By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO–Like sizzling meat thrown to rabid dogs, the sad business on the sea on Monday off the shores of Israel and Gaza has given vociferous energy to the knee-jerk anti-Semites and their leftist acolytes who find fault with everything about Israel except its mortality.
Granted, it is difficult to applaud an operation that in and by itself was bungled enough that civilians were killed—even though the inevitable American investigation will reveal that the civilians from several nations were set up to be endangered. After all, no one, not even the Arab/Islamic tilted and heavily-winded “United Nations” has ever disproved the fact that Hamas—the wholesale terrorist syndicate that owns and operates Gaza—has used children as human shields in its nonstop rocket and infiltration war against Israeli towns and villages.
Israel, like any sovereign nation, has every right to blockade in international waters while defending itself against an entity (Hamas/Gaza) publicly sworn to its elimination. Many nations, including the United States, have done so in certain situations. The sudden activity and righteousness at the UN is funny. When Egypt blockaded the Red Sea in 1967 at the Straits of Tiran and publicly declared a war of extermination against Israel’s population (with Syria as its immediate ally) the UN did not call a meeting. But it did immediately withdraw its peacekeeping force—perhaps the worst betrayal of any people since the Holocaust only two decades prior.
Let’s get real and let’s get the facts: Israel has no quarrel with humanitarian aid to the stricken people who barely subsist in Gaza (does Hamas want to actually get involved with this problem rather than continue killing Israeli kids?) and Israel has offered to deliver such aid after an inspection of such convoys. Many Israeli citizens are sickened by the conditions in Gaza and a majority of the electorate favors a two-state solution but do have this strange insistence on safety and security for themselves and their children.
As the veteran journalist and editor Leslie Gelb has just written: – +
Where was the international outrage and demand for explanations and retribution when the North Koreans sunk a South Korean ship? Where was it when the Gazans attacked Israel? Where, when Afghan men flogged their women for not wearing veils? Where, when Saudi Arabia funds terrorists around the world? This international outrage is highly selective, isn’t it?
There is a reasonable solution to this terrible dilemma: The Gazan people are in need of food and medicine, and Israel must protect itself against Gazan terrorists. President Obama should propose this simple arrangement: First, those wishing to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza agree to land aircraft, dock ships, and use land checkpoints all reasonably designated by Israel for inspection of contents. Second, Israel agrees to inspect cargoes within two to three days, and allow all humanitarian goods to proceed to Gaza immediately.
From my point of view, the paradigm of what happened on Monday is this: One young Jewish boy, an Israeli naval soldier, was stupidly lowered by helicopter into a sea of hostile “humanitarians” on a ship who promptly stabbed, clubbed, and threw him overboard—thus prompting a blast of weapons and fatalities. Meanwhile, another day went by in Gaza for a sea of faceless Palestinian kids who are hungry, sick, and without a future.
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Rabbi Kamin is a San Diego based freelance writer. His articles also appear on examiner.com