The good thing about being a Sar El volunteer, as opposed to being officially called up as an escort officer in the Military Spokesperson Unit of The IDF, is that, at midnight, after a long day, and not a little bit of jet lag, on your first day back in uniform, after a truly wretched war, that none of your countrymen wanted any part of, that was forced on you by a group of theocratic, genocidal, imperialistic, fascist, Terrorist thugs like Hamas,who amazingly, have been bathed in the glow of victimhood, by supposed supporters of equal rights for gays, women, minorities and all around champions of peace and justice, is that you can be justifiably cranky.
You can be especially, justifiably cranky,if ,in the two week interlude, in which you’ve left the war zone, you’ve gone to West LA, The Upper West Side of Manhattan, Carrol Gardens and Cobble Hill, in the trendier moral centers of the universe of East coast enlightenment, and had passing social intercourse with those taking a break from the rigors of the Hamptons, while you return to the the former war zone of agricultural communities, and rock solid folk, along Israel’s internationally recognized, 1967 border with Gaza .
Because I’m a writer by trade and have to begin getting back to my day job I had a series of pitch meetings in LA and meetings with theatrical producers and the gentleman who hopefully will become my editor for a new novel I’ll shortly begin writing. During those sojourns on the East and West Coast I experienced a taste of the the moral indignation, nay ,moral outrage, directed at Israel during Hamas’s most recent war against the only Jewish state in a sea of Moslem countries, not a few of which are today writhing in the flames of Islamist induced wars, massacres and acts of truly genocidal ethnic cleansing of all non muslim religious minorities, within their territories, and those Muslims of a different stripe or shade than those currently committing said massacres, and truly genocidal acts of ethnic cleansing .
And what typified the true flashpoint of this moral outrage? Where was the epicenter battle field on which these champions of the down trodden chose to make their stand against the Zionist,pig, oppressors of the Palestinian masses? And what was their battle cry?
The battle ground on which the moral gauntlet was thrown down was a food co op in Cobble Hill.
And what was the battle cry?
“ To The Barricades, My Brothers!”?
“ Liberte, fraternite, egalite!”
“Liberty or Death?”
I swear to you what follows is an accurate quote, word for word.
“ I will not buy this genocidal humus!!”
Pardon me.
Chalk it up to an eighteen hour day and the lateness of the hour, but what a bunch of hypocritical, moral simps.
I know. You saw pictures of dead babies in the New York times and on the Network news.
Unfortunately,no one needs to instruct me on the tragedy of the death of one’s child. Each one represents an entire lost world and my heart breaks for anyone whoever has to join the truly awful club of which I am a member .
But try balancing your moral outrage with a few facts.
I know you’ve already written the script.
Hamas is the duly elected representative of the Palestinian people, who are victims of Israeli genocide, all in the name of protecting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands,and if only Israel agreed to withdraw to the 1967 borders and tear down their illegal settlements, peace would reign supreme in the entire middle East, since the Israel /Palestinian conflict is the root cause of all the region’s woes, and on that blessed day, when Israel withdraws to said 1967 borders, the Zionist genocidal humus will at last be defeated, and justice restored to a ravaged people and land.
Fact: According to the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestine Authority , Gaza was to be permanently demilitarized.
Fact: Israel unilaterally and unconditionally ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, forcibly evicted all of its ten thousand Jewish settlers, and withdrew to it’s internationally recognized 1967 border, hoping that the “ Gaza First” policy would create a template for the “ two state “ solution, and give Peace a chance.
Fact: Hamas immediately began firing rockets and mortars against Israel’s communities all of which were well within it’s 1967 borders
Fact: Hamas took power in 2007 in a bloody coup in which they murdered hundreds of their Palestinian brothers and sisters in order to brutally seize Gaza, not from Israel, but from the Palestinian Authority!
Fact: In Syrai and Irag,Iran, Yemen,Somalia,, Egypt and Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan and India,to name a few, Sunni Moslems are murdering Shia Moslems, Shia Moslems are murdering Sunni Moslems, and various Islamist sects and terrorist organizations, militias and armies are slaughtering Christians, Hindus,Bahais, Yezidis, Kurds, and Copts, and beheading orange clad journalists, and none of it has anything, whatsoever, to do with Israel .
Fact: More Moslem Arabs are killed in Syria every few months than all the Palestinians who have been killed in the last three wars with Israel,and in first and second intifadas, over the last thirty years, combined!
