By Steve Kramer
ALFE MENASHE, Israel — Here’s what I would tell the United Nations:
Esteemed Delegates of the United Nations,
I have come to address you today as a stand-in for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is constrained by political correctness and the code of diplomacy from saying much of what needs to be said. You delegates demand an immediate ceasefire and the start of negotiations to promote peace between Israel and the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel must refuse your request.
Look around the Middle East and you see numerous devastated countries, with masses of benighted refugees clamoring for food and shelter, orphaned children, grieving families, and more. In these countries, Muslims are killing each other while the innocent suffer. The UN has accomplished almost nothing to remedy this. How many hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been slaughtered by their brethren in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and North Africa? The number is mind-boggling. Yet, the UN is powerless.
Instead, you have decided to insert your organization into the war between Israel and Hamas. To put it bluntly, because the Jews are involved, the UN and the West want to intervene. The other, larger problems plaguing the region get short shrift. One cannot help concluding that Muslims fighting Muslims is one thing, but Jews fighting Arabs is quite another.
Even now, after 2,500 rockets have targeted Israeli men, women, and children, you act as if it’s no big deal. A common refrain heard from the Palestinians is, “The rockets are nothing. Where are the dead Jews? But please look at all the poor, dead Palestinians!” If even 5% of those 2,500 rockets had hit fuel depots, camp busses, old age homes, apartment houses, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Jews, would you have been satisfied because it was “proportional?” Where does this notion of proportionality come into the equation?
The UN and the West weren’t too upset when Hamas fired rockets into Israel before the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. After all, they might have thought, not many Jews were killed. Nor was concern evident when Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel after the painful evacuation of our army and 9,000 civilians. Again, not “that many” Jews were killed by the rockets. When, not if, Hamas fires rockets at Israel after the half-baked truce that is being proposed, Israel would once more be expected to accept aggression that no self-respecting country would agree to.
Let’s be crystal clear: Israel’s war against the Hamas terrorists must continue, until this scourge is truly debilitated, if not eradicated. The Hamas Charter makes it crystal clear that the conflict is NOT an “Arab-Israeli” conflict but rather an Islamic holy war against the Jews. The war must continue so that Israel’s far bigger enemy, Hizbollah, is thoroughly deterred from unleashing its arsenal of rockets (six time more than that of Hamas) on Israel.
Israelis know that Hamas miscalculated when it started this war. It thought that Jews wouldn’t have the stomach to fight when they saw the bodies of Israelis killed in air raids and the dead soldiers’ funerals. And if that weren’t enough, the Jews would certainly quit fighting when Hamas slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews close to Gaza in coordinated tunnel attacks, which were planned for the Jewish New Year just weeks away.
But even as wrong as Hamas was, they knew, in fact they counted on, the bodies of dead Arabs as their “secret” weapon, to galvanize the world against Israel. How could it be otherwise, when Hamas fires rockets from homes, schools, mosques, even hospitals, and human shields are used to protect rocket launchers and ammunition dumps?
Are Gazan citzens the innocent bystanders here? Don’t they support Hamas, after having voted them into power? Didn’t they cheer when the three young Israelis were kidnapped in June, and cheered even more when the teenagers were found murdered? But there are no bomb shelters in Gaza?
Where are the Hamas leaders? They are hiding safely underneath hospitals, or in tunnels built with the cement that you insisted must be allowed into Gaza to rebuild homes and schools following Hamas’ last rocket war against Israel. Not to mention that the Hamas leadership have enriched themselves with the money you donated to better the lives of ordinary Gazans.
So, I say to you, there will be no truce with Hamas, which would only allow it to rebuild tunnels, replenish the rocket arsenal, and better plan for the next attempt to wipe out Israel. If you delegates are so concerned about Muslims dying, go to Syria, go to Iraq, go to innumerable countries in the Muslim world, where Muslims are killed daily. Try to do something to stop the carnage there.
Please don’t sanctimoniously tell us Jews that we must stop defending ourselves because of Arab casualties. There has never been an army that takes so much care to prevent civilian casualties as the IDF. But when the enemy hopes to win a propaganda war by having its own civilians die in large numbers, know that there will be carnage.
So, esteemed delegates of the United Nations, do Israel the favor of allowing us to defend ourselves – and even to win. Don’t punish Israel, a country that values life over death, while it fights enemies who proudly proclaim that they will win because they value death over life. Those among you from democratic countries should recognize that Israel is fighting your fight. If you don’t understand that, your democracies are in mortal danger.
Thank you and God bless.
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Kramer is a freelance writer based in Alfe Menashe, Israel. He may be contacted via steve.kramer@sdjewishworld.com