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9.20a What About the Accusations of Genocide Against Israel?
There are a lot of people all over who falsely accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza including people in American schools. The Office of Student Pathways Newsletter for example, a newsletter sent out by the New York City Department of education included a link to a Google doc titled “STOP GAZA GENOCIDE TOOLKIT”
Why is Israel fighting in Gaza? Why doesn't Israel just give the Palestinians a state? One problem with that is the Arabs effectively already have 4 Palestinian states. The Palestinian Authority governs a large part of Judea and Samaria. Hamas governs Gaza. The state of Jordan which was originally supposed to be part of the Jewish National Home was given by Great Britain to the Palestinian Arabs and has 3X the area of what was left for Israel. Israel gives equal rights to Jews and Palestinian Arabs, it is the fourth Palestinian state only it is one the Arabs have to share with the Jews. Another problem with this idea is that many Palestinians say they want to destroy all of Israel. The Hamas covenant calls for the destruction of Israel. When demonstrators chant "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" they are saying they don't want Israel to exist. One reason we know that because all of Israel is located between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. The most important reason of why another Palestinian state won't work is that the real cause of the conflict is religious intolerance. The war between Israel and the Arabs is not about land, or a state, it's caused by antisemitism preached in Islamic texts and Islamic mosques.
The war with Hamas in Gaza started on October 7 when the terrorist organization Hamas together with civilians from Gaza invaded Israel and killed 1200 people in Israel. They would have killed more but Israel finally managed to stop them. Since then Israel has killed many more Arabs in Gaza than 1200 people. Wouldn't it be fairer and more humane if Israel just killed 1200 terrorists from Hamas to match the 1200 people Hamas killed? The problem with that is Hamas is determined to kill as many Israelis as possible and it's capabilities keep increasing. If Israel doesn't remove Hamas from power, Hamas will kill a lot more than 1200 Israelis. Another problem is that Hamas seized Israelis and is holding them hostage in terrible conditions. There are people who think that Israel should not fight to get the hostages back because more Arabs will die if Israel does but there are several problems with that. One of those problems become clear if we imagine that we are the ones being held hostage by terrorists who won't feed us and abuse us. If you were being held hostage wouldn't you want the Israelis to save you even if it meant them killing Hamas terrorists? What if Hamas was torturing a dear member of your family? Wouldn't you want Israel to rescue that person? For Israelis the hostages are like family and they want them rescued. The other problem with not fighting to free the hostages is that if Hamas sees that it can take hostages without consequences they will take more and more hostages. If the Arab world sees that Israel is weak and doesn't fight back they will all started taking hostages. There will no longer be any deterrence. Israel's survival depends on the Arab world thinking that attacking Israel will result in Israel defeating them. If they perceive that Israel is weak they will attack.
Moshe Dayan, one of the great former generals of Israel, gave a speech, stating:
The essence of Israel's security in this region (Middle East) is deterrence. When we formed the State in 1948-9, we were very weak. The Arab States had planes, tanks, heavy artillery and many more soldiers than us. We had very little heavy military equipment. In the period 1949-55, we absorbed almost a million immigrants. Tent cities sprung up all over the country. We were totally disorganized. Had the Arabs mounted another major invasion, we could have lost. We devised a solution to this problem. It was deterrence. Think about being lost in a forest and surrounded by hostile animals. If you light a torch, boldly approach them showing no fear -- they will retreat. But, if you show fear -- they will attack and you are lost. We used this principle to save Israel during those early years. Every time we were attacked, we retaliated ten-fold. We showed daring and penetrated deep within their borders to attack our targets... You know the result. The Arabs were afraid and never attacked. Deterrence worked.
The Hamas Health Ministry has accused Israel of killing over 50,000 Palestinians most of them women and children. It should be called the Hamas propaganda ministry because those numbers are fake. Trusting Hamas to give accurate casualty numbers is like trusting a fox to guard a yard full of chickens. To see some of the reasons that we know the numbers are fake click here and here. Hamas would like us to believe that Israel is intentionally killing civilians because it makes Israel look bad and might lead to the United States withholding arms for Israel. In fact it did during the Biden administration. Israel endangers its own soldiers in its effort to avoid killing Arab civilians.
Before we judge Israel we should look at the track record of other countries who try and avoid killing civilians. The United States tries to avoid civilian casualties when it fights but can't avoid there being civilian casualties. According to an annual report of civilians killed during American military operations:
Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of U.S. forces, civilian casualties are a tragic but at times unavoidable consequence of combat operations. This is especially true when fighting in urban areas and against adversaries like ISIS and al-Qa’ida who use civilians as shields and whose tactics include intentionally endangering the lives of innocents.
