Israel is 'special' – so the world is unfairly harsh on them - opinion

Jews, Israelis, and Israel are considered “special.”

They are not allowed do what others do routinely, without censure.

It is terrifying how much Jew-hatred Hamas atrocities have revealed globally.

How Israel is held to a double standard

• Should WWII leaders of the Allies have been cited for war crimes? Their victory involved the killing of many civilians. The US preaches morality to Israel about the avoidance of harm to civilians, while its own record in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Afghanistan is far worse, not to mention what was done earlier to American Indian tribes or in European colonies. The ratio of civilians to combatants killed by Israel is much smaller than that by others because, unlike other countries, Israel goes out of its way to avoid harm to enemy civilians. 

In the 1940s, sane, unprejudiced people realized which was the good side and who the immoral, inhumane, cruel sadists were. Today, that distinction is trivialized. No rational “wise men” accused the Allies of “mass murder” or “genocide.” Obviously, the Jew-hatred inculcated for years into young Nazis has not yet faded worldwide. Accusations, causing Jews and Israel great harm, are believed instantly. Proper investigation proves many of them to be vicious lies. 

Gazan health services lump the number of Hamas fighters killed together with the number of civilians killed so that cited civilian casualties (for whose numbers they can find no proof) are exaggerated. Much is made of the traumatization of Gazans. Little mention is made of the traumatization of Israelis and their children, who are routinely attacked by many rockets and thus must move away from their homes to avoid death. Today, international opinion is concerned that the sanctity of Ramadan (which Islamic Jihad wants to pervert into a month of terror) be upheld but is less interested in the fact that Muslims violated the sanctity of the Jews’ holiday celebrating the Torah, as well as their Day of Atonement (during Ramadan), by attacking Israel on those days. 

World opinion is not outraged when Jews are made fun of or their books desecrated. Doing the same to Muslims is courting death. Jordan desecrated Jewish holy places it had conquered. While Jordan controlled the Temple Mount, Jews were not allowed on it. At present, Jordan wants to act as guardian of the site. Today, while Israel is in control, peaceful worshipers of all religion are allowed there. 

• Throughout their history, Jews have been expelled from various countries. They and other refugees were helped to be absorbed into the countries to which they fled. How many UNRWA workers are members of Hamas is debated, but little mention is made of the fact that UNRWA has worked for over 75 years to ensure that generations of Palestinian children remain refugees and have access to quality education, which includes advocating the elimination of Israel and Israelis, as taught in their schoolbooks. UN peacekeepers were, according to UNSC 1701, supposed to disarm Hezbollah and keep it north of the Litani River, but they have not done so. 

Why does the world think it acceptable that some countries do not permit Jews to be residents? All peaceful people are allowed to live in Israel. 

• UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths acts as if he is unaware of the Hamas charter, for he has concluded that Hamas is not a terrorist group. His position requires that he be better informed.

From the charter of Hamas: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!... [Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion.” 

In other words, Hamas is not interested in peace but only in obliterating Israel and killing Israelis. For years, instead of using aid money for bettering life in Gaza, Hamas spent huge amounts of money on building tunnels, importation and manufacture of weapons, and spreading anti-Israel propaganda in worldwide media and universities (whose effect is readily seen).

• It is known that Hamas appropriates (for its own use or for sale on the black market) the food, fuel, medical aid, etc. sent into Gaza. Kind-hearted people who want to send more relief should be asked to devise supervision methods to make distribution safe and to prevent Hamas from stealing items Gazans need.
• If a moral group fights an immoral one, the latter has the upper hand, since it has no restraints on its methods. Why does the world not put the blame on the culprits who cause innocents to be hurt?

Reporters who ask questions about Israel killing innocents should be told forcefully that they are abetting evil by not thinking straight. How would they act in Israel’s shoes? Let themselves be slaughtered to avoid hurting innocents? When Israeli lives are at stake, Israelis are more interested in survival than in world sympathy. 

