The Might of Right: A View of the Foreign Media Coverage of “Operation Protective Edge’ from Israel

Here in Israel during yet another war for our very existence, I have been watching, sometimes from the protection of my bomb shelter huddled with my family, with dazed fascination the Orwellian double-speak of the foreign media outlets, with the notable exception of Fox News, regarding “Operation Protective Edge.”

Israel Defence Forces troops are defending a democratic country against totalitarian anti-Western Islamic Terror.  What is so difficult to understand?

The war is not, as the British Parliament recently stated in a 12 minute discussion that would have done Goebbels proud, about the “occupation.” In fact the thousands of Israeli citizens who were unilaterally withdrawn from every millimeter of the Gaza strip by the Democratic government of Israel in order to “give peace a chance” left a veritable treasure of agricultural infrastructure for the Gazan population to utilise. That infrastructure, coupled with extremely generous donations from the international community, should have allowed the Gazans to build a “brave new world,” a Singapore on the Mediterranean. Instead, as we all know, they choose the path of the gun by electing the terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas promptly killed or expelled their Fatah rivals and imposed a sharia inspired campaign of terror on the local population and set about, with generous help from Iran, trying to realise the aim of their founding charter to violently conquer “all of Palestine.”

Both sides of the British Parliament falling over themsleves to accuse Israel of “War Crimes.”

CNN, BBC et al, never uses the “T” word (“Terrorist”) but consistently insist on referring to those who indiscriminately target civilians as “Militants.” This lends them a veneer of legitimacy.   In their statements, such as, “according to Palestinian officials, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed,” they do not differentiate between terrorists who were killed whilst deliberately targeting Israel’s civilian population, Palestinian “collaborators” who were summarily barbarously executed, without trial, by their own people, or the few civilians who were killed collaterally, but not deliberately by the IAF. In fact, the Hamas regime is committing a double-war crime, both deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and using their own civilians as human shields. Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, who was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan stated:

“I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza. Hamas, the enemy they have been fighting, has been trained extensively by Iran and by Hezbollah, to fight among the people, to use the civilian population in Gaza as a human shield.”

These foreign outlets also falsely claim that the “national identity” of the Palestinians was forged from the “trauma of loosing their land to Jewish armies in 1948.” They neglect to contextualise by mentioning that UN Resolution 181 passed on November 29 1947 called for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states: A Palestinian Jewish State living side by side with a Palestinian Arab State. Had the Arabs accepted that resolution, as the Jews did, there would have been no conflict.

The tragedy of the Middle East is that the Arab countries summarily rejected the UN Partition plan and tried to finish Hitler’s job and drive all of the Jews into the sea and conquer the entire mandatory territory. The “tragedy” (naqba) for them is that the Jews fought back and managed to create a State of their own, at the huge cost of 1% of the Jewish population. Those are the inconvertible historical facts.

Finally most foreign media outlets neglect to mention that whilst the both sides have suffered civilian deaths during the current conflict, there is a palpable difference:

• Hamas publically rejoice at civilian casualties. Israel grieves at civilian casualties.

• Hamas deliberately attempt to murder civilians, whilst the Israel DEFENCE force surgically targets known terrorists and terror infrastructure.

• Hamas educate their children to sanctify death, whilst the Israelis educate their children to sanctify life. As Golda Meir observed: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

“Not by the right of might have we returned to the land of our forefathers but we have returned by the might of right…And therein, all its inhabitants, the citizen as well as the resident, will live in freedom and justice, in solidarity and peace.”

 

-Menachem Begin