21 years prior to the October 7 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel, Jonathan Foreman in an article called "Media Miss Israeli Restraint" (New York Post 4/17/02) wrote:
the tactics chosen by the Israeli army -- sending infantrymen from house to house -- simply make no sense unless the avoidance of civilian casualties was a priority. If the Israelis were truly as callous or reckless about civilian casualties as CNN and the BBC imply, they could have destroyed the "terrorist infrastructure" at much less risk to their own men: * The last time American troops fought guerillas in an urban area was the battle of Hue in 1968. We didn't hesitate to use artillery and jet aircraft in support of the Marines. * The early French response to the uprising in Algeria included the naval bombardment of a rebel-controlled town, randomly killing up to 8,000 people. * The Russians literally pulverized the Chechen capital of Grozny in 1999. And if the Israelis were as monstrously cavalier about human life as their enemies claim, they would simply have shelled or bombed Ramallah and Jenin into submission. That's what Syria's then-President Assad did at Hama in 1982--where he crushed the Muslim Brotherhood at the cost of at least 10,000 lives....
The Israelis could be forgiven for learning the wrong lesson from the past two weeks: That next time they go after the people who've been suicide bombing their kids, they might as well just level Ramallah and Nablus and Jenin. Why take the risk of fighting from house to house if you're going to be treated as if you've done a Grozny anyway?
While the United States attacked Afghanistan they tried not to hit civilians but they were not willing to do so at the risk of house to house combat. One result was U.S. aircraft hit a hospital by mistake. Another was the loss of many civilian lives.
Israel doesn't only risk the lives of its soldiers by having them fight house ot house with terrorists. Israel actually phones civilians and warns them to evacuate so they won't get hurt when Israel goes after the terrorists. Those phone calls alert the terrorists that the Israelis are coming which gives them the option to prepare ambushes and to flee to fight another day if necessary. Israel could save the lives of a lot of it's young men if it didn't try so hard to avoid killing civilians in Gaza.
The video below is a very good expose of the lies about Israel and civilian casualties. It is an interview with John Spencer.
In the video below General Millie, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the army summarizes how many civilians the American military has killed in its wars.
Should the United States not have invaded Normandy and not fought the Nazis in order to spare innocent civilians? What would have happened to innocent civilians if the U.S. had not invaded Normandy? During World War 2 the Japanese massacred civilians in the territories they conquered. What would have happened to civilians if the U.S. had not forced Japan to surrender by dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
In the video below Senator Lindsay Graham asks a U.S. general if he would have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The most similar battle the U.S. fought to Israeli's fight in Gaza took place in the city of Manila in the Phillipines. Netanyahu talks about that in the video below.
Many people admit that the terror attack by Hamas on Israel was terrible but ask if that justifies the thousands of children that Hamas says were killed by Israel. Just because Hamas says something happened or shows a video clip of something happening doesn't mean it happened. On the other hand, no matter how hard Israel tries it can't avoid there being some civilian casualties when it fights Hamas in the cities of Gaza especially since Hamas uses civilians as human shields.
Israel has no choice but to do everything it can to prevent Hamas from carrying out more massacres like the ones it carried out on October 7. Building a wall between Israel and Gaza didn't work. Hamas just shot rockets over the wall and dug tunnels under the wall. On October 7, Hamas blew holes through the wall and and entered Israel. Israel tried giving the Palestinians a self governing state, in 2005, Israel pulled out all its citizens from Gaza and let the Palestinians elect their own government. It was the Palestinians who chose to vote for a terrorist leadership. There is only one way Israel can permanently stop Hamas from killing Israeli families and that is to eliminate Hamas. Israel does not have a choice even if many Palestinian civilians get killed. The deaths of civilians in Gaza is the fault of Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza who elected Hamas. There are many Arabs in Gaza who realize that. Israel can warn civilians to get out and it does and many do. However many who try to are shot by Hamas who doesn't want them to leave. In addition some refuse to leave. The video below has a conversation between Israeli soldiers who are trying to convince Gazans to leave and a Gazan who refuses to do so.
Israel bombed Hamas in Gaza and that resulted in civilian deaths. What people don't realize is what would have happened if Israel had sent troops in without bombing first. That would have been the end of many of those troops. Israeli troops are people too, they are just civilians who put on uniforms to defend their country and their own civilians.
The video below shows beachgoers in Gaza. If Israel was genocidal they'd all be hiding underground. Seeing this led to many Israelis being very angry. While Israeli citizens have lost loved ones to Hamas and are preparing bomb shelters and buying generators, and at least 100,000 Israeli civilians are evacuated from their homes in the north and south of the country because of the threat of more October 7 like attacks and rocket fire, and when 133 hostages were still in Gaza seeing these beach scenes was outrageous to many Israelis
This lesson was split into 3 parts because it became so long.
Click Here to See Part 2 of This Lesson
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