Fact: This current war was planned by Hamas, not Israel, for over five years, as is proven , literally in concrete and steel, by the scores of terrorist attack tunnels Hamas has been digging under Israel’s 1967 borders, in preparation for this war, for the last half decade!
Fact: Hamas has now publicly admitted that they initiated this war by giving the order to kidnap and murder three Israeli school boys on their way home from school. And when that did not suffice to drag Israel into a war it did everything to avoid, they began raining down hundreds upon hundreds of rocket attacks against our civilian communities while hiding behind their own civilians and turning them into unwitting and unwilling human shields.
Fact: We have the footage of them shooting from mosques , hospitals and schools,and crowded neighborhoods , thereby turning those civilian positions into military targets, thus committing a war crime against both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.All you have to do is google and open your eyes to see it.
Fact: We now have the testimony of multiple journalists who, since they have left Gaza and are no longer subject to Hamas thuggery and intimidation , have admitted to seeing rockets launched from said,civilian institutions and communities. All you have to do is google, read and open your minds to understand it.
While you’re planning your campaign against our genocidal humus try reading this letter written by Gila and Doron Tragerman,from Kibbutz Nachal Oz. Their four year old son, Daniel , was killed by a 120 mm mortar round fired deliberately at their home by Hamas Terrorists in Gaza. Nahal Oz is a farming community, not a military installation. I know that because Nahal Oz is the first place at which I ever had the dubious pleasure of being shot at in 1963. I was sixteen at that time. There were no settlements. There was no occupied territory. Israel was in it’s 1948 borders, and I was shot at for the same reason four year old Daniel was killed. I was a Jew trying to live in peace in the Jewish State of Israel. Period.
“ Daniel died in front of his little sister and his best friend, Yuval, three and a half years old; he died in front of Uri, only four months old, and right before our eyes, his mother and father…Daniel was killed from a mortar shell that was fired by Hamas members from an elementary school for boys in Gaza City. It wasn’t a stray shell. It wasn’t an accidental death”
And how do those heart broken parents know that? Because a 120 mm mortar is an extraordinarily precise weapon in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. And Nachal Oz is a straight line of sight shot.
Let me ask those of you who would sit in judgement of Israel from the front lines of New York and California. Who is on your borders? New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, Canada? Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Mexico? There’s a little Tsuris from some of those , no doubt.
You know who are on Israel’s borders today? Not separated by a continent, nor an ocean, nor a buffer zone of any kind, but literally who is on our borders, our doorsteps?The people on our very doorsteps, as we’ve just learned, can quite literally pop up in a terrorist tunnel on our front lawns. Try these on for Neighbors.
You know the guy n the black suit with the bloody knife in one hand and the severed head of a nice, liberal, New York Times reading, NPR listening journalist in his other hand? He’s on our border . Right Now.
Isis or the Islamic State, or the Caliphate. They’re on our border.
So are the Al Aksa Martyr’s Brigades, Jubhat Al Nusra, Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Bayt Al Maqdis,and Islamic Jihad, Just to name a few.
We stay afloat in a sea of Islamist terror which has engulfed our entire region and the only thing all of these disparate groups have in common, is their common desire to annihilate each and every one of us….on their way to annihilating you.
Yes . We fought a war that Hamas started.
Yes we killed close to a thousand of their terrorists and operatives and probably a little over a thousand of the civilians behind whom they hid, and who they turned into human shields in order to attack us.
We created Iron Dome to protect us from their rockets..
We put air raid shelters every few meters in our front line communities and invested hundreds of millions in civil defense.
That’s why are casualties are low. Because we protected our people.
They placed their rockets and terrorist command and control centers in civilian neighborhood, hospitals schools and mosques , and callously planned for the deaths of their own civilians.
That’s why their casualties are so high. Because they deliberately put their civilians in harm’s way.
We returned fire when shot at, and sometimes the innocent civilians they put in harm’s way were killed.
For that we are heart broken.
But for doing what was necessary to prevent more children like Daniel from being killed in front of their parents however,we offer no apologies.
We do more than any other army in the history of warfare to avoid civilian deaths, and you know it.
But here is the inconvenient truth you boycotters of genocidal humus would rather not face.
You know why Hamas hides behind their civilians, literally assuring the deaths of their own women and children?
Because it works.
Because naive, hypocritical, moral simps like you fall for it.
Let that sink in for a bit.
You want to judge someone.
Try being intellectually honest.
And look in the mirror.
Dan Gordon
2:00 a.m.
Israel
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.