One of my favorite Israeli talking points about the conflict with Gaza/Hamas is that Israel holds the moral high ground because it can afford advanced weapons systems, many provided by the United States military.
Hamas, we are told, fires its rockets “indiscriminately” into Israel whereas Israel uses “targeted strikes” intended to reduce civilian casualties.
From Commentary magazine, for example: “Standing beside the UN secretary general yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted again that every rocket from Gaza is a double war crime, since each reflects: (1) an intentional indiscriminate attack on civilians, while (2) hiding behind a civilian population for protection.”
I have no doubt that Hamas would prefer to use Israel’s more-sophisticated (and expensive) targeted missiles and helicopter gunships against its enemies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Perhaps, to be fair, Israel or the U.S. would be willing to give them some?
I didn’t think so.
If the roles were reversed, and Hamas had better arms, who doubts that Israel would be forced to resort to the use of “dumb” missiles that “indiscriminately” targeted civilians? The use of indiscriminate bombing against the British, after all, led to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.
If Hamas is evil, make a moral argument—not a tech one. By that standard, I’m morally superior to someone who uses a five-year-old Dell laptop because I’m typing this on a months-old MacBookPro.
P.S. “hiding behind a civilian population” is the standard talking point used by state actors against indigenous resistance organizations which hide among the people because they ARE the people. Israel should come up with a better line; this one is old and shopworn.
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You have a YouTube complaining about the NYT op-ed asking that more competition be allowed in the US air travel market, but some of us have more of a problem with your favourite newspaper’s reporting that most of those killed in Gaza were militants. Al Jazeera has shown lots of dead Gaza babies, against a total of three Israeli civilians killed, plus one soldier and one defence contractor.
The right-wingnut cartoonists portray a massive flotilla of Hamas missiles (enough to fill the entire cartoon) vs a single Israeli missile, and screams from the loony left that it’s all Israel’s fault.
It was many years ago that Trudeau, then in his salad days, ran a cartoon where an Israeli spokesman justified their war on terrorists: men terrorists, women terrorists, and infant terrorists. Mr Trudeau has kept away from similar cartoons for many years.
And the NYT has started calling Arabs ‘anti-Semitic’. The last time I looked, Arabs were Semites.
Saying Israel has killed mostly militants while Hamas has killed large numbers of Israeli civilians is, IMHO, far worse than asking the US to let Singapore Airlines run domestic flights to and from under-served cities.
“The use of indiscriminate bombing against the British, after all, led to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.”
Around the end of the 19th century, the US began blaming Europe for US recessions: if the US manufacturers could sell to the Raj and to Southeast Asia and to the other European colonies, the US would not have any recessions, since it could out-compete the Europeans’ industries. Or so the US manufacturers thought, and the US presidents promised to ‘do something’.
After WWII, the US demanded that the French and Brits dismantle their empires, and they had no choice but to accede to US demands.
The US, in turn, was shocked when the former colonies turned NOT to the US, but to the USSR. Obviously, there were many Communists in the state department who helped bring this about.
Still, while the US was sleeping, the annual running of the bulls is appreciating on schedule.
No right or wrong in this conflict. Both sides are wrong. If Hamas could aim their rockets better, they’d be happy to kill more Israelis, military or civilian. And if the world would look away, Israel would be happy to push the Palestinians into the sea.
To bring about peace, Palestine wold have to give up the idea of holding any part of Jerusalem, and Israel would have to leave the West Bank. And UN troops would need to guard the borders for decades.
In order for there to be peace, there has to be a clear winner and a clear loser. Israel should push the Gazans into the sea, or at least into Egypt. Or, all the Israelis should emigrate to the US and Europe and let the Palestinians have the place.