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Fred Maroun
A believer in peace and human dignity

Inside the minds of racists: the “war crimes” accusers of Israel

In June 2015, Israeli MK Tzipi Livni avoided arrest in London over accusations of war crimes. In August 2015, a petition with almost 112,000 signatures was presented to the British parliament demanding the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. In December 2015, a retired IDF soldier was detained for questioning in Britain over allegations that he was involved in war crimes.

The accusers of Israeli politicians and soldiers claim that Israel did not take adequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties during the Gaza wars and that Israel chose to wage wars when none were necessary.

These accusations are phony. As Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of all British forces in Afghanistan, said, “No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save the lives of innocent civilians in a combat zone”.

A good friend of mine, who is a former IDF soldier, wrote to me, “Thousands of rockets and multitudes of incursions have come from Gaza which Israel left to promote peace. Despite this, no army in any conflict has done more than the IDF to alert civilians and avoid deaths: dropping leaflets, spending thousands of man-hours meticulously cataloguing cell phones from residents living in apartment blocks, training legions of Arab speakers to call residents and warn them, and developing “noise maker” munitions as a last resort to warn people to leave the premises before they are to be bombed. No other army has ever done this. No other army anywhere else in the world has willingly given up the element of surprise just to save lives on the enemy side, knowing very well that the warnings also reach the terrorists.”

Of course these precautions would be insufficient if Israel started wars for no valid reason, but Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorists who are attacking its civilians using an extensive network of tunnels and thousands of missiles.

Israel’s accusers know this. The accusations against Israel make sense in their minds only because they see no responsibility on the Arab side of the conflict. This betrays a stark double standard based in racism. If an adult leaves a child with a dangerous dog, and the dog harms the child, the dog is not taken to court, the adult is. For the accusers, Arabs, like wild dogs, have uncontrollable impulses, and they cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

For the racists, it is inconceivable that Israel could have expected Gazans to choose democracy and peace once Israel removed its soldiers and completed the painful process of uprooting its settlers. Israel must have had some ulterior motive!

The racists cannot even conceive that Arabs would be intelligent enough to conduct terrorism on their own initiative. They claim that Hamas was invented by Mossad and that Israel wants Palestinian terrorism to continue so that it has excuses to bomb Palestinians.

The fact that each war costs Israel support in the West and costs Israel lives that it values highly (as demonstrated by its willingness to engage in very asymmetrical deals in order to free a single captured soldier) seems to elude them.

Denmark’s ambassador to Israel, Jesper Vahr, practically admitted this racism. Asked why Europe judges Israel and the Arab regimes by two different standards, he responded, “Israel should insist that we discriminate, that we apply double standards, this is because you are one of us”. Vahr therefore admitted that Arabs are judged by a lower standard, and he admitted that it is because they are not “one of us”, i.e., they are inferior.

The fanatics who target Israelis for war crimes accusations do not always stop there. Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader of the British Labor party, claims that Israel is guilty of war crimes, and he also supports war crimes accusations against his predecessor, Tony Blair.

Many of those who accuse Israel of war crimes in Gaza make similar accusations against former U.S. President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the war in Iraq, and the two sets of accusations suffer similar weaknesses.

The accusations against Bush and Blair ignore the responsibility of Saddam Hussein and his cronies for attacking their own people and their neighbors and for creating international mistrust towards their regime. They ignore the responsibility of the real perpetrators of violence in Iraq and Syria, including Assad, Hezbullah, Al Qaeda, and Daesh.

For the racists, it is inconceivable that Bush and Blair would have trusted Iraqis to build a democracy; like the Israelis, they must have had an ulterior motive! The fact that the Kurds of Iraq are grateful to Bush and Blair for having liberated them from the tyranny of Hussein is also of no importance to racists; they see Arabs as animals out of control who need a ruthless thug like Saddam Hussein to control them.

The accusers of Bush and Blair also dabble in “9/11 truth” theories, just as the attackers of Israel engage in theories about Hamas being Israel’s puppets. In their minds, how could the dimwitted Arabs have possibly orchestrated such a far-reaching attack on U.S. soil?

Despite all this, the accusations against Bush and Blair are less blatantly misguided than the accusations against Israel. While Israel has no choice but to fight back against terrorists, the Iraq war was a deliberate choice based on information that turned out to be false. To the double accusers, however, this makes no difference since they are anti-Semitic in addition to being racist. They do not recognize the Jews’ right to defend themselves, so they see the accusations against Israel as having the same weight as the accusations against Bush and Blair.

As an Arab, I resent the racism, and I resent that Arabs are used as pawns against the Jews. The bad behavior of Arab regimes and Arab terrorists is not due to lower intelligence. It is due in large part to low expectations. Arabs are perfectly capable of behaving ethically and peacefully, and everyone must expect no less.

About the Author
Fred Maroun is a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984, including during 10 years of civil war. Fred supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and to defend itself. Fred supports a liberal and democratic Middle East where all religions and nationalities co-exist in peace with each other, and where human rights are respected. Fred is an atheist, a social liberal, and an advocate of equal rights for LGBT people everywhere.
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