BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
July
17, 2014
WASHINGTON — – Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed
Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at
civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning
civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.
“Here’s the difference between us,” explains
the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our
civilians and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”
Rarely does international politics present a
moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting
described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What
possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows
Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows Hamas’ proudly self-declared
raison d’etre: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.
Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust
to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? There is not a soldier, not
a settler, not a single Israeli in Gaza. Does no one remember anything? It was
less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army
pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted it
settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch
of Gaza over to the Palestinians.
There was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel
wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel
gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers
for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.
The whole idea was to establish the model for
two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to
remember that simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four
smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s
desire to leave the West Bank too and thus achieve an amicable two-state
solution.
And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to
being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor
British, nor Turkish, had ever given them – an independent territory? First,
they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of
building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they
spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base,
brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.
Where are the roads and rail, the industry and
infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile
upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets
tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing
rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed
them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their
own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Why? The rockets can’t even
inflict serious damage, being
almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even
West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by
sending rockets?”
It makes no sense. Unless you understand, as a
Washington Post editorial explained, that the whole point is to draw Israeli
counterfire.
This produces dead Palestinians for
international television. Which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people
not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.
To deliberately wage war so that your own
people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But
it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s
treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by
a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive
sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring
Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and
right to self-defense.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical
inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the
Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera – both
deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores
humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state
warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to
avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all
this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those
outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the
madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.
The Washington Post Writers
Group