• Those who preach avoidance of war crimes to Israel (while Israel tries hard to avoid them) should do more to condemn their own, as well as the terrible ones of Hamas, including cruel destruction, killing, torturing, raping, and hostage-taking. No one in Israel is safe as long as Hamas and other opponents of peace have any power. 
• The global viewpoint appears to be that if you want to kill enemies without their resistance, first surround yourself with innocents or those you have captured by force. Your enemies will then let themselves be killed rather than fighting back and hurting innocents. Take as many hostages as you can, treat them as inhumanely as you can, and kill numbers of them. Then all the world, including your enemy’s helpless relatives of hostages, instead of forcefully rising up against you in righteous indignation at your outlawed, heartless cruelty, will cause your enemy to give in to your demands. 
• Former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: “Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.” Since its founding, Israel has been forced to defend itself against non-peaceful neighbors who attacked it again and again. Israel is interested in making peace with all its neighbors. It has done so with several of them but is still faced with hostility, aggression, and terror by others. Speaking of peaceful people, President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas trivialized the Holocaust and hates Jews, paying those who kill Israelis. He appears ignorant of the Koran’s statement that Allah gave the Land of Israel to the Jews. Hamas leaders have a charter which says they are not interested in peace with Israel. Are these the people to lead the unilaterally recognized state of Palestine?
• Those demonstrating against Israel either do not know or overlook the following facts: (i) Israel was forced to “occupy territories” because these territories harbored those who, without restraint, fired rockets at Israel and organized terrorist atrocities like those committed by Hamas. (ii) Israel stopped occupying Gaza in hopes of living peacefully next to it but instead received huge numbers of rocket attacks from there. (iii) Arab countries (as well as Gaza) do not permit Jews to reside in them. (iv) When other countries conquer territory during wars, they often keep it. When Israel was repeatedly attacked, it fought back and conquered enemy territory, which international opinion expected Israel to give back. (v) When Arabs controlled the Temple Mount, they did not consider the sanctity of this holy place for Jews but built a mosque on the site previously occupied by the Jewish Temple. After Israel reconquered the site, it was expected to respect the sanctity of this mosque.
• Arabs live and work peacefully among Jews in Israel, earn similar salaries, go to schools with Israelis, and are part of the Israeli Knesset. That is why it is irrational to call Israel an “apartheid” state.
• Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose life was saved by Israeli doctors when he was in an Israeli prison, turned out to be a cruel ingrate.
• Jew-haters believe Jews have no claim on the territory of Israel, although the Bible and the Quran state that God gave the area of Israel to the Jews. A Kuwaiti Al Qabas article stated: “The Israelis …are a foreign entity in a region that they have no historical, ethnic, or cultural ties to.” Obviously, this was written by someone who has not read the Bible, the Jews’ great moral gift to civilization, parts of which were appropriated by both Christians and Muslims. (These religions and Western civilization were shaped by their Jewish roots.) Jews are not colonialists or occupiers, for they are indigenous to the Land of Israel and have a longtime attachment to it. It is appalling how ignorant of Jewish history and culture are the Jew-haters (as well as those who consider themselves to be impartial).
• Peaceful Jews are saddened when peaceful Palestinians are hurt or killed. Can Israel count as friends those who do not understand this and do not agree that the cause for the plight of Gazans is that Hamas, besides stealing life necessities from peaceful Gazans, also uses hospitals, schools, mosques, and other places designed for peaceful use to hide behind? Israel is given little credit for the fact that it goes to great lengths to avoid hurting or killing non-combatants, while Hamas, hiding behind non-combatants, makes this more and more difficult.
• Can all the “friends” interested in the welfare of Israel do anything to eradicate worldwide Jew-hatred, which makes Israel so important as the only country to be a Jewish haven? (Before WW II, many countries did not accept numbers of Jewish refugees.) Just contrast the way the US fought against its enemies in the past, without regard for civilian deaths, to what it and many on the globe tell Israel today. Obviously, Jews are “special” – i.e., less deserving of fairness than others. Insanely sadistic Hamas counts on global Jew-hatred to countenance using its peaceful co-religionists and hospitals, schools, and mosques to shield it from just retribution. Shame on all those whose statements prevent Israelis from living peacefully in the land that the Bible and the Koran affirm as belonging to Jews.

Moral: Global support for ending Israel’s occupation of any territory claimed by Palestinians will enable them to attack Israel without restraint. If you violently hate Jews, feel free to inhumanely degrade, torture, or kill them. As long as you hide in hospitals, schools, houses of worship, etc., and use human shields, short-sighted, naïve and ignorant international opinion will prevent retaliation or punishment. The old aphorism “Might makes right” has been replaced by “Despise the small in size.” (Today there are some 2.38 billion Christians, 1.9 billion Muslims, and only 15 million Jews in the world.)

The writer, now retired in Haifa, was a research associate at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City before coming to Israel in 1974 to head the Safed Rivka Ziv government hospital’s biochemistry laboratory. He is author of Trivicarl Pursuits, Ten Socially Corrected Tales and Rhymes and Rothschild’s Musings (Mazo Publishers).