If You Really Want Babies to Stop Dying, Read This

I am on social media a lot. Too much, probably. But it’s hard not to be, because I care about the truth from MY side of this conflict (to which too many people in the world are NOT exposed).

I have just read for the gazillionth time the accusation: “NOTHING, justifies killing thousands of babies.”

That’s correct, of course. And that moral clarity is exactly why Hamas and Hezbollah won the PR war.

The strategy isn’t complicated:
* Attack Israel.
* Embed your fighters and weapons among your own civilians.
* Document the aftermath.

Then watch the world’s most compassionate people demand that Israel stop defending itself and wait quietly for the next round.

I’ve lived it for 20 years.

It worked in Gaza. It worked in Lebanon. It will keep working as long as you let it work.

No Israeli celebrates the death of a Palestinian or Lebanese child. NOT ONE!

Hamas celebrated murdering Israeli ones.

Hezbollah and Hamas spent two decades turning Gaza and southern Lebanon into a weapons depot, with civilians living on top of it.

Somehow, that asymmetry seems to get lost.

So does the slaughter in Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Ukraine. No campus protests for them.

Then you get those amazing “keyboard war analysis experts” suggesting Israel could “just use special ops” instead.

Genius!

I never know whether to be more struck by the confidence with which they write, or the distance from whence they write their posts. These armchair warriors who live thousands of miles from tunnel networks, a leadership indifferent to its own people’s deaths, and the most densely populated combat environments in history, actually believe they are qualified to write recommendations. They would do better learning a bit about the history and the background of the conflict before they set their fingers to the keys.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: Hamas and Hezbollah have turned millions of decent, caring people into unwitting defenders of the movements that started all of this. Every child who has died, Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese, died because these organizations chose this.

If saving babies is the goal, that’s where the outrage belongs.

ToI Blogs have no “likes” or reader counts. If you have read this, please leave a short comment – even just an emoji – so I’ll know I’m being seen. TY ~APR

(Credit where credit is due: this was inspired by Richard Greene.)