Far more than rockets or suicide bombers, the weapon of choice for Hamas is dead Palestinian civilians. As such, Hamas’ major strategy is to maximize the death of their own people for propaganda purposes.
It is bad enough when entities like the European Union and the United Nations buy into this evil manipulation, willfully ignoring that Hamas itself is legally and morally culpable for these deaths.
What concerns me much more, however, is fellow Jews who take the bait. During the Gaza conflict, it has been distressing to hear well-meaning but naïve Jews wring their hands over the plight of the Palestinians, questioning Israel’s use of military force and proclaiming that there must be some (unspecified) “other way.”
It is exactly what Hamas is counting on: Jews themselves swallowing and spreading their propaganda for them. The result is that the will of Jews and Israel to survive steadily erodes, and Israel never pursues a decisive victory, an ironic consequence of which is that more innocent people, Israeli and Palestinian, actually get killed in the long run.
How can Jews and Israel expect the rest of the world to support our defending ourselves when we continually apologize for doing so?
In a world in which moral complexity abounds, there is no clearer moral difference than that between Israel’s jihadist enemies, who declare that they love death more than we love life, and the humane democratic state of Israel.
My fellow Jews, let us no longer play (in Lenin’s terms) the “useful idiot” for those who would destroy us. Enough with the hand-wringing.
Jim Beer
Fox Point
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