The speed with which so many gleefully rushed to judgment over the hospital attack was disgraceful
Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/10/23
We have just been subjected to a grotesque masterclass in misinformation, moral inversion, anti-Semitic hate-mongering and hypocrisy.
Within minutes of Hamas claiming, with zero proof, that Israel had bombed a hospital, the world erupted into instant, unequivocal condemnation of the Jewish state. The pent-up rage on social media, the utter certainty with which the allegations were repeated on the broadcast media, the uncritical acceptance of the vilest propaganda from terrorists, the willingness to attribute the worst possible motives to a tiny democracy fighting for its survival: it was a chilling spectacle – the successful whipping-up of a global lynch-mob, a terrifying glimpse into the darkest corners of the human psyche.
Millions of people in Britain, Europe, America and the Middle East knew – they just knew – that Israel must have bombed the hospital, that Hamas’s claims must be true. Isn’t that what an “illegitimate” nation of “settlers”, “ethnic cleansers” and “war criminals” would do? The sense of relief, of glee, from the Israel-haters was palpable.
Their sickening coalition of two-faced virtue-signallers, hard-Left activists, Islamist extremists and old-fashioned racists had kept quiet over the past few days, refusing to condemn the pogrom of 7/10, destabilised by a Hamas genocide that contradicted their worldview. But their cognitive dissonance – the gulf between the reality of jihadist massacres, and the anti-Israeli propaganda that they have imbibed – was becoming unbearable, and they couldn’t wait for confirmation of their detestable prejudices.
Now, they thought, a little over a week after the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, the normal order of things could return, and Israel could again be blamed for the death of women and children. To call such people useful idiots is far too kind: the extreme, irrational demonisation of Israel is the new blood libel of our times, an attempt at inflaming passions and provoking war, terror, death and destruction.
As Jake Wallis Simons argues in his brilliant, eponymous book, Israelophobia is the latest manifestation of anti-Semitism. The grossly disproportionate criticism, the hysterical denunciation, the virulent double standards, the delegitimisation and dehumanisation: this allergic reaction to Israel is so acute it can only be explained as the current iteration of the world’s oldest hatred.
The same people who spent days claiming that the massacre and incineration of babies by Hamas was “unverified”; who didn’t believe witness statements from Israeli doctors or soldiers; who conveniently ignored the fact the murderers had live-streamed their atrocities; who wanted to view every piece of evidence, every picture, every video for themselves before finally, almost reluctantly, accepting that Hamas had indeed committed war crimes – these very same people all immediately jumped to judgment.
Hamas’s word was enough. No proof was needed. The bias, the lack of objectivity, point to an abhorrent, endemic culture of anti-Semitism among swathes of the West’s cultural elites, even among those who see themselves as “tolerant” and “liberal”.
We should all care about the truth, however inconvenient or upsetting. I don’t know for certain what or who caused the explosion, but having scrutinised the evidence and especially the judgments of trustworthy open-source experts, it appears very likely that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired. It seems very unlikely that Israel was to blame. If the evidence were to change, I would change my mind. So why have so many of those who rushed to condemn Israel remained silent now that the facts point to Islamic Jihad as the guilty party? Or is that a stupid question?
It should be obvious that Hamas are despicable liars, and that many of the civilian deaths inside Gaza have been caused by their own failed rocket launches. Palestinian deaths are helpful to the terrorists – in effect, a suicide cult who don’t value their own people – as they can blame Israel.
It is also sadly true that all democracies – America, Britain, France and Israel – sometimes get it wrong, and even tell untruths in wartime. At some point, it is inevitable that Israel will accidentally hit civilian targets. Yet anybody who understands anything about Israel, about the Israel Defense Forces’ legal apparatus, about the values of its people, knows that it is more committed to a clean war than almost any other democracy, let alone all the tyrants and fanatics that surround it.
The critical point is that this conflict – and the death of Palestinian civilians – is entirely the fault of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran and other terror groups. It is they who inflicted a pogrom on Israel. It is they who don’t believe in Israel’s right to exist, and don’t believe in the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews. It is they who hide among civilians, and store bombs in schools. It is they who are responsible for forcing Israel to defend itself, with an inevitable, tragic impact on civilians. We must hold the terrorists morally responsible for every death, Israeli or Palestinian.
Depressingly, Hamas’s psy-ops are succeeding. The pro-Israel alliance is fraying. The Iron Dome camouflages the scale of Hamas’s daily attempts at massacring Israeli civilians: the IDF’s strength is paradoxically its central weakness in the info wars. Much of the West is petrified at the prospect of a prolonged ground conflict, and cannot stomach large-scale casualties, for fear of a domestic political backlash. Yet without entering Gaza, how can Israel punish the murderers and destroy Hamas?
There is such a thing as a just war, one conducted for the purposes of self-defence, even one that requires invading another country and fighting street by street until total victory is assured. It is what happened in the Second World War, when the Allies liberated Europe, and in myriad other conflicts, though Israel would be far more restrained than most Western armies ever were. There is a fundamental, profound moral and legal distinction between deliberately torturing, raping and exterminating women and children, and the accidental, tragic death of civilians used as human shields as a result of careful, considered action taken by a law-bound army engaged in self-defence.
Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden are holding firm, to their great credit, but the global anti-Israel propaganda is reaching a crescendo. The world is inching ever closer to the abyss, and Hamas’s stooges are helping to drag us into another dark age.
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