Israel Accused of the Crime of Defending Itself

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British journalist Brendan O’Neill is appalled at the way so many in the West paint Israel’s efforts to defend itself as “war crimes.” No matter how precisely it attacks its targets — as the Hezbollah possessors of pagers, hand-held radios, and walkie-talkies were — the IDF is accused of “indiscriminate” killing in Lebanon. No matter how many ways the IDF warns civilians in Gaza to leave places and buildings that are about to be targeted, Israel remains accused of “indiscriminate” bombing. For too many people around the world, everything Israel does is “a war crime.” More on this world-wide condemnation of the Jewish state for defending itself can be found here: “This wasn’t a war crime – it was an audacious assault on anti-Semites,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, September 18, 2024:

…All eyes are on Israel, naturally. Experts suspect Mossad intercepted a massive stash of pagers destined for Hezbollah militants and planted explosive material in the batteries. Then they sent a signal, from hundreds of miles away, that caused the batteries to overheat and eventually to blow up. The planning required for such a spectacular op blows the mind – no pun intended. I know Israelophobia is the default position of the influential classes, but surely even they will admit this was an ingenious way for the Jewish State to take out the adherents to a self-styled ‘army of god’ that has sworn itself to excising the ‘cancerous growth’ of Zionism from the Middle East. (They mean Jews.)…

That many in the West view Israel’s every action as criminal is depressing, but not surprising. Fundamentally, they think it is a crime for Israel to defend itself. They think it is a crime for Israel to take any action that might limit the threat posed by the apocalyptic anti-Semitism of Hezbollah and Hamas. And they think this because they think Israel’s very existence is a crime. They view the Jewish State as a criminal enterprise, a vile, law-defying blot not only on the Middle East but also on the reputation of humankind itself. When you harbour such intense, irrational hatred for one nation, it is a short step to telling that nation to down its weapons, lower its defences and let itself be attacked.

Make no mistake, this is what the radical accusers of Israel are saying when they tell it to stop bombing Hamas, stop attacking Hezbollah militants, stop arming itself, stop everything. They are saying leave your enemy be, and let your people be murdered. They can call this ‘anti-Zionism’ as much as they like, but to many of us their bizarre and cruel singling out of the world’s only Jewish nation as the only nation that is forbidden from fighting its enemies smacks of anti-Semitism. If you are stony-faced when Jews are murdered, but furious when their murderers have 20 grams of explosives put in the batteries of their pagers, then please remove the word ‘anti-fascist’ from your social-media bio, please refrain from calling yourself ‘anti-racist’, and please cease all future use of the word ‘progressive’.

Through those weaponised pagers, Israel sent an important message not only to Hezbollah but also to the world. It let the world know that you cannot kill Jews with impunity anymore. Those days are gone. Kill Jews now – as Hamas and Hezbollah have both done, as part of their fascistic war on the Jewish State – and there will be consequences. You might lose a bollock, you might lose your life. That the racist militants of Iranian-sponsored Islamism are peeved that Jew-killing is no longer acceptable makes sense. That so many ‘progressives’ in the West also seem put out by the fact that killing Jews is a riskier business today than it was in earlier centuries is more disturbing. Paging the Western left: racist terrorism must always be resisted.

When it comes to the Jewish state, many in the Western world have become morally unhinged. They would deny Israel the right, and with arms embargos the ability, to defend itself against those who make no secret of their desire to destroy the Jewish state.. The West does not realize that the same forces of Islam that cannot accept Israel’s existence are also those that, thanks to the 50 million Muslims who now live in Europe and whose numbers inexorably increase would, if they could, make Islam everywhere dominant, and Muslims rule, everywhere.