The Human Shield Strikes

Well, it’s about time that Gazans speak out against Hamas, but that’s easy for me to say. In the second week of the war, I wrote on these pages that this time around Israel has a chance to win the propaganda war, building on a backlash of Gazan Palestinians shaking their fists at Hamas. Wishful thinking on my part, that the people of Gaza would lash out against those who squandered all that “foreign aid” on building a terrorist infrastructure, and brought nothing but death, destruction and misery to the overcrowded and impoverished Gaza strip. I was hopeful that Gazans who were being used by Hamas as a human shield would point a finger at those very same Islamic extremist lunatics whose terror tunnels always seem to lead into mosques, schools, hospitals and apartment buildings.

As it turned out, I was dead wrong, on two counts: First and foremost, people who live under oppressive regimes don’t necessarily have the guts to raise their voice. That may explain why German resistance to the Nazis was marginal, and why Russians who now oppose Putin do so at great risk. Conversely, it explains why people who live in weak democracies run by wannabe above-the-law autocrats are making so much noise in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv and across the United States, while they still have a chance.

The second flaw in my reasoning was that Israel, or rather those who are running this stumbling democracy down to the ground, never had any intention of fighting a propaganda war, let alone winning it. The IDF was sent into Gaza with the full knowledge that Hamas cowards fight behind their human shield of mostly women and children, for protection as well as propaganda. They have used this formula time and again to stir up the sentiments of the west, and it works for them every time. This time it worked so well that anti-Semitism has risen exponentially, fueled by Hamas’s useful idiots on college campuses everywhere.

The sad part is that Israeli officials have done nothing to stop this onslaught, other than repeat the mantra “Israel has a right to defend itself.” That is our right, so what were we thinking before October 7th? Certainly nothing that smacks of military readiness, or even a pretense of a defensive posture. Our entire political and military establishment, with very few exceptions, was all caught up in the conceptzia that Hamas was “deterred.” Our army was nowhere near Gaza. We may as well have put up a sign on our hi-tech fence: “Israel welcomes Hamas.” To follow up, not only did we bomb the hell out of Gaza and play into Hamas’s hands, we (meaning “they,” the government that so misrepresents Israel) even abetted their propaganda effort with irresponsible calls such as “flatten Gaza” and worse, “there are no non-combatants” in Gaza. The type of statements that got Israel into the Hague, accused of incitement for genocide.

The genocide part is a lie, for useful idiot consumption. The incitement part is true, to our national embarrassment. Thanks to our shameful government. And whenever there is incitement in the air, dating back to the Rabin assassination, there is always one “leader” who doesn’t see, doesn’t hear, and stands only to gain from all the divisive background noises. The national nightmare that never goes away, he who refuses calls for a state commission of inquiry to investigate the failures that led to the October 7th massacre, he who wouldn’t do enough to free the hostages and did everything to bring back that terrorist Ben Gvir to his coalition, he who preaches unity in wartime and is busy firing the Shabaq chief and Attorney General while aiming to take over the Supreme Court. He who is now taking credit for the Palestinian mobs calling for Hamas to get out Gaza, with the far-fetched claim that “his policies are working.” The real sad part is that after all the lies, half-truths and deceptions over so many years, Bibi Netanyahu still has his own useful idiots.

And for those Israelis who still say that all Palestinians support Hamas, take a good hard look at what’s happening in Gaza.