Defending its very right to survive against Hamas terrorists

Monday’s defence by the IDF was not an act of genocide or an attempt to ethnically cleanse, it is part of a continual and very ugly battle to repel those who want to obliterate the Jewish Homeland.

Israel was forced to defend itself on Monday and tragically this exercise led to death and wounding of a scale beyond the anticipation of a security defence oriented exercise. Death in any such form is tragic especially when innocents are cynically placed alongside the guilty in the line of fire and deliberate agitation. But some of these deaths were not tragic, for many of those individuals who died on Monday were Palestinians who tried to detonate bombs, shoot soldiers and set rapid fires, they were there in a coordinated effort to breach Israel’s security fence and to create havoc.

And yet still a canard is expeditiously reasoned that it’s Israel who is seen as the agitator. Why is this?

What’s remarkable is the backlash that has grown since that day against Israel for doing what it had to do: to protect itself against Hamas terrorists in Gaza and their enablers in the Palestinian Authority, who have the succour and motivation to organise those offenders who not only want to destroy the Jewish homeland, but won’t be done until they indoctrinate all their followers into doing the same, ultimately rewarded with a place in paradise as so-called martyrs.

In its twisted and perverted logic, Hamas look at these deaths as quite necessary, because the bloodshed only firms their sponsored ‘Great March of Return’ or in other words, a concerted effort to spark a long-term violent uprising, emboldened by the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

Why is Israel the one receiving moral opprobrium for defending its citizens when the agitators seeking to tear down the fence are fully signed up to the Hamas charter, which even after a 2017 revision calls for the “complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.” It continues: “The resistance to occupation, by all means and methods, is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws, customs and international laws.”

To the detractors and haters of the IDF and Israel, the rioters and agitators that turned up with burning kites and Molotov cocktails were not there in the spirit of Gandhi to peacefully protest, they wanted a violent uprising and if they could breach the fence to enable terrorists to infiltrate Israel, then all the better for it.

The only Gandhian aspect to this protest was that it was coordinated and planned, with at least 50,000 Palestinians from Gaza congregating the borderlines in 12 different locations. They were not all terrorists at all but many were there to strike terror, trying to plant explosives at a fence and in two separate incidents, troops opened fire on gunmen who tried to shoot them. In another incident, Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas military training facility after gunmen attacked Israeli troops.

Israel and the IDF is not interested in killing for the fun of it as the political chattering classes maintain. Israel sent out leaflets with a warning not to breach the security fence, then using non-lethal offensives to maintain peace. They had to resort to deadly force because it was clear Hamas had turned up for a fight.

Israel lives in a permanent state of threat, constantly beleaguered and isolated, on edge, obsessed with protecting its borders because it knows the threat of a hostile incursion is ever present. You can shut your eyes to this reality and just look at the Gaza-Israel border incidents as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ or you can recognise that Israel lives every day knowing that others continually call its very existence into question and that some won’t stop at questioning it but would rather get on with wiping it off the map completely through bloodshed.

Look at the wider context. Iran’s influence is growing in the region after the Iraq war and civil war in Syria; Hezbollah in Lebanon is playing a key role for Iran and Assad in Syria and Turkey’s Erdogan is now turning his nose up at the Jewish homeland, describing Israel frequently as a ‘terror state’ and then of course there’s Hamas in Gaza, backed by Iran and ready to confront Israel on its border whenever it gets the chance.

The Western observers, academics and activists are doing the propaganda work of Hamas for them. Would they be happy if the borders were torn down and insurgent forces finally passed through, ready to battle the IDF and kill Jews? Whether it’s BDS, UN condemnation through lobby groups, constant moral questioning and outright antisemitism, Israel has its back against the wall and is doing what any sovereign nation with a torrid history would do — fight for its right to survive and to protect its citizens, its very way of life.