to discover that the IDF came ‘under heavy fire’ and ‘fought intense gun battles’ with Hamas militants. To describe an army’s response to the bullets and missiles of terrorists as ‘genocidal’ is an unconscionable manipulation of language for cynical political ends.
The truth is this: Hamas is responsible for every death in Nuseirat. It will be literally responsible for some of them, unless we are expected to believe that you can fire grenades and mortar rounds in an area teeming with civilians without one of the deadly loads going anywhere near an innocent. And it is morally responsible for all of it, for all the suffering we saw on Saturday amid the joy of the four Israelis being liberated from the confinement of the anti-Semites. For the simple reason that it is the author of this hellish war, the instigator of it. Hamas and Hamas alone brought war to Nuseirat.
What the Battle of Nuseirat really exposes is not Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’ but Hamas’s evil. That Hamas placed the four hostages in a crowded civilian area confirms its callous disregard for Palestinians as well as Israelis. That it started a bloody battle with the IDF even as women were shopping and children were playing confirms its terroristic indifference to the injury and loss of innocent life. That it prioritised trying to hurt the IDF and keep a hold of the hostages over and above keeping the civilians of Nuseirat safe from harm confirms how zealous, how unhinged, its anti-Israel, anti-Jewish doctrine has become. This is a movement that prizes killing a Jew more highly than saving a Palestinian. Its cruelty is unparalleled in the modern era.
And yet, all of this is whitewashed. Hamas’s ‘intent’ is rarely mentioned, its ruthlessness rarely commented on, its moral responsibility never even broached. Instead the anti-Israel set infantilises Hamas and holds up Israel as the only true, conscious actor in this conflict. There is bigotry here, even something like racism. There’s the racism of blaming the Jews for everything but also the racism of blaming Palestinians for nothing, as if they are children, not truly answerable for their wrongs.
But Hamas are not children. They are anti-Semitic warmongers. They started this war that has been a calamity for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and they refuse to end it by returning all the hostages. It will be a good day for the Jewish State, the Palestinian people and the world when this barbarous movement is brought to an end.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
What the Battle of Nuseirat really exposes is not Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’ but Hamas’s evil. That Hamas placed the four hostages in a crowded civilian area confirms its callous disregard for Palestinians as well as Israelis. That it started a bloody battle with the IDF even as women were shopping and children were playing confirms its terroristic indifference to the injury and loss of innocent life. That it prioritised trying to hurt the IDF and keep a hold of the hostages over and above keeping the civilians of Nuseirat safe from harm confirms how zealous, how unhinged, its anti-Israel, anti-Jewish doctrine has become. This is a movement that prizes killing a Jew more highly than saving a Palestinian. Its cruelty is unparalleled in the modern era.
And yet, all of this is whitewashed. Hamas’s ‘intent’ is rarely mentioned, its ruthlessness rarely commented on, its moral responsibility never even broached. Instead the anti-Israel set infantilises Hamas and holds up Israel as the only true, conscious actor in this conflict. There is bigotry here, even something like racism. There’s the racism of blaming the Jews for everything but also the racism of blaming Palestinians for nothing, as if they are children, not truly answerable for their wrongs.
But Hamas are not children. They are anti-Semitic warmongers. They started this war that has been a calamity for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and they refuse to end it by returning all the hostages. It will be a good day for the Jewish State, the Palestinian people and the world when this barbarous movement is brought to an end.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Hard to argue with that reasoning. Hamas have the ability to end what they started. The sooner, the better.
Well said Brendan. The corrupt MSM’s propaganda is becoming so desperate in an effort to shape public opinion would be laughable if it wasn’t so sick. One would only underestimate the Israeli military intelligence and bravery at one’s own peril.
It’s just another war crime committed by Israel, to add to the list of committed war crimes over the last 80 years of occupation.
The deliberate destruction of life and property as a distraction to allow IDF commando's to exit is a war crime.
They killed 280 innocent Palestinians, mostly women and children and non-combatant men to ‘rescue’ 4 hostages, and in the process killed 3 of their own, and of course celebrate this as a great victory.
And then the gas-lighting kicks in by the corporate controlled media (shills) and others like this author who wrote “The truth is this: Hamas is responsible for every death in Nuseirat”?
From he who desperately wants to be your “one source of truth”.
“ The truth is this: Hamas is responsible for every death in Nuseirat.”
The truth is that Islam is responsible for the entire Arab-Israeli conflict as it has unfolded since 1948.
In.1948 the UN voted to partition the former British Mandate of Palestine into two States: one for the Jews, another for the resident Arabs, now politically labelled ‘Palestinians.’
The conflict in this part of the Middle East will not be solved by a two-State solution as Western wannabe ‘peacemakers’ naively believed.
The Arabs could have had that on 1948.
Within hours of the historic 1948 United Nations decision to partition the former British Mandate of “Palestine” into a Jewish state and state for the Arabs now referred to as “Palestinians,” Israel was attacked without warning by six Arab nations promising to drive the Jews into the sea and complete Hitler's work.
Despite repeated assurances from Jewish leaders that non-combatants would remain unmolested, many Palestinian Arabs then fled to refugee camps in Lebanon and the Gaza strip, at that time part of Egypt.
They expected to return to their homes in a few days once the Arabs armies were victorious.
But the unthinkable happened. The Jews won.
The Palestinian Arab leaders have kept their people trapped in squalid refugee camps as a political weapon ever since.
It is often claimed that Israel is provoked by the mere existence of Palestinian Arabs and wants to wipe them out.
In fact, it is Arab-Islamists who are affronted by the mere existence of Jews and want to eradicate them from the world.
Muslim anti-Semitism first arose centuries before the establishment of Jewish Israel.
Islamic scripture (the Koran and associated Hadith narratives of Muhammad’s life and sayings) records that the Jews of Yathrib (now Medina) repeatedly refused to convert to Islam when asked by Muhammad to do so.
An angry Muhammad then cursed the Jewish people, describing them as “the offspring of apes and pigs,” damning them in this world and the next.
That’s why Muslims have always see Jews as the worst and most inveterate enemies of Islam.
An oft-quoted Hadith saying of Muhammad that is part of the charter of the Gaza Strip’s rulers, Hamas, states: “The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’“
This is what the disgusting Muslim chant—aped by NZ’s disgusting Green Party—“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” actually means.
‘Islamic lands’ reclaimed by wiping out all the Jews.
The problem ain’t Israel, which is only defending itself and its citizens.
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