Last Saturday (July 19th) a protest march in Dublin against Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza strip attracted between three and five thousand people. It was one of several marches that took place around the country and in other cities Worldwide. If we were to believe those that spoke at these demonstrations, we might be fooled into thinking that Israel’s actions were the worst thing that had happened to Palestinian Arabs for years and that somehow Israel was over-reacting to the ceaseless rocket fire that has been aimed at them for months, if indeed that even managed to mention those attacks. These rockets and the chilling sirens that come with them have become a regular feature of Israeli life in the past month, but rarely get anything like the attention that Israel’s response attracts.
Every night we hear the latest casualty numbers with the death toll now sadly in the hundreds of Palestinians Arabs and an increasing number of members of the Israeli Defence Forces. Unfortunately this simplistic headlining of the current conflict plays into the hands of those who like to portray Israel as heavy handed (or worse) when it comes to dealing with the Hamas terror campaign and fails to properly identify why the death toll is unbalanced.
While Israel has poured millions into developing a sophisticated missile defence system to intercept rockets before they reach population centres, Hamas which rules Gaza has put a much greater proportion of its money into building rockets and what has turned out to be a large tunnelling system to infiltrate Israel from below. It is now believed that over 70% of the cement imported into Gaza for schools, hospitals and homes in the last five years has been diverted into building these tunnels.
To compound the fact that the tunnels cannot be used to protect Gazan civilians, Hamas is launching rockets from build-up areas; effectively using those people as defence shields against Israeli attempts to neutralise the rocket launch sites. Forced with this regrettable scenario, Israeli is taking huge efforts to limit the civilian death toll. Pamphlets are being dropped in potential target zones, warning phone calls made to house close to rocket launch site and even warning rockets in advance of removing the rocket sites. Rather than trying to help Gaza’s civilians, Hamas is instructing them to ignore the warnings and remain in place while they continue to fire rockets into Israel. In such circumstances is it any wonder that the civilian death toll is increasing? Yes there have been some very unfortunate civilian casualties but even with warnings and the most sophisticated weapons to remove military targets, accidents will happen, as we know from the “friendly fire” incidents that have impacted the Americans, British and others.
Day after day we see images of suffering from Gaza, images which are clearly aimed to evoke an emotional response, but we are seeing comparatively little reasoned analysis of the cause of the conflict and what steps can be taken to find a solution that brings peace to the lives of civilians on both sides. How much have we seen or heard from Tony Blair, the supposed Middle East peace envoy? The west’s support for the Egyptian coup which removed the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood from power means that Hamas no longer sees Egypt as an honest broker for negotiations. The wider Arab world is facing a challenge from Isis and in many countries domestic issues mean that they have little or no real time for Palestinian Arabs. The EU is more concerned about the mess that it helped create in Ukraine and Obama’s foreign policy, such as it is, appears to consist of aspirational sound bites and nothing of substance.
What other choice does Israel have when allowing its citizens to be terrorised on a daily basis is intolerable? To date, there have been three ceasefire attempts, all observed by the IDF and ignored by Hamas. Hamas has refused to negotiate, as not only does it not recognise Israel, its primary aim is to wipe Israel off the map. The Palestinian Authority wants to turn the clock back to the 1967 borders before it will engage and if there is one lesson that Israelis have learned from Gaza it is that they cannot trade land for peace.
It’s now almost ten years since Israel withdrew from Gaza. Before 1995, thousands of Israelis lived in over 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza. Under a plan devised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel shut down all the settlements and withdrew all its military personnel from the Gaza strip as an act of goodwill and an attempt to bring peace. Large horticultural sites were left intact for the Arab population of Gaza to help their economy. However within two years, the hard-line terrorists of Hamas had displaced the more moderate Fatah group in a bloody civil war in Gaza and began its attacks on Israel. The horticultural sites were all destroyed and the economy collapsed making the people dependant on hand-outs from Hamas. Consequently it is now quite clear that any transfer of land from Israeli control will not bring long-term peace. With diplomatic efforts effectively on life support, Israel has no choice but to defend itself.
On a recent trip to Israel, I was asked on a couple of occasions as to why Ireland is so obviously anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian. It would be easy to identify the examples of anti-Semitism that dot Irish history, and while I still believe that is a motivation for some, it is far from being the main cause. The left in Ireland can find little to agree on, but one thing that they do coalesce on is their dislike for America and by proxy, Israel. Sinn Fein especially has links with Palestinian groups, going back to the days when the I.R.A. and Palestinian terrorism was funded and supported by arms from Libya’s Colonel Ghadaffi. Those links have never been broken and last week we saw the disturbing sight of Sinn Fein TDs using Palestinian flags in the Dáil chamber and attempting to bully other members of our parliament into taking an openly partisan approach to the Middle East. Not to be outdone we saw a People Before Profit councillor in Dun Laoghaire climbing up a flagpole to remove the Israeli flag celebrating a children’s regatta. Such obvious self-serving attention seeking can only promote the idea that Ireland has no empathy with people trying to overcome a terrorist threat to its very existence.
The one thing that exposes the left-wing anti-Israeli sentiment for what it is, is the hypocrisy and patent double standards. In the past three years over a quarter of a million people have died in Syria and civilians have been slaughtered by the Assad regime, using tactics that included chemical warfare. Where were the demonstrations against that? Where were the flags in the Dáil and emergency motions to protest against the Syrian regime? They didn’t exist, because the same people who supposedly care so much about civilians in Gaza, weren’t able to find a way to blame the USA or Israel. I could give similar examples in Egypt, Libya, Turkey and beyond where civilians were targeted, but the silence of the Irish left is deafening.
Three quarters of a century ago, Europe’s Jews looked to others to protect them. Europe was too slow to act and millions perished needlessly. Today the descendants of those that survived may no longer be dependent on others to protect them, but we should at least have the decency to support them as they work to remove the threat from Hamas.