From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

The move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is taking place amidst violence, and who’s surprised?

Palestinian “leaders,” never missing an opportunity to stoke violence, incited their people to riot and attack last week, and Israelis have been forced, yet again, into a terrible position: allow their citizens to be attacked, or fight back and, in the process, kill Palestinians, including children.

The call for “peaceful” protest that spurred the riots was put out on Facebook on January 7, by a “journalist” who stated, “What if 200,000 demonstrators came out in a peaceful march and broke into the barbed wire east of Gaza.” Since when does “peaceful protest” include “brea[king] into … barbed wire?”

The IDF has stated that Hamas was “leading a terrorist operation under the cover of masses of people,” and added that “firebombs and explosive devices” as well as rocks were being thrown toward the barrier, according to NBC.

So much for “peaceful” protest.

It’s been meticulously documented that Palestinian leadership deliberately places children in harm’s way, using them – and their deaths – to make Israel look bad. Due to the efforts of watchdog organizations like Committee for Accuracy in Mideast Reporting, Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI,  and the attorney and documentarian Brooke Goldstein, whose groundbreaking film, “The Making of a Martyr,” featured on-camera interviews of Palestinian terrorists admitting they recruit children as young as 10 to become suicide bombers, this horrific reality has perhaps penetrated the consciousness of a few more people in the West than it had 30 years ago when Palestinian leaders, including Yassir Arafat, weaponized children as cannon fodder for the Palestinian cause.

But all these years and dead Palestinian children later, not nearly enough people in the West know about this dynamic. And journalists, including those who have been to the Palestinian territories and should know better, continue to fall down on the job of asking tough questions of Palestinian leadership, such as, in this case, why were children brought along to the front lines to violently breach a security fence and attack Israeli soldiers?

As long as the media continues to reflexively blame Israelis when Palestinian children die, without asking questions about who is placing those kids in harm’s way, and inciting them, those kids’ leaders, and in some cases even families, will keep on using them to advance a political agenda. In this way, the media is complicit in the ongoing brutalization, exploitation, and abuse of Palestinian children.

Some will protest that Israel bears responsibility for civilian deaths, including those of children. I believe Israel makes a serious effort to minimize civilian casualties. Israeli leaders must prioritize their own people’s well-being ahead of that of the people trying to destroy Israel and target Israeli civilians. Then again Israelis, like every people, are obliged to fight as humanely, and as much within international standards of good conduct, as possible. Personally, I don’t know of any country on earth that takes greater steps to fight with respect for civilian life than Israel does.

In one powerful example, the IDF entered the town of Jenin because dozens of suicide bombers had come from the town, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad were recruiting and storing weapons. Because they wanted to prevent the unintended killing and injury of civilians, especially children, IDF soldiers went door to door to evacuate the town before they bombed it. They were ambushed and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed there.

Israeli leaders are tasked with an especially difficult problem because they are combating an enemy that specifically targets civilians (not just military) via terrorism, and also uses its own civilians in ingeniously diabolical ways, ranging from locating weapons caches inside schools and hospitals to targeting youngsters who are socially outside the mainstream and persuading/brainwashing them to become human bombs, to bringing them to the front lines to taunt and provoke armed soldiers.

Last week was rough: while the latest is that most of those killed were Hamas terrorists, several children died. My heart breaks for those children and for the IDF soldiers defending themselves and their country who were forced, by the lowlifes using their own children as shields on the front lines, to fire the bullets intended for Hamas terrorists that accidentally struck innocent kids.

Fortunately, the vast majority of those killed were adult terrorists: a Hamas official has admitted on camera that of 60 killed, 50 were Hamas.

According to Canada’s National Post, “When Israel sent trucks full of medical supplies into Gaza this week to help with the injured, Hamas refused to admit them. Evidently, the kind of people who push civilians into the line of fire don’t mind if they later die for lack of treatment.”

But while my heart breaks for any civilians, especially children, killed, I am grateful that the IDF soldiers did what they had to do. We know what Hamas and other Palestinians terror groups and mobs have done to captured soldiers. It is not the obligation of any people, no matter how compassionate, to lift their necks for slaughter by a murderous enemy.

Never again.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on May 18, 2018 at 11:13 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: Hamas protests, Jerusalem embassy. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>